I recently have been playing with parsing GPX files and spitting out the results into a special KML file. I initially wrote a parser using minidom, yet after running this the first time – and my Core2Duo laptop reaching 100% utilization for 10 seconds – I realized I needed to re-write it using something else. I spent a little time reading the different parsers for XML and eventually read more about cElementTree. And it is included with Python2.5, sweet.

Status: ✅ You can likely tell that I’ve been having some fun with graphing and mapping recently. I was reading a few articles about GIS and stumbled upon a pretty darn cool project at Webopticon, which included cool pictures. I showed it to a friend thinking they would find it interesting, and then realized: oh! KML has an altitude attribute. That could be interesting. One of my projects is to create maps of Sydney’s traffic, so I have been experimenting heavily with Mapnik and OSM. I figured I could have some fun and finally parse some gps tracks and display the data.

My new guest VMs under Xen seem to be having issues where upon each reboot, the network interface gets incremented by 1. For instance, it starts at eth0, then goes to eth1, then eth2, and eventually ethX. There are two issues to fix: 1) get the count back to 0, and 2) stop it from counting again. I was able to get them to decrease by looking in the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file and removing all entries.

I have managed to install mapnik 0.4, 0.5, 0.5.1 and various SVN releases in-between on Ubuntu. While this isn’t in itself exciting, I think I manage to stumble at every installation. I typically forget to add the flags when building, so, to prevent myself from stumbling again, I’m going to write them out here. Build mapnik $ python scons/scons.py PYTHON=/usr/bin/python \ PGSQL_INCLUDES=/usr/include/postgresql \ PGSQL_LIBS=/usr/lib/postgresql BOOST_INCLUDES=/usr/include/boost BOOST_LIBS=/usr/lib Then install it $ sudo python scons/scons.py install PYTHON=/usr/bin/python \ PGSQL_INCLUDES=/usr/include/postgresql \ PGSQL_LIBS=/usr/lib/postgresql BOOST_INCLUDES=/usr/include/boost BOOST_LIBS=/usr/lib …

I have finally decided to do another remodel of this site. I had a few goals before starting: Use one image Use the YUI-CSS framework Use Django Make it easily extendable So far, I think I’ve accomplished these goals. The site is easier to read, easy to modify, and has a few new features. More entries to come!

I returned to my computer today to notice I had the following error: (145, "Table './databasename/comments_freecomment' is marked as crashed and should be repaired") Darn. The solution is quite easy, however: mysqlcheck -uUsername -pPassword databasename comments_freecomment Now you know what you already know, you can fix it: mysqlcheck -r -uUsername -pPassword databasename comments_freecomment If that doesn’t work, you can try a slightly different method. First, go to the location where your databases are stored on the disk (most likely something like /var/lib/mysql/databasename). Next, stop the database – and try to free up as much memory as possible. Then run:

Yesterday I was sort of curious if I could use my 3 Skypephone in a pinch if I got lost, which here in Sydney, happens quite often. Luckily 3’s Skypephone has both Bluetooth, and supports j2me apps. Mobile GPS unit, here I come. The recipe to get maps on your Skypephone is pretty darn easy. You’ll need one dash bluetooth GPS receiver (I have the Qstarz BT-Q1000), TrekBuddy, a TrekBuddy acceptable map (easily downloadable), and one dab computer – but since you’re reading this, I figure you’ve got that part taken care of.

I’ve been playing around with OSM a little lately, and have been meaning to construct my own slippy map. At first I wanted to do it on my VPS – but with rather limited storage, and even more limited memory, there just isn’t a way. Three problems exists: the first occurs when trying to use osm2pgsql to import the OSM file into the database. Current records state that this typically uses 650+ MB, something my 512MB VPS just doesn’t have (although I’m writing some code that might make this possible in the future).

I’m in the process of working on one of my projects, and the requirement came up to download a fairly large file (4GB). Since I only receive ~20GB/month at my house, I decided to just use my server in the U.S. The next requirement came about needing to compile Mapnik, which I had intended to do on the server at some point anyways, yet I ran into memory constraints. Good old distcc comes to the rescue. I don’t need to use distcc that often, yet when I do, it is very handy. However, I always forget to set g++ to use distcc as well. So, for when I forget next time…

I have to admit, I’m pretty lazy. I don’t (ironically) like to type, and I really don’t like typing the same command over and over. I found myself switching between my external monitor and laptop quite frequently, and decided to somewhat automate the task. Although I know there are other programs out there that allow this, they either had too many features, or crashed. Xrandr works just fine, but like I said, I’m lazy…