If you've been using python for a long time, then you surely know that os.listdir() function returns an unsorted list of file names.

I didn't care much untill I faced a situation, in which the sorted-sequential processing of files was crucial, and I could not remember whether the previous file processing were done in sorted order. Well, luckily they were. But hey, this is a little bit annoying, isn't it? Why os.listdir() returns an unsorted list of files? Would you like to find out?

Ubuntu 10.10 is coming out soon. As a little bit active community user, I'd like to add my part in testing the software. I always do, just because I appreciate the work done buy hundreds of thousands of people and that's the least I can do.

So, Ubuntu 10.10 Beta is out, an upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 took about two hours and whooo! It's working! I mean almost everything works. Would you like to find out how-to deal with e.g. Skype problems?

Back in my "Windows" times, I was a fan of Foobar2000 music player. One of my favourite plug-ins was "Alarm", which could turn user's computer on during "suspend" state. So, I could switch my laptop to "sleep" mode, and be awaken in the morning by music from Foobar's playlist :)
Is it possible to reproduce a similar trick in Linux? It depends on your hardware. Let's give it a try!

A very common problem in Ubuntu is "how the heck do I change the first day of week to Monday?". One can google and find a lot of solutions with locales "hacking". Is there a simpler way to do that?

The worst thing has happened: I have an unexpected drive failure. That's how my Easter has started :(