Anathema concert

I already have my ticket for tomorrow's Anathema concert. /me happy :-)

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

I upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 9.04. Upgrade went smoothly. But to my horror, the laptop would no longer power down when I shutdown Ubuntu. A little research and I found this bug report, and a simple solution: install the module linux-backports-modules-jaunty.

NS-3 and Packet::Copy

Grr! I have lost track of how many times I forgot that I need to packet->Copy () some packet. Or how many wasted hours of work. Clearly the worst design decision in NS-3, ever.

  for (std::set::const_iterator poaI = binding.oldPoas.begin ();
       poaI != binding.oldPoas.end (); poaI++)
    {
      NS_LOG_LOGIC ("Terminal " << terminal << " associated; sending BU (terminal=" << terminal
                    << ", newPoA=" << bu.newPoa << ") to " << *poaI);
-     m_buAgent->SendBu (packet, *poaI, msg.GetMessageSequenceNumber (), bu.terminal);
+     m_buAgent->SendBu (packet->Copy (), *poaI, msg.GetMessageSequenceNumber (), bu.terminal);
    }  

Note to self: in the future, when ever transmitting a packet inside a for-loop, make sure to Copy each transmitted packet!

Python will switch to Mercurial (Hg)

Python will switch to Mercurial.

I like bazaar only slightly better, but good thing GIT is out of the picture!

Note: Mercurial is the DVCS what NS-3 has been using since the beginning.

Proof that GIT is more difficult to use

Proof that GIT is more difficult to use than other alternatives:

1. Instructions to checkout the stable branch of freeradius:

"""
 $ git clone git://git.freeradius.org/freeradius-server.git radiusd
$ git fetch origin stable:stable
$ git checkout stable
"""

2. Instructions to get the 6.0 branch of mysql:

"""
Get this branch: bzr branch lp:mysql-server/6.0
"""

Why most GNOME developers chose to use GIT instead of bazaar or mercurial is beyond me... *sigh*

Books, reading

I finished reading David Palmer's "Emergence". Interesting and original writing style, intelligent writing, but all too familiar post-apocalyptic, and save-the-world plot themes.

Now reading Jack McDevit's "Seeker". More space archeology, searching for lost civilizations through the galaxy. I love the Alex Benedict character. Both "A Talent For War" and "Polaris" were excellent novels.

Yesterday I mail ordered four new books: William Gibson's "Neuromancer", Juliet Marillier's "Wolfskin", Stephen King's "It", and Isaac Asimov's "The Gods Themselves". So, mostly SciFi, with a sprinkle of fantasy (Marillier) and horror (King). It's good to vary reading style slightly, once in a while ;-)

Interactive Python Shell in NS-3 PyViz

With ns-3-pyviz, one of my patterns of debugging simulations was to run "ipython -gthread myscript.py". This would run the gtk main loop in a thread and allow me to interact with the IPython shell and inspect a live simulation, to find out what is going on.

Since ipython -gthread stopped working in recent versions, I decided to just follow a recipe for embedding an IPython shell into an existing pygtk program. It has been pretty easy to do, thanks to reusing the work of others (Eitan Isaacson, in this case); thank you, open source! :-)