John Hobbs

“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”

- Elbert Hubbard

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I finally got a hold of some Sugru a few days ago. I had pre-ordered a sample pack (12 small sachets) and it arrived at last.

First off, when they say that a sachet is small, they mean it. However, this stuff goes a long way.

Sachet Size

My first fix was my beloved flip flops. I’ve had these for 5+ years and they are the most comfortable things ever. Darcy would tell you that I only hang on to them because she hates them BUT THATS A LIE! (mostly)

The Sandals (Post-Op)

These sandals had major issues. Before I repaired them there was a rip all the way through (depth wise) and almost all the way across (width wise). Previously I had closed that gap with long nails, which worked for most of a summer, but they were not a long term solution.

Underside Repair

But Sugru was just the ticket, it worked great. I followed the instructions and washed up then opened a packet and got to work. I found that it stuck to me more than the shoe in my case, but with some push and quick pull-back I managed to get it where I wanted it.

I used two sachets on this, but looking back I could have done the job with one. The first packet I put up top and I rushed a bit and got sloppy. Later I put the bottom packet on and I think that’s what actually did the job.

Foot Area Repair

All in all a nice experience. My only issue with Sugru is that is stained my hands for a while, but that’s a pretty minor complaint. My sandal is comfy, solid and ready for years more action.

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I’ve been meaning to check out the Tweepy for a while and got around to it today. It’s a Python library for interacting with Twitter. The feature I’m most interested in is the streaming API support, which isn’t advertised much by Tweepy but seems pretty solid.

Tweepy has pretty good documentation, and the code is terse and readable, but what I found most useful was the examples repository, which had the only example of streaming with Tweepy that I could find in the official documentation.

It’s really straightforward. Implement a tweepy.streaming.StreamListener to consume data, set up a tweepy.streaming.Stream with that listener, then pull the trigger on the streaming function you want to use.

Here’s a quick example I set up to track the filter keyword “omaha”.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
from tweepy.streaming import StreamListener, Stream
 
class Listener ( StreamListener ):
  def on_status( self, status ):
    print '-' * 20
    print status.text
    return
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
 
  USERNAME = "YourUsernameHere"
  PASSWORD = "YourPasswordHere"
 
  listener = Listener()
  stream = Stream(
    USERNAME,
    PASSWORD,
    listener
  );
 
  stream.filter( track=( "omaha", ) )

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I started trying to lose weight a while back, since we both know I’m a bit heavy and sitting in front of a computer isn’t going to lose the weight for me.

Naturally, it’s important that I incorporate technology into my weight loss somehow, right? So I decided to give the Google Visualizations API a spin.

I worked up a quick data format and a method to pop the data out. Nothing fancy, just a fixed width flat file. This doesn’t deserve a database.

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2010-06-30 235.4
2010-06-29 236.8

Easy to read, easy to edit, and easy to consume. Every morning I just hop on the server, add the day’s weight and log off.

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<?php
  // Get the max days back we want to look.
  $max_days = 7;
  if( isset( $_REQUEST['days'] ) and ! empty( $_REQUEST['days'] ) )
    $max_days = intval( $_REQUEST['days'] );
 
  $i = 0;
  $lines = array();
 
  $fh = fopen( 'data.txt', 'r' );
  while( ! feof( $fh ) and ++$i <= $max_days ) {
    $line = fgets( $fh );
    if( empty( $line ) ) { continue; }
    array_unshift( $lines, $line );
  }
  fclose( $fh );

Now I just needed to represent it. The API is very object oriented and easy to work with. I wish there was a less verbose way of presenting the data, but you can’t have everything.

Actually, there may be a better way, I just didn’t come across it while speed reading the docs.

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function drawChart() {
  var data = new google.visualization.DataTable();
  data.addColumn( 'string', 'Date' );
  data.addColumn( 'number', 'Weight' );
 
  data.addRows( <?php echo count( $lines ); ?> );
 
  <?php
    $i = 0;
    foreach( $lines as $line ):
  ?>
  data.setValue( 
    <?php echo $i; ?>, 
    0,
    '<?php echo substr( $line, 0, 10 ); ?>'
  );
 
  data.setValue(
    <?php echo $i; ?>,
    1,
    <?php echo floatval( substr( $line, 11 ) ); ?>
  );
  <?php
    ++$i;
    endforeach;
  ?>
 
  var chart_div = document.getElementById( 'chart_div' );
  var chart = new google.visualization.LineChart( chart_div );
  chart.draw(
    data,
    {
      width: 800,
      height: 600,
      title: 'Weight Over Time'
    }
  );
}

And there you have it, fancy charting in no time.

See it in action at http://static.velvetcache.org/weight.php

Get the full source at http://gist.github.com/459148.

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