Can't seem to use zope debug mode anymore.

I drop out very quickly from my Mac OS X laptop running 10.5. Going to go home and try it on Ubuntu. Grrr... this is a royal pain.

Update: This was because I had a broken version of readline on my Mac. I did sudo easy_install readline and now it works.

Trials and Tribulations of avoiding vi

So I'm stuck working today with a Solaris box. That means no Emacs. Heck, that means even no nano! Instead all I have is vi. Oh no!

Sure, some of you think vi is great. More power to you. Its just not something I like to touch, even if I grant automatic respect to anyone who uses it well. Just like watching any competant craftsman doing their daily tasks, watching a good vi master is pretty fun.

I've been spoiled by Redhat, Ubuntu, and Mac OS X. They come with Emacs installed, and if you have a few rights, you can add in new text editors. On Mac OS X I'll use Textmates, but otherwise I'll make do with Emacs or even Nano if I must.

If I could have argued successfully for more rights on the Solaris box, and had the rights to download software, I would have gotten Emacs working on that machine. Alas, the chance of that happening is around the same amount as a presidential political candidate not selling out his morals and ethics. Which means it ain't happening.

So, my work around?

I had access to the python shell. I wrote the file in there and saved it to a text file. Annoying at times, but less painful for me than trying yet again to figure out vi. I got my stuff done pretty quick and went on to other things.

Sick but Ubuntu

I was out of work for a couple days. Stuck at home, the first evening I grabbed an old machine and installed Ubuntu plus a surplus wireless card. This was my second Ubuntu install, the first suffering from a Microsoft wireless card. I was amazed by how fast and easy the install was to do. I kept the old XP on a seperate partition and got on the house network in 30 minutes.

Of course the basic installation doesn't have all the python tools I like to use. That took me another 30 minutes.

The only real downside I discovered was a lack of Mac's Textmate. I can do emacs, but Textmate is my preference. So I toyed a bit with gEdit and was pleased. Its also free!

One thing that Ubuntu beats out Mac and Windoze for is speed. Granted, this is a new install but I have to say I love the speed of the machine. And this machine is about 3.5 years old.

Good times indeed.