Python rounding to 05

Here in Switzerland they decided (for some reason, that can’t be good) not to pay the correct amount, but round it to the nearest 0/5 cent – which is a pain when doing python stuff. Therefore i made a Decimal rounding function for python, check it out:


from decimal import Decimal, ROUND_HALF_UP

def decimal_round(d, digits=0, to_five=True):
if to_five:
d = (d/Decimal("5"))
d = d.quantize(Decimal("1") / (Decimal('10') ** digits), rounding=ROUND_HALF_UP)
if to_five:
d = d * Decimal("5")
return d

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Plugins (management) with RabbitMQ

Today i spent quite some time investigating why i could make the plugin “management” run with RabbitMQ. I was running ubuntu 10.04 (LTS) and did sudo apt-get install rabbitmq-server.

First of all, it was a mystery how to enable the plugins. There were no default plugin directory existing, but thats solved by adding it yourself. You can find your rabbitmq directory with whereis, e.g. “whereis rabbitmq”. Then you just create a folder called “plugins” inside the folder called rabbitmq_version, in my case: /usr/lib/rabbitmq/lib/rabbitmq_server-1.7.2/

In the above case, i didnt get it working, as the management interface isn’t compatible with 1.7.2, which is bundled with the LTS. So now I’m investigating the possibility to upgrade it via their custom apt-get repository available from their website.

However, the reason why im writing this, is that i spent a lot of time not beeing able to enable the plugins.

You have to run a script inside the bin folder in /usr/lib/rabbitmq/ – both for enabling and disabling plugins

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Managing VMware ESXi 4 from you mac

For my own reference, and maybe others i found this very usefull link:
http://www.howconfig.com/linux/how-to-open-cli-to-vmware-esxi-how-to-clone-virtual-machines/

This will be a direct quote, in case the site will ever change:

You can access the CLI by switching to terminal 1 using Alt-F1.
Now type “unsupported”, This is not echoed so you won’t see anything. If you get it right, you will get a prompt asking for the root pasword.
( This might not work in ESXi 4.0 as VMWare is trying to limit ESXi for their own corporate reasons )
That drops you at a shell prompt. (ash is our shell).
Hint: editor = vi
Now you can you modify /etc/inetd.conf and uncomment the ssh line so that you can ssh into it unless you are planning always being at the console.
Reboot ( init 6 )
Cloning Virtual machines in ESXi
vmkfs tools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore/YourVM/YourVM.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore/NewVM/newvm.vmdk
vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
vim-cmd vmsvc/power.reset xx
check out these ( with vim-cmd vmsvc/command ):
power.off
power.on
power.reboot
power.reset
power.shutdown
power.suspend
esxtop = is your top tool

My tips:

Just ssh to your ESXi server e.g. ssh root@esxi and run the above commands. It might tell you that its unsupported, unfortunately there is no supported client to mac, so thats not really usefull information anyway

Use at your own risk.

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En lækker salat

I dag troede jeg, at jeg havde en masse ting herhjemme jeg kunne lave mad af. Det viste sig, ikke at være tilfældet. Jeg blev derfor nødt til at improvisere, det ville jo være forfærdeligt at gå over på den anden side af vejen til vores kæmpe supermarked.

Jeg havde det der svarer til et halvt hoved icebergsalat, noget pasta, oliven og nogle af de der små agurk-lignende ting der vidstnok (ihvertfald på tysk) hedder cornichorns. Salaten var allerede groft snittet, så jeg vaskede den, smed den ned i en stor skål, sammen med fint skårne skiver af oliven og chornicorns. Herefter krydrede jeg den med salt, peber og oregano. Det smagte egentlig fint, men jeg havde sådan lyst til noget anderledes – så jeg hældte en god omgang tabasco sauce i, sammen med lidt paprika – det blev dog liige stærkt nok, så jeg smed lige lidt “french dressing” i – det minder mest af alt om en tynd creme fraiche dressing.

Jeg vil ikke sige så meget andet end, det smager skide godt – og det kan ikke have kostet meget mere end en 20′er.

I øvrigt kan jeg lige tilføje at jeg sidder her en tidlig majdag med 29 grader indenfor – og “pænt varmt” ude i solen ;)

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VMVare fusion black screen after first reboot

Today i wanted to test some stuff, so i fired up 3 vms with the newest ubuntu server, i used VMVware fusions easy install feature and it didnt take many minutes before everything worked, however, then i did sudo reboot and got black screen, no reaction at all.

However, after randomly doing a couple of things, i tried to turn it off – and it actually printed the different services going down.

So i found out that it default didnt activate any tty’s, so you just have to switch to any one of them, e.g.

ALT + F1 (if you are on a macbook pro too, remember the FN button in the combination, to actually use the F2 key)

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Next Danish election threatened by workers union

In Denmark we will soon have the next 4th yearly election for our parliament “folketinget”. However, it seems to be threatened by the workers union PROSA, whose members are maintaining some of the most important IT systems in Denmark (including the police systems and the tax authorities). All these systems are maintained by CSC, who made a lockout of some of the works unions members, which resulted in a strike for even more members.

If you ask me CSC reminds me of overpriced public IT projects – it always ends this way. Furthermore, its really common that every time they finish a project, that they charged many tax moneys for, it seems to be lacking functionality. However, the public IT administration seems to be married with them and continues to pick them for every project.

I think this is a great example of the public IT administration failing once again – never pick the same supplier for all the public service systems – you risk loosing them all simultaneously.

Read more at comon

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Løgne, useriøsitet og mistede pakker

Jeg arbejder selv i kundeservice i et større dansk firma og er vandt til at snakke med alle forskellige slags mennesker hver dag. Der skal derfor også normalt ret meget til at jeg hidser mig op, specielt i telefonen.

Det er dog lykkes bring at få mig til at gå ud af mit ellers gode skind. Jeg havde bestilt en pakke med noget skræddersyet tøj, som jeg har ventet på i snart en måned. Det var derfor glædeligt da jeg blev meddelt for en uge siden, at det var afsendt.

Det skulle være leveret i torsdags på mit arbejde, men i stedet for at få min dels meget store pakke (25kg, iflg. deres track-n-trace system), men også dyre pakke, så får jeg en mistænkelig lille pakke med cykeludstyr, adresseret til en anden person, med en seddel ovenpå, hvor der står den skal sendes til mig. Jeg kunne dog ikke nå at fortælle det til chaufføren, da jeg fik leveret det på arbejde.

De har simpelthen udleveret en anden mands pakke til mig, selvom der stadig står at de ikke har leveret min pakke i deres system.

Jeg har aldrig hørt om lignende før, og jeg tager straks kontakt til bring (i deres meget begrænsede åbningstid) og får fat i en svensker der er meget svær at forstå. Jeg prøver at forklare ham at jeg har fået en anden mands personlige ting udleveret af deres firma, noget han antyder slet ikke er unormalt. Han siger at jeg blot lige kan give den til chaufføren, når han kommer med den rigtige pakke.

Her begår jeg min største fejl, og tror på hvad han siger. Derudover lover han at levere det på en anden adresse, da jeg ikke skulle på arbejde dagen efter. Jeg får den nye adresse bekræftet på email og sidder derhjemme og venter på pakken.

Denne gang kommer der ingen chauffør og jeg bliver heller ikke kontaktet. Jeg ringede herefter i morges, efter ikke at have hørt det mindste. De fortæller mig nu at de egentlig ikke aner hvor min pakke er, men lover at ringe rundt og forsøge at finde den og ringe tilbage.

Det skete ikke, og jeg ringede derfor igen til middag, hvor jeg fik at vide at de stadig ikke have den fjerneste ide om hvor min pakke var, men at de ville ringe senere. Jeg har lige talt med den igen, hvor de har sagt at det jo ikke er deres problem at de har mistet pakken – jeg må ringe til det firma jeg har købt varen ved og få dem til at sende en ny.

Jeg har aldrig været så forarget over et firma i mit liv, de er fuldstændig ligeglade med kunderne (og der går da også ca. 15-20 minutter i gennemsnit før de gider tage telefonen, sikkert fordi de sætter erhvervskunder foran i køen).

Min konklusion må være, hvis du vil have dine pakker (til tiden), så bestil dem med Post Danmark.

Jeg er i øjeblikket ved at undersøge hvorvidt jeg kan klage eller anmelde bring til de rette myndigheder.

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How to install PIL (Python Imaging Library) on Mac

I often get the error “ImportError: No module named PIL”, when using ImageFields in django. I had my current mac for about 2 years and i never found out how to install PIL. Today, however, i really needed it and i found this amazing fix. In case this perfect description will be deleted, I’ve inserted it below for my own reference.

Full credits to p16blog.com

Execute the following code
cd /Library/Frameworks
sudo ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/ Python.framework

Download and install PIL

Remember to add PIL to PYTHONPATH
export PYTHONPATH=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/

(should be added to your startup script, e.g. ~/.bash_profile)

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Puppet: err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server

Yesterday i found Puppet and shortly after i bought the book Pulling Strings With Puppet. I got up and running with a few test machines (while reading the book) within a couple of hours and i managed to do some basic stuff. Furthermore i installed puppet-dashboard, an overall pretty undocumented process. Maybe I’ll write a post about this later.

However, i used many hours trying to debug this really annoying error:

err: Could not retrieve catalog from remote server: Error 400 on
SERVER: Could not find class nginx in namespaces <class> at 
/etc/puppet/manifests/classes/<class>.pp:3 on node <fqdn>

I got this error after installing the nginx module, from “module forge” – by install i mean git clone the github page. I put in into /etc/puppet/modules/ and after adding nginx to a class, i was stuck with this error. The solution, however, is really simple.

When you clone the nginx module, the directory is called puppet-nginx – you need to rename it, so its called nginx and nothing else. This will remove this error.

I googled this thing for hours, hopefully this will be #1 next time someone experience this.

Please comment if you use Puppet and saw this article! :-)

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It’s finally here. The mac app store.

Let me start by saying, I really love my mac – and all the stuff that comes with it. When I, two years ago, switched from Windows Vista to Mac OS X I was thrilled by the general quality of the applications available for OS X. Everything looks nicer and works better.

This is why I have been looking forward to the release of the Mac App Store. A quick view shows, what Apple showed on their prelaunch site months ago:

Mac App Store Overview

It looks a bit like iTunes, but its entirely separated (thank god!). I initially tried to download MindNode for Mac.  Its was surprisingly easy and the software was automatically added to the dock.

Currently the selection is a bit narrow and many of the apps available are iphone ports and to be honest, I dont think Angry Birds is as fun on the Mac as it is on my iPhone. However, the Danish App Store reviews gives another impression.

If you didn’t update your Mac yet, you can do it from System Preferences. The download is not too big and after a fast restart you are ready to try the brand new Mac App Store.

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