Finally! I discovered what the problem was with Ubuntu and old versions of Python (I had to create symbolic links for libz.so.1 and libreadline.so.5 from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu to /lib). That resolved all of the problems I was experiencing with the older versions' interactive shells. I also re-created the test script that automates feedparser ( Read more... )

A day or two ago I reviewed almost every bug report that's accumulated in the feedparser issue tracker. Several of them I've marked NeedInfo, but almost all of the rest of them are valid and will be addressed.

I'm expecting that there will be an opportunity to begin fetching and reviewing the git pull requests and miscellaneous patches later this ( Read more... )

I made time this weekend to continue reading Pro Git, and I paid special attention to dealing with remote branches. I learned quite a bit, and I think I'm nearly to the point that I can competently deal with the pull requests I've received. I also created a new SSH key so I can push to github again.

The biggest problem I have right now is that I ( Read more... )

This post is about software development, but I'm disappointed to say it's not about feedparser or listparser development.

I'm back to working 14+ hour days, and much of my time has been spent writing automation scripts in a custom scripting language that can be interpreted by Tera Term. It has a featureset that makes what I'm doing fairly easy, ( Read more... )

I was invited to participate in the gpodder hackfest last Saturday by joining the group on IRC. I had a blast talking with the group! In the invitation it was suggested that I could join and talk about my plans for feedparser. I've thought a lot about serious architectural issues, so after discussing it on IRC I wanted to share what I wrote ( ( Read more... )

After losing so, so much in a catastrophic hard drive failure, I've found it difficult to get my development environment back up and running. Time was, I could open a terminal and everything was ready to go: command completion, test suite, every version of Python, BeautifulSoup, lxml, Sphinx...I had everything set up and functional. Now I'm ( Read more... )

Work has been very demanding throughout the month of September. The sheer number of hours I worked, especially for the final week, is staggering. On Monday, for instance, I worked from 9:30am to 5:00am the next day (19.5 hours). I continued working 16 hour days throughout the week, and then Saturday I got to work around noon and didn't leave until ( Read more... )

At the end of June I experienced a catastrophic hard drive failure: I turned on my computer and heard a metallic ping, followed by the gut-wrenching grinding noise of something dragged across the spinning platters. I turned the computer off immediately, but when I booted it back up a few days later the drive was no longer spinning up at all and the ( Read more... )

Yesterday while driving home just before midnight I passed by a woman who was walking along the side of the highway. I saw that she wasn't carrying anything that would warrant walking (such as a gas can or a bag of groceries) so I circled back around, stopped, and asked if she needed to use a phone or wanted a ride. She said that she could use a ( Read more... )

While an observer was being shown around at work:

Pete: And this is Kurt. He'll be building and configuring the servers for that system over there.
Me: Actually, David's going to be right next to me, helping me the whole way. I've told him to mimic my movements, so if you cross your eyes just right it'll look like a single person, but in 3D.
( Read more... )