Posts Tagged ‘Python’

Fall feeling in the air

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

I rushed outside this morning (running behind) to find the air crisp and feeling very much like my favorite season on the way.

Work was “work” and progress seemed to crawl along. I managed to complete (let’s hope) a Python script to inject binary values into two registry keys depending on what system it runs on. The keys represent “mail boxes” for locked printer jobs.

The hex encoded binary string is 8176 characters long (only stating it because I’m sort of amazed at the length) and contains all settings for that printer. I wonder if the devs realized that breaking individual settings out into subkeys would be a good thing?

Oh well.

I’m also making good progress on an audio volume limiter (governor). It’ll run every X seconds and make sure that the various mixer volume levels are within a set threshold. If not the volume controls will be lowered to the maximum allowed.

The concept and pseudocode is pretty simple, but dealing with the WinAPIs is another story.

Thankfully I found an article showing how to set the master volume and I managed to get the waveOut code from there. I had no idea just how ugly working with ALL CAPS TYPEDEFS CAN BE. IT’S NOT LIKE IT MAKES IT HARD TO READ OR ANYTHING. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Impulse Power, Ensign

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Another day and some progress. A Wiki has been started, groceries purchased and a Cordon Bleu lunch a week ahead of my birthday. Not a bad way for the day to go.

I think I’ve managed to read another page of a C++ book I borrowed from the library but I still feel pretty good about my progress. I can see how I could overuse that word, but it’s really been a concern of mine lately. I’ve read C++ books in the past but felt pretty overwhelmed. I also got distracted a bit by other things, namely video games.

Of course with me being ‘me’, I don’t tend to stay on one topic for too long. Something usually comes along and grabs my attention and I’ll be derailed by it for a while. I suppose that could be called fickle, but I like to think I’ll get back to it eventually.

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