MySky Loopthrough Problem

Another MySky update: I moved everything about yesterday, removing the VCR from the lounge. The MySky manual mentions a “loopthrough” feature, in which a single AV channel on a TV can be shared between MySky and another device (e.g. a DVD player or PlayStation). The manual says to have the SCART output labelled “TV” go to the TV’s AV port (unsurprisingly), and (surprisingly) have the other SCART output (input?) go to the other device (e.g. DVD player). Then pressing the “AV” button on the remote will swap between Sky and the other device.

This would be useful for me, because unfortunately the TV in the lounge only has a single AV channel (and only one set of plugs, at the rear), so I could plug both the DVD player and MySky in (rather than the current setup, which has the DVD player plugged in, and Sky through the RF leads, which isn’t as high quality).

However, this just doesn’t seem to work. The “TV” SCART seems to output the MySky signal or (if “AV” is pressed) no signal at all. The other SCART constantly outputs the MySky signal (as with non-PVR Sky, it’s an output, not an input). The other video connections are all output as well.

Something else to ask about as well as the broken series link feature, I suppose.

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emlx Files

For the moment, I’m using Apple‘s Mail as my primary email client (even though it’s bafflingly slow at displaying messages at times (they’re simple text files!), gets stuck updating at times, and won’t let me tell it that ihug‘s SSL certificate is ok (which is partly ihug’s fault for buying some cheap one instead of something that programs would recognise) it does have some nice features, and beats any of the other mail clients I’ve tried).

As of Tiger, Mail stores messages in individual emlx files, scattered through various folders in the ~/Library/Mail folder.  For use with SpamBayes‘ test setup (as well as others, like the TREC one), I need messages in individual files in plain RFC2822 format.

What I needed was a simple export script (much like the existing Outlook export script – except hopefully faster and including attachments) that would create RFC2822 copies of the emlx files in the standard SpamBayes format (ham and spam directories containing a reservoir directory containing messages as individual text files).

I had thought that this might be quite difficult (take a look at the Outlook export script!) since emlx is a proprietory format.  Thankfully, I discovered that the first line is the size of the message in bytes (as text), followed by the RFC2822 message itself, followed by a plist containing various Mail information I’m not interested in (flags, sender, etc).  Nice to see that Apple can keep things simple.

So the SpamBayes distribution now contains a simple export_apple_mail.py script that will do the job.

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2nd November 2005 Python-Dev Summary

The second November Python-Dev summary is now out. This took a while (even though the summary was actually finished a while back), but is the first summary that I’ve actually been able to publish on the pydotorg website myself, without Brett’s help. This should mean that future summaries are quicker to get out.

(Steve and I are working on the December summaries now – end-of-year tasks delayed the first December summary).

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Obscurity

Weird.? I migrated some of the content from my Massey site here today (so that it doesn’t vanish when the Massey site does), and this (completely unlinked, apart from one from there) blog suddenly gets found.

HawkWings found my quoting tutorial (prepared for the Written Communication for Information Sciences paper at Massey), which has been on my website since the 27th of October last year (about 13.5 months).? Go figure. Continue reading “Obscurity” →

Universal Student Allowances: A Better Solution

Students’ Associations, like my own ASA and the NZUSA, are continually pushing for a “universal student allowance”. This is quite clearly an unworkable solution – not even the Labour Party is in favour of it – and nor is it a desirable one.

[Note that throughout this document, student refers to tertiary students. Secondary, primary, and pre-primary students have other support mechanisms.] Continue reading “Universal Student Allowances: A Better Solution” →

After Hours Sign-in Books

A recent Massey Albany announcement:

As part of our Health & Safety requirement it has been necessary to provide after hour sign in books in all multi-storey buildings on campus.These have now been put in place and can be found either by the after hour entry doors or in the case of the Quad A and Atrium buildings close to the lift. Please make yourself familiar with the location of the books and ensure that all staff and visitors entering and leaving the building after hours sign the book.

Remember they are in place for your safety and in the unlikely event of an emergency they will assist security or emergency services in determining who is in the building.

How silly is this? Continue reading “After Hours Sign-in Books” →

Visiting Australia (Passport Requirements)

I’m visiting Australia (just for the day) next week, and realised last night that I foolishly have let my passport reach the stage where it expires in just over two months.  I know that many countries require the expiry to be a certain amount of time after arriving (e.g. six months) and wondered if I would have to speedily renew my passport (an extra $75 for the speed, and taking three days plus travel to and from the passports office, which would cut it close).

I googled for information about this for ages, and tried the sensible seeming sites (Australian tourism, New Zealand and Australian government departments that look after passports and immigration, travel websites.  Nothing helped.

Eventually my wife rang the New Zealand Ministry of Internal Affairs (who do the passports), who said that in their opinion (matching mine) the passport is valid until it expires.  They suggested ringing the Australian consolate.  They couldn’t do anything but play recorded messages, but one of those messages suggested a website to look at.

The website, which does have the information is australia.org.nz.  What a stupid choice of URL – how could I possibly be expected to guess that?  And why did google not find this? (They have a PageRank of 0, which explains much, so someone needs to do a better job of promoting the site!).

The answer, anyway, is that (for a New Zealander at least) you only need a valid passport for the duration of the stay (although obviously the length of the visa allocated will be effected).  So I can just renew my passport when I get back, and wait the 10 days, and save $75.