August 2010

There were 36 posts published in August 2010 (this is page 3 of 4).

East Raleigh Community Day

I am back from a fun but busy day at the East Raleigh Community Day. I was the master of ceremonies for the four-hour event, and also ran between booths to fetch supplies when needed.

It was fun, there was a good turnout from the neighborhood, and lots of kids got school supplies. That’s a good day in my book!

You can see pictures on Flickr here.

Changing directions again

… well, not exactly changing directions so much as returning to the direction I’ve traveled before. Today I put in my notice at one of America’s great places to work. I have landed a sales engineering position at a growing software company. In a lot of ways it’s pretty much my dream job: I get to do what I love to do best, the folks at the company are all really cool, and I can really make an impact right from the start. I had been looking for the right position and it looks like it found me.

Sales engineering takes a combination of technical and people skills. While it’s easy to find people who excel in either category, it’s not often you find someone who excel in both. I’ve been using my technical skills at my current job but almost none of my people skills. This gives me a chance to perform while still being a geek. I love it.
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Railhawks

We went last night to watch a game between our local professional soccer team, the Carolina Railhawks, and the Rochester Rhinos. They were having a ceremony at halftime to honor the athletes from each CASL team who were recognized for their outstanding sportsmanship. I am quite proud that our daughter Hallie was among those good sports.

We got lost on the way to the stadium, arrived late, and endured an especially sweaty night, but the family enjoyed the game in spite of the Railhawks losing 0-2. I hope we will see another game soon, even if Hallie isn’t being honored!

Fixing GNU Mailman to handle mimetypes

I host a few neighborhood email lists on my Linux server running the excellent GNU Mailman list server software. Part of my setup involves stripping pictures/documents from emails and storing them in the list archives instead. This way 300 neighbors don’t get a 5 MB attachment emailed out to them: if anyone wants to view the picture/document all they have to do is click on a link in the original email and it will be fetched from the archives.

Tonight I noticed that the MIME type image/pjpeg wasn’t being properly parsed by Mailman’s Scrubber.py script. Having dealt with MIME type problems before, I suspected that the problem wasn’t with Mailman itself but the operating system’s definition of the MIME type.

Sure enough, checking the /etc/mime.types file revealed there was no image/pjpeg type defined. A little more Internet hunting brought me to this post on the Mailman list, confirming the missing mime.type info as the culprit:

On Jan 6, 2010, at 8:18 AM, Ralf Hildebrandt wrote:

> * Ralf Hildebrandt :
>> I have a list where the attachments are removed and stored on the
>> mailman server itself.
>>
>> This works like a charm, but SOME image attachments of the type:
>>
>> image/pjpeg
>>
>> are stored as “attachment.bin” instead of “attachment.jpg”
>>
>> Why?
>> Example below:
>
> adding “image/pjpeg” to /etc/mime.types fixed that:
>
> image/jpeg jpeg jpg jpe
> image/pjpeg jpeg jpg jpe

This is because Mailman uses Python’s mimetypes module to generate the file
name, and I believe that consults /etc/mime.types where available. Since
before you edit Python didn’t know anythig about image/pjpeg, it assumed it was
random binary data, hence the .bin suffix.

-Barry

From what I can find out, image/pjpeg is a type that Microsoft products choose to use instead of the image/jpeg that the rest of the world uses. I guess those crazy Redmonders are just trying to keep us on our toes, eh?

An “in the moment” Sunday

Sunday was a day when everything came easy. I awoke refreshed. Breakfast wasn’t hurried. There was time to read the paper. And nothing on the family “agenda,” other than picking up Hallie from her sleepover. Kelly ran that errand while Travis and I figured out how to keep ourselves busy.

We began by moving our freshly-painted rocking chairs out of the garage and onto the screen porch. then we fixed a balky toilet. Then we vacuumed the porch floor. Then we began sweeping out the garage. Then before I knew it, Kelly returned with Hallie had returned and Hallie and the girl next door were gleefully sweeping the garage with Travis and me. I felt a bit like Tom Sawyer or something, but everyone was having so much fun I felt guilty when I finally had to declare the garage clean.
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Did the SBI set up Floyd Brown?

The story of the SBI’s treatment of Floyd Brown, convicted by a dubious murder confession, should make everyone shudder.

Some of the shine has come off former golden boy Attorney General Roy Cooper. It’s a shame, since I once thought Cooper could do no wrong.

Here’s Floyd telling his story, brought to you by Travis Long, Shawn Rocco, and Mandy Locke of the News and Observer.

Agents’ Secrets: A confession doesn’t add up from Travis Long on Vimeo.

Our weather ain’t got nothing on Moscow’s

Raleigh’s temperature is expected to reach 92 degrees Fahrenheit today, with a steady breeze moderating that a bit. While that’s warm, it’s a far cry from the weather Russia’s dealing with right now. Central Russia is experiencing an unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures up to 108 degrees. For a country more accustomed to extreme winters, this is a catastrophe. Wheat crops are withering, peat bog wildfires are raging, and people are dropping like flies because air conditioning is uncommon.

To make matters worse, the peat bog fires have made the air unhealthy in Moscow. So either Russians sweat it out indoors in buildings with no air conditioning, or they open the windows and breathe heavily-polluted air. Not much of a choice!
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