My nephew is doing The Python Challenge and my daughter has just started Python at school.  I thought that it might be fun to have a play.  I know nothing about python really, other than there are annoyingly two subtly different versions, version 2.x and 3.x

So I thought I would have a play and try doing the challenge in both languages.

Warming Up

OK, so this looks like you need to replace the 0 in the URL (http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/0.html) with 2 to the power of 38.  Even I could do this I thought.  It didn’t take long

A quick google on how to launch the browser, and the small problem of changing a LONG in to a STRING and it was done.  This works in both 2.7.5 and 3.0

import webbrowser
new = 2
warmingupurl = "http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/" + str(2 ** 38) + ".html"
webbrowser.open(warmingupurl,new=new)

Thanks to “Doodling with electrons” for this.

Change the depth of the top menu in the header php file:
‘primary’, ‘menu_class’ => ‘nav-menu’, ‘depth’ => ‘2’ ) ); ?>

Add submenus with the Advanced Sidebar Menu.

So, my dad’s Dell Inspiron 1210 (Mini 12) finally died after years of service.  I had moved it from Ubuntu to Windows a few years ago, but now it was properly dead.  Dad’s friend had diagnosed a dead hard disk.  And after much work I decided I agreed, though the BIOS was behaving badly.  I used Clonezilla to boot to DOS and refresh the BIOS, and this helped, but in the end it was the disk.

I dismantled the laptop using Dell’s own instructions and found a disk I’d not seen before, a ZIF (zero input force) 1.8″ drive.  I’d never met ZIF before and had no clue how to release it.  Eldest daughter suggested pull it out, so I did, but I later found on youtube that there is indeed a clamp you release.

Anyway, I tried a large variety of methods to make a functioning machine.  I wanted it to boot of an SD card and bought a 16GB in town.  But booting from USB or making an image on the SD card was endlessly frustrating.

In the end, I sought out (with wife’s help) an old USB DVD.  This got me moving forward, and I finally got Mandriva installed, though the display looked awful.  Ubuntu 10.10 then worked, and I then thought I would go the whole hog and go for the latest version of Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support).

Installing was interesting.  Booting from a USB gave me weird display issues, but booting from the DVD was fine.  I installed to the SD card but the install failed at “install bootloader”.  I figured all the files would be in place and I just needed to get a bootloader working.  Thanks to it being an SD card it was easy to whack it in my main laptop.  Much searching got grub installed , I just had to find where it was mounting (/media/:

sudo grub-install –root-directory=/media/ /dev/sdb

This got the sd card in the 1210 to boot to the grub prompt.  More searching found three commands to get it booting:

grub> linux (hd0,1)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 
grub> initrd (hd0,1)/initrd.img 
grub> boot

Then I was in and it booted fine – all the files were there.  Sadly the display was a complete disaster, a known problem.

So ctrl+alt+f1 got me a command prompt to get grub working properly, which was as simple as:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

sudo update-grub 

Then I needed to work on the display issues (it was booting to a blank screen or half a screen of garbled nonsense, depending on its mood.  Back to ctrl+alt+f1 (the dist-upgrade took a while)

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade   # this takes a while

sudo shutdown now -r        # this reboots

The last stage was to follow the Ubuntu wiki for the problematic Intel gma 500 graphics card.

sudo service lightdm restart

I was just following the wiki by now:

Ubuntu 12.04

With the default settings, Ubuntu 12.04 boots to either a black screen or or top half screen.

There are several potential solutions: console=tty1, disable splash, or 915 Resolution

Option 1 – console=tty1

Perhaps the easiest method is to use “console=tty1” as a boot option.

• gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Find the following line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”

Add console=tty1 in between the quotes, the end result looking as follows

• GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash console=tty1″

save and exit, then update grub with

sudo update-grub

 And now it works perfectly and seems very smooth.

Mum bought this for my nephew for Christmas.  It looks fun so I bought a kit.

http://www.arduino.cc

I had a play for a little while and came up with a button that when pressed plays out SOS on a red LED.  I suspect I am not the first to try this, but it looks interesting and the possibilities are enormous.  I initially had problems because in the dim light of my sitting room I had plugged the 5V lead in to the 0V (GND) hole. But I got there.

My masterpiece

I’m still not *quite* sure why I bought this, but if/when I make a go of going it alone in Primary school eduction it might make a fun little project.

This is the board I have:
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardUno

All purchased as a kit from www.earthshineelectronics.com.