One of my favourite things about Python is how I can package up my module into an egg and easy_install it from a tarball, source export, or even an http link. All you need is setuptools and you’re off to the races, but there’s a few things to watch out for:

• There’s no easy_uninstall. To remove an egg, you would need to go into /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/easy-install.pth, manually prune out the offending line, and finally rm -rf the directory container of that egg. Oh, and carefully pick out the various binary scripts the egg installed into /usr/bin. Good luck.
• What if you’re working on two projects that require different versions of a specific egg? Having to re-easy_install a different version of an egg every time you switch contexts is no fun.
• Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s always better to not do things as root?

The solution is virtualenv.

Virtualenv creates a local copy of everything you need for maintaining your eggs. The prescribed way to use it is to virtualenv ~/python1 and then execute ~/python1/bin/activate to enter into the environment of that local installation. From then on, anything you easy_install will go into your local installation instead of your root install. If zombies attack and you need to purge your site-packages of any disease, you can scrap the whole thing and start a-new — try to do that with your root install without losing hair.

The shazow method

The default use of virtualenv is great, but I like to take things a little further. I setup a permanent local install as soon as I log into a fresh Linux user. This way, I never have to install any eggs as root.

sudo easy_install virtualenv
virtualenv ~/local

And add these two lines to your ~/.bashrc or equivalent:

export PYTHONPATH=~/local/lib/python2.5:$PYTHONPATH
export PATH=~/local/bin:$PATH

Now I never have to activate anything, I just happily use my local install without worrying about making a mess in my root. If I need to have different versions of things, I create a separate virtualenv install and activate that whenever I need it as mentioned before.

It’s nice to have your very own contained egg basket. This is especially useful for deploying production code on servers. Production environments often require very specific versions of packages, so deploying multiple Python apps on the same server is made much easier with virtualenv.

Update: Another good idea is to use --no-site-packages with virtualenv, this way the root PYTHONPATH can be omitted and all of your package dependencies will live entirely in the virtual environment. (Thanks, Chris! Check out his Virtualenv and PasteScript screencast for more on the topic.)

IPython caveat!

For those of you who have discovered the incredible life-changing tool of never-ending code-gasms that is IPython, there’s one extra step you’ll need to perform: It turns out that IPython saves some hard-coded paths when it’s installed, so you’ll need to re-install it with your new virtualenv active before it will work properly.

Today, you’ll get to hear about what I’ve been up to! This wont be on the exam.

• After a year and a half stint with Ubuntu, I’m back to my true love Gentoo. That is, with a shiny matte new quad core beast of a machine.
• Bought Rockband for my PS3 couple of weeks ago. Drums are ridiculously hard. Been rocking out. Good fun is being had by all those who dare rock. Can’t wait for Still Alive to be released for free. It shall be a triumph!
• What started out as pretty code is now a bonafide open source Python module: workerpool. People are using it. No, really.
• muxtape.com: A super simple music sharing web app launched last week. Its been enriching my life — doing what Pandora once did. Here’s my muxtape. Be right back, there’s someone at the door.

1. Back up my precious save files: Formatted my external hard drive to FAT32, plugged it into the PS3, went to System Settings > Backup Utility, and hit OK.

   While it’s backing up, I’m reading various Playstation 3 hacking forums, such as ps2dev.org where the first hack to utilize the locked-away GPU in Linux was created. Apparently there’s also hope to use the Playstation Eye as a webcam…

2. Burned the installcd ISO, inserted it into my PS3, hit Install other OS, it did its magic, rebooted, and I was in the Gentoo install CD. Just like that.
3. Plugged in a keyboard into the PS3, created a password, started sshd, and ssh’d in from my desktop and did the rest from the comfort of my fancy chair.
4. Followed the Gentoo Install guide which took about 20 minutes of work, the rest was waiting for things to download, extract, and compile. Meanwhile, I ate pizza and watched the first couple of episodes of Jericho through my PC. Not too bad.
5. Time for the real purpose of this ordeal: Setting up emulators. After much trial and error, I learned that Mednafen is the cream of the crop. After more jumping through hoops, I created the perfect controller configuration that supports two PS3 Sixaxis controllers plugged in USB (bluetooth works too!). You can download it here: mednafen.cfg. Shove it in your ~/.mednafen/ and you’ll be good to go — full screen and all.

   To make your own key bindings, read the nitty gritty in this thread.

(Continuation of Why I Love Linux)

1. Need to make a quick ISO image of your CD or DVD?
   dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/output.iso
2. Your minion co-worker is leaving the office for an alleged 5 minutes, you believe David he is a liar and need to prove him wrong? time read in your nearest terminal, then hit ctrl+d whenever he’s back, and tada, instant stopwatch.
3. Need to SSH but don’t feel like using ol’ cd and ls? Fire up KDE's fish:// protocol and SSHing is the same as browsing your local files. Even edit things in-place.
4. You're doing something long and CPU-intensive in a terminal but you feel like playing a game that needs said CPU? ctrl+z to pause the process, do your thing, then fg to resume.
5. Need to make a quick backup of something and too lazy to type it twice? cp foo{,.bak} is equivalent to cp foo foo.bak. Great for those /super/long_paths/that\ everyone.dreads.
6. Bonus Super-Useful Alias: alias p='ps aux | grep -i'. Need to check if your rogue daemon process is still alive? p foo

Much of this was written about a year ago and I never got around to posting it. Yay for agelessness of Linux.

• Total Patches:
  $ grep -i "Author: " ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  6325
• Number of unique contributors
  $ grep -i "Author: " ChangeLog-2.6.18 | sort | uniq | wc -l
  938
• Number of patches by Andrew Morton (lead maintainer)
  $ grep -i "Author: Andrew Morton" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  133
• Number of patches by Linus Torvalds (father of Linux)
  $ grep -i "Author: Linus Torvalds" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  40
• Number of patches by people with IBM email addresses
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@.*ibm.*\.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  387
• Number of unique IBM contributors
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@.*ibm.*\.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | sort | uniq | wc -l
  81
• Number of patches by people with Google email addresses
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@google.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  11
• Number of unique Google contributors
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@.*google.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | sort | uniq | wc -l
  7
• Number of patches by people with GMail email addresses
  $ grep -i "Author: .*@gmail.com" ChangeLog-2.6.18 | wc -l
  466

Take these numbers with grains of salt. Some people use multiple email addresses, others use non-work email addesses — Andrew Morton is a Google employee for instance, but doesn’t use a @google.com address.

I was impressed at the quantity of contributions by IBM, they make up 6.1% of the total number of patches in this release. Good work!

Fast-forward to today, into Linux-land, where 99% (literally) of my software is open source and free. The 1% being Cedega (used for running, non-free, Windows games).

While reading the debate on GPLv3, I see that there really is a throng of kind-hearted developers amidst the throng of money-hungry leeches. Albeit a smaller throng, but a throng nonetheless. Enough people to make the free world turn.

Some things are free.

While enjoying an exuberant game of WarCraft III, I will occasionally have some downtime and use it to check my messages. This requires switching from the game to another application. In the ol’ Windows days, this would be done with an alt+tab. You’d hit the two magic keys, blink your eyes and hope that the screen changed states by the time your eyes opened. Of course, it never would. You’d always open your eyes with disappointment, and wait a couple more seconds until Windows woke up and decided to do something useful.

Although Linux is faster with the window switching to begin with, desktop switching is in a league of its own. When I was a young and unwise penguin, I scoffed at and avoided virtual desktops. Also, in the same streak of naivety, I always used to maximize my windows — but that’s a different rant altogether. But now, by allocating different purpose to each virtual desktop, my productivity flourishes. And I can save a few precious eye blinks — dry eyes be damned!

One for web browsing and chat, one for music and file browsing, one for development or gaming, and one to bind them all.

When I play some WarCraft III DOTA on desktop #3 and I get pinched to death by the Sand King, I can spend the 40 seconds it takes to respawn productively by replying to pending messages on desktop #1. And quickly switch to desktop #2 to change songs before going back into battle.

There was a slight issue of Gaim opening its new message windows in whatever desktop was currently active, but that’s easily fixed with awesome desktop managers like KDE by restricting the application’s window class to a specific desktop. Yay.

(Elder laptop brother helping younger brother install Linux)

Isn’t it cute? Adorable! They’re getting along great. The youngin’ is a total attention whore though.

Linux is all set, most things are working fabulously. Only quirks I need to work out:

1. Battery life: It’s down to 2 hours versus the ~2:50 hr I got on my initial windows trial. I believe the culprit is the hard drive not spinning down when not in use. Or maybe it is now, I didn’t benchmark recently.
2. Suspend to ram: Hibernating to disk works, suspend to RAM doesn’t wake up properly (screen remains black). Fixed by adding acpi_sleep=s3_bios argument to kernel on boot.
3. Hard drive active protection: Hard drive motion sensors are working, I just didn’t hook it up to a head parking script. Do I need it? It’s damn annoying.
4. Finger print reader: The driver is there, I’m just not using it. I read that they’re not as reliable as one would like. Do I need it?

Sadly now that I got everything I need for drawing working, I lost the desire to draw. :-(