a blog by Brie Gordon

Using Wikipedia’s pseudocode description of the Collatz Conjecture, I whipped something up in Python. Try it!


n = int(input("What number would you like to explore? "))
while n > 1:
     print(n)
     if n % 2 != 0:
         n = 3*n + 1
     else:
         n = n/2
print(n)

--

Brie

Python is a very cool programming language that I've started learning. It's extremely powerful and I've already done some neat stuff with it. I wrote an interactive sales tax calculator for PA residents. (I'm working on a version that will let you tell me what state you are in and output the information appropriately.

# This is actually the cost of the item and the tax. This would be a ridiculous tax rate.
tax = 1.07
price = raw_input("How much is your item before tax? ")
totalcost = float(price) * float(tax)
finalanswer = round(totalcost, 2)
print finalanswer

Here's a screenshot of how it works:

Bet you thought I'd never write that and mean it! So, I got the following straight from the horse's mouth, also referred to as Internet Explorer Platform Preview Guide for Developers[1] in certain circles.

Support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) has become one of the most requested features for implementation in Internet Explorer, and is a powerful way to add attention-grabbing visuals to a website with minimal markup and low bandwidth overhead.

With the Internet Explorer Platform Preview, Microsoft is proud to introduce support for much of the basic SVG feature set, with support for even more expected in future platform pre-releases.

As you may know, I'm a fan of SVG, having spent a lot of time in college writing SVG widgets[2] to recreate form elements in SVG using JavaScript, instructed by the wonderful Dr. David Dailey [3], also known as the man behind "An SVG Primer for Today's Browsers" [4][5] (in cooperation with the W3C, of course).

If you are unfamiliar with what exactly SVG does or you're just new, see this article which will list 9 of a number of reasons why SVG is important for the web. [6]

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff468705.aspx
[2] http://techylady.com/svg/widgets.php
[3] http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/
[4] http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/IG/resources/svgprimer.html
[5] http://www.sru.edu/pages/15247.asp
[6] http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/01/08/9-reasons-why-svgs-are-important-for-the-web/

Then place the following in a file called something like /etc/cron.hourly/auths:

#!/bin/bash

TWEET=`/bin/grep "Failed password" /var/log/auth.log | /usr/bin/tail -n1 | /usr/bin/cut -d"]" -f2`

echo $TWEET | /root/tweet.pl

“; } if (!empty($error)) { $errorcode = file_get_contents($error_url); $replace = “##error##”; $errorcode = str_replace($replace, $error, $errorcode); echo $errorcode; exit; } $internalfields = array (“submit”, “reset”, “send”, “captcha_code”); $message .= $eol; foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) { if (!in_array(strtolower($key), $internalfields)) { if (!is_array($value)) { $message .= ucwords(str_replace(“_”, ” “, $key)) . ” : ” . $value . $eol; } else { $message .= ucwords(str_replace(“_”, ” “, $key)) . ” : ” . implode(“,”, $value) . $eol; } } } $body = ‘This is a multi-part message in MIME format.’.$eol.$eol; $body .= ‘–’.$boundary.$eol; $body .= ‘Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1′.$eol; $body .= ‘Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit’.$eol; $body .= $eol.stripslashes($message).$eol; if (!empty($_FILES)) { foreach ($_FILES as $key => $value) { if ($_FILES[$key]['error'] == 0 && $_FILES[$key]['size'] < = $max_filesize) { $body .= '--'.$boundary.$eol; $body .= 'Content-Type: '.$_FILES[$key]['type'].'; name='.$_FILES[$key]['name'].$eol; $body .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64'.$eol; $body .= 'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.$_FILES[$key]['name'].$eol; $body .= $eol.chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents($_FILES[$key]['tmp_name']))).$eol; } } } $body .= '--'.$boundary.'--'.$eol; mail($mailto, $subject, $body, $header); header('Location: '.$success_url); exit; } ?>

I have been subjected to far too many of these commercials. How, exactly, did you tell Microsoft about how Windows 7 was your idea?

What is so ironic about these commercials is that the virtue they extol is a large part of what I (and so many others) love about open source software. It really is *our* idea. Using Launchpad, development mailing lists, Ubuntu Brainstorm and other tools, my ideas (or code or translations or documentation or artwork) can be submitted to the community responsible for a project and considered in an open, clear process for approval.

Try expressing in a clear, open manner your thoughts about Microsoft. Ask to watch the progress of your idea. Request that you be kept in the discussion loop of the key developers. You'll be laughed out of town.

Why should you take my word for it? Because I'm awesome. No, you shouldn't just take my word for it. Below I've included a bunch of links to ways *YOU* can contribute -- even without coding.

We're awesome and open source software is our idea!

Ways You Can Make Ubuntu Your Idea:
Ubuntu Brainstorm
Launchpad
Community Documentation

Ways You Can Make Linux Your Idea:
The Linux Documentation Project
Mailing Lists

Ways You Can Make FreeBSD Your Idea:
Mailing Lists
Submit a Problem Report
The FreeBSD List of projects and ideas for volunteers

Even more goodness:
A huge list of How to Contribute to Open Source without Coding
Microsoft uses the same channels to contribute to the Linux kernel

Until next time,

Brie

Posterous is amazingly simple and fun to theme. (Last time, I talked about setting a custom favicon.) That's a nice touch but it's a detail that some will not notice. A custom background, on the other hand, is very noticeable and speaks volumes about you and your blog. Grab an image (may I suggest something from COLOURlovers?) and follow along:

1. Log into your Posterous account.
2. Go to Settings > Theme and customize my site
3. Click Advanced
This is where you can put the custom CSS. Note that how it ends up looking will vary based on what kind of customization you have done already. I am using the Ginza bigpic theme. This is what I did, modify as appropriate.
4. Scroll down to the body section that starts out like this:

5. Right before the closing '}' place some lines like this (remove the spaces):

6. Click 'Save, I'm done!'
Caution: Some patterns are very bold and may be too distracting for your blog or make the text hard to read.

Bonus:
I've attached several patterns from COLOURlovers.com that I think are really pretty. The links for them are below:

[1] http://imgur.com/VTGTy
[2] http://imgur.com/qdIcN
[3] http://imgur.com/1NR2V
[4] http://imgur.com/P9Rog
[5] http://imgur.com/cOpj9

the one I'm using:
[6] http://imgur.com/wJLLa

P.S. I <3 Posterous. The theming docs are complete and well-written if you're interested in doing more with your Posterous blog.

           

Click here to download:

Pretty_Pretty_Posterous_Backgr.zip (81 KB)

Here's what you need to do to set your own favicon:
1. Log into posterous.com
2. Scroll down and click 'Theme My Site'
3. Click 'Advanced'
4. Click 'Expand'
5. Remove this line:
    <link rel="icon" href="/images/favicon.png" type="image/x-png"/>

6. Place a line like this where the one you removed was:
    <link href="http://www.unixsysadmin.org/favicon.ico" rel="icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" />

7. Click 'Save, I'm done!'
8. Click 'OK'

You'll be returned to your blog. Note the favicon! :+)!

Occasionally, I experience some network latency and packet loss through my ISP, Comcast. When this happens, I let them know about it - and you should, too.

Before you do that, though, there are some things that you should do, as dumb as they may sound. They *will* help you get through to your ISP.

Reboot your computer. Reboot your router. Reboot your modem. (For the last two, unplugging the power cable should suffice; don't forget to plug it back in.)

Finally, you should gather some data to give them. I like to do this by setting up some pings to places in different geographical locations. I've written a script (tested on Linux and FreeBSD) to get this ping party started. FreeBSD users may have to change the interpreter to #!/usr/local/bin/bash first.

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash

#### uhoh ###
# ISP Trouble Script #
# Author: Brie A. Gordon
# brie@unixsysadmin.org
# I run this when I'm having trouble with Comcast.

# Replace the line below with the IP of your router.
gnome-terminal -e "ping 10.100.1.1" -t "router" &

# Located in Pittsburgh
gnome-terminal -e "ping cmu.edu" -t "pgh" &

# My ISP
gnome-terminal -e "ping comcast.com" -t "ISP" &

# Located in Australia
gnome-terminal -e "ping news.com.au" -t "australia" &

# Located in California
gnome-terminal -e "ping dreamhost.com" -t "california" &

#Located in Germany
gnome-terminal -e "ping joker.com" -t "germany" &

As long as you were smart enough to choose a web host that allows SSH, I've thought up an easy/lazy way to do this!

From your local machine:

rsync -e ssh -av yourusername@webhostserver.com:~/ Dropbox/

Type your password when prompted then sit back and watch.

(This assumes that the folder you are in on your local computer has a Dropbox folder and that the files you want to back up are in your home folder on your web hosts' server.)

Holler at brie@unixsysadmin.org or http://www.unixsysadmin.org/contact.html with your thoughts.