Monthly Archives: September 2009

Installing python-qwt5-qt4 on Ubuntu Jaunty 64-bit

I needed the package mentioned in the title, but it fails to install due to some problems with the dependency configuration in the original package.

Following some instructions here and using the patch provided here (from this thread), I was finally able to get it working.

Here’s the resulting package.

python-qwt5-qt4_510dfsg-1ubuntu1_amd64

Steps to build:

Create some directory where you want to build this. Change to that directory. Then…

sudo apt-get build-dep python-qwt5-qt4

(installs dependencies for building)


sudo apt-get source python-qwt5-qt4

This should download the package source. Download the patch from the comment I linked to above, then change into the directory and patch the files. You may have to change the directory ownership so that your user can write to it (sudo chown -R yourusername .)


patch -p0 < ~/Inbox/pyqwt-final.diff
(of course your patch may be located in a different location)

Per the GPLv2, here's the patched source I used to build the .deb file (note -- I think you can just download this instead of patching it yourself).

brocks_patched_pywqt5_src.tar.bz2

Once it's patched, rebuild it with:

sudo dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b

Go get a cup of coffee or whatever, it's a fairly involved build. When it's done, in the directory above you should find your .deb packages. A simple:

sudo dpkg -i python-qwt5-qt4_5.1.0.dfsg-2_amd64.deb

(replace the filename with whatever yours is, of course)

will install it for you. Hope this is helpful for someone, as I wasted a few hours trying to install this all from source and so on.

Review: Where the !@#% did my day go?

I’ve been using daily planning techniques, in the form of “big rocks”, since October 2007. In fact, I left a comment on Matthew Cornell’s blog about it about a year ago (his post is here).

Matt’s been testing and honing his ideas on daily planning as an addition to a GTD-like system, and I recently had the pleasure of reviewing the results: his new eBook on daily planning, Where the !@#% did my day go?.

Despite having practiced daily planning paired with GTD for almost two years (and GTD for nearly four), I found several new gems in the book. In particular, the practice of inserting everything into the daily plan, including calendar and inbox-checking tasks, is new to me and will help streamline my current process. I opted to skip the ‘getting started’ phase of the book and the one-week challenge, given my experience, but I found that they really covered the nuances of the practice well. Furthermore, every pitfall that I’ve encountered in daily planning was addressed by Matt later in the book.

Matt also detailed a number of experiments to try, to help hone the system for one’s individual needs. These covered every single experiment and metric I’ve run on my daily planning, and added several more that I’m considering trying. Ultimately he suggests trying for a “touchdown” — finishing all of the tasks on the list. This is the rule for me, rather than the exception. It provides a really nice feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day, a feeling I couldn’t get from looking at my list of remaining, actionable tasks in PHPMyGTD (20-80 normally, I prefer to keep it below 40).

I found very little to criticize in the book, and most of it can be traced back to personal preference. For instance, Matt mentioned the use of an accountability partner for holding to one’s daily plans. For me this makes a massive difference in my discipline, enough that I created DidYouDo.it, a site for finding accountability partners. (It’s unfortunately not really active at the moment.) I also find it really helpful to estimate the time required for each task explicitly and then write it down, reporting back to my accountability partner each day how the actual times matched up to the estimates. On the whole, however, the book is nothing short of an excellent introduction and manual for daily planning practice. If only this book had been in my hands two years ago when I started this practice, I could have saved myself months of tinkering and lost time.