Shallow Thoughts : : Sep

Opening a URL in a New Tab of an Existing Browser Window

My search for a good desktop Mastodon client has led me down a path that involved learning some fun ways to interact with existing browser windows on Linux with X programs like xdotool and wmctrl.

Like many people, I've switched from The App Formerly Known As Twitter to Mastodon (where I'm @akkana@fosstodon.org). But the next question was which Mastodon app to use.

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Drag-and-Drop in Python Qt6

I had a need for a window to which I could drag and drop URLs.

I don't use drag-and-drop much, since I prefer using the commandline rather than a file manager and icon-studded desktop. Usually when I need some little utility and can't immediately find what I need, I whip up a little Python script.

This time, it wasn't so easy. Python has a GUI problem (as does open source in general): there are quite a few options, like TkInter, Qt, GTK, WxWidgets and assorted others, and they all have different strengths and (especially) weaknesses.

Drag-and-drop turns out to be something none of them do very well.

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Carrying Water for a Canine Companion

The weekly hiking group I'm in has quite a few members who bring their dogs on hikes, as long as the trail allows it (National Parks, Monuments and Preserves don't allow dogs).

I've seen various solutions for carrying dog water: bowls that telescope out in use, and can be compacted flatter. Bowls out of flexible materials like waterproofed nylon. Smallish cups. Then there's the tricky job of pouring the unused water from a flexible bowl back into a narrow-mouthed water bottle each time.

But dogs are more flexible than you might think. One of our canine hiking companions, Lewis, has been trained to drink from a water bottle. He just laps at the stream as it falls, and spills surprisingly little. So his person can give him a drink at any time, without stopping and digging around for a bowl.

I'd never seen this before, but it seems pretty handy for a dog and person who go hiking just about every day.

Los Alamos Voting Data on a Folium Choropleth Map

Somebody in a group I'm in has commented more than once that White Rock is a hotbed of Republicanism whereas Los Alamos leans Democratic. (For outsiders, our tiny county has two geographically-distinct towns in it, with separate zip codes, though officially they're both part of Los Alamos township which covers all of Los Alamos county. White Rock is about half the size of Los Alamos.)

After I'd heard her say it a couple times, I got curious. Was it true? I asked her for a reference, but she didn't have one. I decided to find out.

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