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Birthdays, logic and honesty

A friend recently sent me the fun Singapore maths olympiad problem in which Albert and Bernard attempt to discover Cheryl's birthday. As well as being full of mathematical knowledge, this implies some philosophical assumptions about knowledge and truthfulness. Here's a slightly expanded version I made up, incorporating the question of honesty:

HarmoniHue - coloring musical notes

At PyConZA 2013, one of the speakers couldn't come due to a visa issue, so I volunteered to do a talk at the last minute. I was already on a panel discussion earlier, and wanted to listen to Matt's talk on caching, so I ended with only three-quarters of an hour preparing the talk! But it ended up being a great opportunity as I decided to talk on a fun project I've been pottering away at in my spare time over the last few years: an experiment in music maths and colours that I've called HarmoniHue.

frasergo website relaunched

In the most self-referential of blog posts, I've redesigned and relaunched this website using Mezzanine, a Django-(and therefore Python)-based CMS.

A happy charging laptop

In a slight break from our normal family news...

Facebook Chat through Pidgin (and disabling it in the web UI)

So, Facebook added their Chat application but still haven't added the promised Jabber support so that you can use it through a standard instant messaging client. (If you haven't ever used one I recommend Pidgin - you can use it to do messaging over Jabber, Google Talk (which uses Jabber), MSN, Yahoo IM, etc, etc, in a unified way without having to install hundreds of programs. There's also a Mac-specific version called Adium.)

Japanese Maps in Romaji

Just discovered DiddleFinger which lets you use Google Maps without having to understand Kanji, etc...

Uploading photos

We've added a Photo Gallery section (using Gallery 2) and started uploading photos - so far just Leaving Cape Town and Stopping over in Joburg but more will be added soon!

Plugging Skype and Pidgin together

After thinking about de-nuctifying the world I've started to investigate creating a Pidgin (formerly Gaim) plugin to control Skype. This means you're still using a closed network, but from an open program, which makes migrating easier (and allows people to try multiple networks from the same interface).

PyToddler - just right

I found PyToddler recently and had James having lots of fun moving crayons round the screen and trying to make a mouse eat some cheese and say "Yum yum yum yum yum" - great watching him say "Go over there mouse!" and trying to encourage him to move the actual mouse (as in the computer-type one, not the rodent-type one). Just the kind of thing I wanted to write... the annoying thing in teaching James letters is that it's easier to learn lower-case letters but computer keyboards are all usually decorated with upper-case ones. Once we get to Japan we'll have plenty else to worry about :-)

De-nuct-ifying the world

I've had a strange experience over the past year, and it's getting more common. As a developer, I used to be the one recommending software/tech things to my friends. Now all my non-technical friends have started recommending things to me that they have discovered on the intar-web. The trouble is, they're almost all closed systems - apparently free, but under the control of one group.

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