GDC Diary 1

Wow.  Talk about sensory overload.  I didn't expect GDC to be so big!  Everybody here reminds me of people that either attended the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science or the Cal Arts Character Animation Department.  My main problem is that there is almost too much to see and do.

I was pleasantly surprised that the Video Game History Museum had an Atari exhibit.  Haven't played Missile Command in ages!

Fixing homebrew after installing Yosemite

Well...well...installing Yosemite broke homebrew.  Big surprise.  I figured out how to fix it by checking out:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153790/how-to-fix-brew-after-its-upgrade-to-yosemite

>$ brew

/usr/local/bin/brew: /usr/local/Library/brew.rb: /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

/usr/local/bin/brew: line 23: /usr/local/Library/brew.rb: Undefined error: 0

>$ cd /usr/local/Library

>$ ls

Aliases/       Contributions/ ENV/           Formula/       Homebrew/      LinkedKegs/    Taps/          brew.rb*

>$ git pull origin master

...bunch of stuff...

Then you can run 'brew update'.

Understanding Python's With Statement

Turns out the 'with' statement in Python is fairly straight forward.  Here is an article (oldie but goodie) that gives a quick thumbnail sketch of how that statement works:

http://effbot.org/zone/python-with-statement.htm

On another note, this is the first blog of the New Year!

Parsing Excel with Python

Cos sometimes you don't want to deal with xml, csv, json or any other text format.  Check out https://openpyxl.readthedocs.org/en/latest/.

Design Patterns

I generally avoid buying computer books because they become outdated very quickly.  However, Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides is an exception (probably due to its general nature):

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements-Reusable-Object-Oriented/dp/0201633612/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411492186&sr=1-1&keywords=design+patterns

 This book makes me rethink how I approach object oriented programming.

Setting the PYTHONPATH with the Powershell permanently

I actually got a lot of tips on how to do this through this article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff730964.aspx

If you have the .NET Framework, you can do the following:

> [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PYTHONPATH", "D:/mypath", "User")

In order to see the changes, you need to open a new Powershell.

Setting the PYTHONPATH with Powershell

Powershell is the Windows hacker's best friend until it isn't.  Actually, I really do enjoy the power you get from Powershell.  However, figuring out how to set my python path in the shell was a frustrating experience that I hope to spare other users from.

PS C:\Users\spearsc> Get-ChildItem Env:PYTHONPATH

Name                                    Value
----                                        -----
PYTHONPATH                     r:/env


PS C:\Users\spearsc> $env:PYTHONPATH = "D:/localenv"
PS C:\Users\spearsc> Get-ChildItem Env:PYTHONPATH

Name                           Value
----                               -----
PYTHONPATH           D:/localenv

There you have it!  Pretty sure this setting is not permanent, which is fine for testing purposes.