Author Archives: ejrh

Coloured call graphs!

Posted on August 18, 2012 by ejrh

Juha Jeronen has added some features to the Python call-graph generator (pyan) I’ve previously blogged about. With a single command line, I can now get pictures like this: A bit of colour always shows a program’s structure in a better … Continue reading →

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Simple but efficient backups

Posted on August 4, 2012 by ejrh

Backups are perennially on my To-do list. Just having them would be good, but more than that I want to automate their creation and maintenance. My problem, of course, is I prefer to make my own system for doing this … Continue reading →

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New SSD

Posted on July 31, 2012 by ejrh

A couple of Fridays ago, a solid state drive — the 256GB Crucial M4 — on which I’d been keeping my eye became available again at a reasonable price, so within a few minutes I placed an order. It arrived … Continue reading →

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Curious line-endings in FTP

Posted on July 26, 2012 by ejrh

Whilst hurriedly implementing basic FTP support in a program that’s due in a couple of days, I ran into a strange phenomenon: Retrieving ftp://login:password@server/data.csv, a multiline text file, will return the file intact. Retrieving ftp://login:password@server/data.dat, another multiline text file, won’t: … Continue reading →

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Is software “engineering” ?

Posted on July 19, 2012 by ejrh

(TL;DR – Yes, but it isn’t architecture.) This question, and the subject of vocational nomenclature in general, has been grinding my gears for ages, and deserves a rant of its own. Sometimes it is difficult to know what to call … Continue reading →

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Sleeping in loops considered harmful

Posted on July 13, 2012 by ejrh

NetBeans gave me an interesting code hint today: Thread.sleep called in loop.

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DOS filenames are still useful

Posted on July 6, 2012 by ejrh

TL;DR – If you end up with an invalid filename on Windows, you can manipulate the file using the secret DOS name.

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Using the NTFS journal for backups

Posted on July 6, 2012 by ejrh

This post (in draft for almost 18 months) describes my amateur understanding of an interesting and useful NTFS feature, the USN Journal, and shows how I’m using it as part of a simple backup program in Python. It also gives … Continue reading →

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Sequent calculus fun with Logitext

Posted on July 4, 2012 by ejrh

(This post is overdue; I’ve been more than usually busy at work on a new project, and have not had the energy to do anything interesting when I get home. Well, I saw this a while ago and today out … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, Programming | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A small contribution to PostgreSQL beta testing

Posted on June 16, 2012 by ejrh

PostgreSQL 9.2 has been in beta for a few weeks, and (since they asked for volunteers) I thought I’d do a bit of informal testing. I’m also eager to see the effects of Index-only scans and other performance improvements (which … Continue reading →

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