Possibility and Probability » Linux

Python in the Amazon cloud

Nick — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:22:12 +0000

I have a couple ideas rolling around in my head, and recently I decided to take advantage of Amazon’s AWS service since they are offering a “free” tier. (Basically its free if you are below certain generous limits on resource utilization.) Since python is my weapon of choice these days, I set about to figure out how to get python up and running on an EC2 instance.

If you are going to go down the Linux route with AWS (and honestly why wouldn’t you?), then you are in luck since python ships on most modern distributions. But, while python is “batteries included” there are some really nice projects out there that it is good to take advantage of. Installing these projects is where you start to find out there are differences in the EC2 AMI’s.

My first attempt was with the default Amazon AMI. It seemed like a good choice, but the more I played with it, the more I realized that it was pretty bare-bones. easy_install is included, but when running it to try and install something you run into permissions problems.

Because this is supposed to be a nice experiment, I only played around with it for a hour or so. My patience exhausted, I went looking for an alternative and ran right into the perfect match: ActiveState has an AMI specifically for python developers

This is awesome because ActiveState puts out a really nice Windows package for Python (and other lesser languages). I fired up their AMI instance and have found it to be really nice. I put my python project out there earlier this month and it ran without a problem… until the code crashed because I forgot to put a try catch block in place.

Seriously though, I really like this AMI. Not only is a nice python distribution there, but they also included gcc so if you need to compile something, you don’t have to go far. The easy_install script runs like a dream, and I haven’t had any problems with it at all. In fact, my whole experiment (which seems to getting attention mostly from blog aggregators at the moment) has only cost me a total of $0.19. Yes, only 19 cents! And 1 cent of that was from the ActiveState Python AMI (the other 18 cents was from my playing around with the Amazon AMI that wasn’t that great).

Now to get back to my ideas, and sling some python code out into the cloud…

Linux becoming the new Windows

Nick Loadholtes — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:35:06 +0000

My jaw hit the floor today when I read this: OpenOffice gets pre-load, update notification . I’m all for applications running/loading faster, but not pre-loading apps is one of the main things I like about about non-Windows operating systems. It looks like the bloating of Linux continues, which is a shame. (Yes, there are distro’s that are fighting this, but they don’t get enough press like the big guys do.)

Repeat after me: small, light, tight.

File under no big surprise: Linux kernel ‘getting buggier’

Nick Loadholtes — Sat, 06 May 2006 12:57:17 +0000

I saw this article this morning:Linux kernel ‘getting buggier,’ leader says | CNET News.com, and I have to say that I’m not surprised.

Its not that Linux is buggy by default, rather that it has grown so much that this was bound to happen. I think that anytime you have a project with multiple developers over a long period of time, and a growing user base you are just bound to get (or find) more bugs.

The statement by Andrew Morton about the difficulty of getting coders to look at old bugs is very true. I experienced that myself here recently. Its hard to go back and re-visit something that once was working (or so you thought) but is now broken in some weird convoluted way.

I wonder if anyone is running any type of code analysis tools over the kernel codebase. I’m sure someone is, its just too high profile of a project for someone to not do that. I imagine that report must be a mile and a half long…

Office apps on the Mac

Nick Loadholtes — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:46:54 +0000

The Drunken Blog is always a good place to catch up on news. ther other day while reading the site I saw this article: The dirge of NeoOffice.

I’ve been trying to use OpenOffice on my Mac for the last few weeks (specifically to do spreadsheet work) and it has been just downright painful. Apparently my transition to the “Mac Side” is complete, the thought of cranking up the X11 package makes my skin crawl.

I was thinking that NeoOffice might be a solution to my Office needs and allow me to have the pride of using OpenOffice (which I do like on Linux and Windows). But after reading this article, it sounds like I might be better off getting the MS Office package for the Mac.

2 month review

Nick Loadholtes — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:14:00 +0000

Well its been about two months since I got the Mac Mini and I have to say that I’m suprisingly happy with it.
From everything I had read and heard about the hardware I thought I would like it, but I was unsure about the software, specifically OS X. I ws expecting it to be a lot like Linux, but that really is not the case. If anything, OS X is what Linus should aspire to be. Unified in its look and feel (even though some progams like iTunes still bug me), consistent in its implementation, this is what Linux and its apps should be like.
And as a developer I’m very pleased with the quantity and quality of the development tools that come with the Mac. I was expecting to have to go invest in new tools, but for the most part everything you could want is already there in XCode. Good stuff. I think I’m going to be able to write up some great software using these tools. (Ok, I’ve alreay started writing software using these tools, lets hope it turns out great!)
Perhaps the biggest sign that I really like the Mac platform is the fact I’ve been trying to convince people to get a Mac Mini. When did I become the Mac guy? I guess the quality of this platform speaks for itself.
Tags: OS X, Reviews, Linux

I should have seen this one coming

Nick Loadholtes — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 00:03:00 +0000

Ok, I finally break down and try to join the Apple tribe and what do they do? Tear down the tent and leave town!. It figures as much though, I seem to have that kind of luck.
But it doesn’t mean my mac mini will stop working tomorrow. In fact for a while (like a year or two) there probably will be no difference in what I’m doing. So instead of bellyaching like everyone else about how the PowerPC Mac is fading into the sunset, I’ve decided to post my complaints about a lot of different companies/technologies.
-x86
Nice and accessible (cheap price, tons of documentation), but can we please move the architecture forward and leave behind 16-bit mode? I know legacy is important, but at some point we all have to leave the nest. (And thank you to AMD for making those first few steps.)
-Sun, Solaris, sparc
For a long time I thought Sun was the be all end all when it came to unix. Then I started to realize that they (the company, the os, the chip) were not moving forward fast enough. Which is too bad, I like a lot of their products. Even if they are expensive to the point that Scrooge McDuck couldn’t afford them.
-Microsoft
*sigh* So much potential, so little progress. Yes, Win95 was a step in the right direction, and I’m so glad that Win2000 was based on NT4 rather than Win98. But why did they let things like IE, Office bloat, and security holes get so out of control? I think they could have made a ton of money by Doing The Right Thing(tm). Look at Google. They are what Microsoft was and could have been.
-Motorola and IBM
Thank you for the PowerPC architecture. But why didn’t it take over the PC market? Or maybe I’m asking this question too soon. IBM seems to have something up their sleeves.
-Linux
Why? Why, why, why, why? So close to breaking through to the mainstream, yet you don’t. Why must you tease us? A clean, usable desktop, working sound, that’s all we ask for. Apple and Microsoft can do that, it can’t be that hard can it? Perhaps having no central authority tying all of these together is a bad thing.
-Apple
Thanks for switching hardware on me a month after I buy into the hype. I appreciate that. Way to keep me on my toes. But seriously, why? Sales are increasing, popularity is rising, you’re set to take on the world. Now pull out the rug? Or are Mr. Cringely’s predictions about Apple going to come true? I don’t know, all I know is if I have to leave the mini within a year (because of a forced software upgrade) I’ll be pissed.

Begun, the Mac war has.

Nick Loadholtes — Mon, 30 May 2005 04:21:03 +0000

Well, I decided to get a Mac mini. Or Mini Mac. I’ve been running it full time at home for about 3 weeks now. So far I think I’m digging it. Its different than the Mandrade/Linux system I was running before. Not to say that one is better than the other. Just different, just like how they advise you to think.

Except for the temperature/noise of the hardware. In that area the mini wins hands down. It is sooooo quite and runs sooooo much cooler than the ol’ Athlon. They are at about the same clock speed, but the mini seems so much more responsive. (Ok, the mini’s bus is going faster than the Athlon, and there’s also the whole CISC vs RISC thing, but I’ll get into that more later.)

A tip for Mandrake 10.1 users

Nick Loadholtes — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 03:41:07 +0000

Today I was messing around and trying to get my Creative Webcam NX to work with my Mandrake 10.1 syste. After googling a bit and seeing others have had problems I thought I would post this tid bit.

To get the zc030x driver to compile, you will need to type in this command:

ln -s /usr/src/linux /lib/module/2.6.8.1-10mdk/build

This will create a link to your kernel source which the driver uses when it is being built. I saw one or two postings on various boards/forums where people were saying the driver (or the compile to build it) wasn’t working for them. I thought I would post this just to let people know about it incase they see that error message.

As a side note, while the camera is now functional (the message log sees it being plugged in), it isn’t fully there yet. The only programs that I can run that seem to pull a picture are xawtv and gqcam. Other programs (like webcam) report all kinds of errors and exit. Additionally the picture that is seen in the working programs is pretty messed up, so that tells me there is a lot of configuration left to do on my end. But hey, its a start.

Last post!

Nick Loadholtes — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:35:23 +0000

As the year draws to a close I have managed to get my newly upgraded system (went from Mandrake 9.2 to 10.1) pretty much operational and stable. Turns out most of the problems were due to the video driver be compiled against the old kernel. A quick download and recompile and *poof*, good as new.

After some experimenting I have concluded that my custom.el file for XEmacs is truly hosed. So I have decided to make it my new year’s resolution to fix it. And because it is a new year’s resolution it will be promptly forgotten at the stroke of midnight.

And instead of working on it, perhaps I’ll spend my new years eve Ned Flanders style, working on my taxes…. not.

Upgrades

Nick Loadholtes — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 07:31:46 +0000

I just finished updating my home system. Why can’t I have an OS update/upgrade go smoothly? Personally I’m starting to think I’m cursed.

This upgrade (from Mandrake 9.2 to 10.1) seemed to go smoothly but then as I played with the system I discovered that while it did upgrade everything, not everything is working. Example: The system keep looking for the floppy drive which was removed a while ago.

Also, apparently the new version of XEmacs is prett different from the older version I was using. As soon as I started it up it started screaming bloody murder about my custom.el, apparently there’s a lot of crap in there that isn’t working right now. Big surprise, I’ve been thinking for the last year or two that it needed to be overhauled. Looks like the time is now… ugh.