Lonely Lion

Thread in comp.lang.python

Gimli, the little server that has run the Lonely Lion family of services for the past couple few years has been upgraded significantly.

Look for some new stuff in the near future. I especially want to get Tomcat working, I found this article that will probably help.

Merry Christmas Reader!

Hope your Holidays are grand.

As a followup to the whole mailbot thing I’m trying to write, I’ve decided to go (for the minute) with Python. Python’s email library is as easy to use as Simon’s Mail::Simple module, once you wrap your head around a few concepts. I was able to write a simple bot that adds numbers using Simon’s module, so I know I could write the bot in Perl.

I’m going with Python for two reasons. The first is PyAIML, I’m excited by the idea of using the ALICEbot brain to respond to emails. Second is Python itself. I’m reading Randal L. Schwartz’s excellent Perl Objects, References & Modules, but am still having trouble with Perl’s hinky OOP’ness.

Extremetech Article

On the train / walk into work today, I had an idea to write an Email Bot. I run a few mailing lists for my improv groups. It’s pretty frequent that the same questions are asked multiple times. I’m going to write an email pre-processor to handle some of the common questions, as well as scheduling, addresses, phone numbers, etc.

It shouldn’t be too tough. I’m not sure if I should use Perl or Python though, both handle Email pretty slickly. I found a Python based AIML bot, called PyAIML that makes me want to use Python more than Perl. There’s a similar project in Perl, called ProgramV, but it uses mod_perl, which isn’t bad, but might be too heavy duty for me.

I just recently found Simon Cozen’s Email::Simple module, which screams, “use me instead of Python!”. So, I think I’m probably going to use Perl.

I’m interested in how chess computers work, this seems like a good jumping off point.

http://chess.lonelylion.com is pretty popular, but Webchess, the PHP code that runs the system, is kind of buggy. I’ve been looking for a new server base, and found Lasker, a fork of chessd. I’m going to check it out this weekend.

UPDATE: Now that I look at both Lasker and chessd, it seems like chessd is a more active project…so I’ll probably go with that instead.

Mozilla Backup

This morning’s weblog theme has been, “How can Chris backup all his important stuff?” The third (this) installment: Backing up Mozilla and Thuderbird / Firebird settings.

Phew.

Download details: Outlook 2003 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup

Nice! It’s always bugged me that I need to buy a 3rd party piece of software to backup Outlook. I’m really glad this exists. Good job Microsoft.

Hotmail Popper

I use Outlook Express now, but I’d love to switch to another client. The big hold up has been accessing my Hotmail. Looks like I can take care of that now.