Python experiments.

I’ve been tossing around with some web application ideas in my head, one of them being a system for looking up item information on Thottbot, and using it in an guild item trade system. At the moment, there is no system in place for Thottbot to be used by a third party application, so I decided to write an ugly parser for the HTML, based on searches... in Python as per usual. It’s very incomplete at the moment, and I’m slowly working it up to the point where one could do:

import libthottbot
results = libthottbot.search('westfall stew')

And get a tuple containing dictionaries with metadata for the individual items. There is however a copyright implication in that the Thottbot data is copyright, so you couldn’t just use the library to go and write your own complete frontend to Thottbot and pass the data off as your own. It’s a bit like BitTorrent in that it’s an system that has legal (personal or “fair use”) applications yet someone can abuse the software and create a huge debarcle. I’ve been sure to try and parse in information about contributors as well, because they need credit for their Cosmos-collected data. :)

I’ve also uploaded a copy of ddrgen to the svn repository with the extras I wrote. I should check if they’re finished too... and try and add support for Windows XP/amd64. On that subject, I’m currently in discussions with Wacom in beta testing an amd64 version of driver for my tablet, and Logitech can’t give me a date as to when I’ll have an amd64 version of iTouch. Wacom: 0.5, Logitech: -2... no, -3 because they haven’t yet fixed the bug (that I reported to them 5 months ago) in iTouch where you have to enter the secure mode code with a US keymap. Luckily XP has some basic support for the keyboard in that I can change the volume and use some of the media keys. I’m also still without a free virus scanning solution (it seems that Avast’s validation email still hasn’t come through, and AVG are doing a “wait and see”), though Spybot S&D picks up a number of things.

amd64 fun, Chapter 2

This is part 2 of my amd64 fun, this time on Windows XP Pro/amd64. The install was the same as a normal Windows XP install, and all the SP2 fun was rolled in, even though the build was marked as Service Pack 1. The system is a cut down version of Windows 2003, because of the fact the XP-SP2 stuff was in a SP1 build, and that the system version was Windows 5.2 (rather than 5.1 for XP)

I installed it on a separate partition to my Windows 2000 install, and they played along happily, and they were about even in speed... maybe XP/amd64 was slightly faster. I was suprised considering I regard XP as very slow and bloated. Maybe I’ve used one too many XP boxes with the “standard” 256MB of RAM, and I have four times that. :D I couldn’t install AVG Antivirus on the system, because there isn’t support for that yet. I couldn’t install my keyboard or mouse drivers, and I’ve submitted a support ticket to Logitech about it.

My verdict is at the moment, Windows on 64-bit environments is about one and a half years behind Linux. The issues with closed source drivers make hardware compatibility issues far worse. Props to Nvidia though for having their drivers out for amd64 since day one on Linux and Windows.

And my laptop will cost “about 190$” to get fixed up. Yay.