Indexing the Sky
SETI may be the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Indexes.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Rectangle classes in python
This will be useful for mapping applications.. assuming it works well. I keep hoping to find time to build something with Google maps and Python people data. Maybe this will help.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
If it looks like a Duck, it may be a Parrot..
Last Saturday (July 15), the DFW Pythoneers gathered together to hear wise words from Patrick Michaud. "Lo", he said, "it is not an ex-parrot (though it may be pining for the fjords.." and we listened in solemnity.
PM gave us another great talk and explained why Perl 6 is important/interesting/intriguing to Python people and how we can get pizza paid for by the Perl foundation while looking at Python.
Parrot is the VM for the upcoming Perl6. It also happens to be capable of 'running' Python (and a bunch of other languages, some of which you will wish you had never heard of if I told you about them so I won't. You're welcome) and Patrick gave us a run-down on how the Python sourcefile in all of its beauty gets transformed into bytecode for Parrot. It's less than simple so you can go ook it up yourself at parrotcode.org.
After the meeting, I checked out the latest Parrot code and tried the test suite. Yay, it worked (good start) and then I tried the command line prompt for the Python part of Parrot, pynie. It also worked but things got a little bumpy after that:
PM gave us another great talk and explained why Perl 6 is important/interesting/intriguing to Python people and how we can get pizza paid for by the Perl foundation while looking at Python.
Parrot is the VM for the upcoming Perl6. It also happens to be capable of 'running' Python (and a bunch of other languages, some of which you will wish you had never heard of if I told you about them so I won't. You're welcome) and Patrick gave us a run-down on how the Python sourcefile in all of its beauty gets transformed into bytecode for Parrot. It's less than simple so you can go ook it up yourself at parrotcode.org.
After the meeting, I checked out the latest Parrot code and tried the test suite. Yay, it worked (good start) and then I tried the command line prompt for the Python part of Parrot, pynie. It also worked but things got a little bumpy after that:
- longs appear to be broken but aren't
- floats are broken, along with imaginary numbers
- list, arrays and dictionaries are less than working
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Django Flat Pages are cool
Turn your ever-growing linear website into a Django website with all that leading edge buzzword goodness!
I have been helping a friend with a website and it, like Topsy, just growed. It went from being manageably small (not too many pages) to large enough to be a problem (too many pages). Think it doesn't sound so bad? Imagine having to fix the copyright date on each page. That's not a good example because I was careful to use a standard layout.
Obviously the solution is to use templates but I didn't want to edit the content and add the template on my machine and upload everything so I wanted server-side templating (as opposed to rendering the pages client-side and uploading them, like they do for python.org).
My preference is to use Python for, well, just about any reason and then it hit me! Use Django! Or aanother framework, after all there are 80+ at the last count. But use Django! It's sexy! The voices in my head finally convinced me and I sketched my requirements:
I wanted
After I fixed the problem where TinyMCE decided to rewrite URLs (wanted to leave that to Apache to solve number 6), it was all uphill to the finish line. Apache rewrites most URLs to send them to django, except for the fixed asset stuff (like CSS, images, forms for download etc).
What I may do, for a giggle, is have Django write a copy of the rendered page to the filesystem and server all content as static. Hm.. maybe not. What might be good is to version the pages - add a post-save so that we keep some amount of history.
I have been helping a friend with a website and it, like Topsy, just growed. It went from being manageably small (not too many pages) to large enough to be a problem (too many pages). Think it doesn't sound so bad? Imagine having to fix the copyright date on each page. That's not a good example because I was careful to use a standard layout.
Obviously the solution is to use templates but I didn't want to edit the content and add the template on my machine and upload everything so I wanted server-side templating (as opposed to rendering the pages client-side and uploading them, like they do for python.org).
My preference is to use Python for, well, just about any reason and then it hit me! Use Django! Or aanother framework, after all there are 80+ at the last count. But use Django! It's sexy! The voices in my head finally convinced me and I sketched my requirements:
I wanted
- really straight-forward templating
- WYSIWYG editing in the browser so the client can fix the content (if they want)
- access control (so bad people don't do bad things)
- a well-explained system with a user-base
- ease of implementation and support (this should have been nearer the top of the list)
- Simple urls, somehow mirroring existing URLs. Don't want to edit lots of pages.
After I fixed the problem where TinyMCE decided to rewrite URLs (wanted to leave that to Apache to solve number 6), it was all uphill to the finish line. Apache rewrites most URLs to send them to django, except for the fixed asset stuff (like CSS, images, forms for download etc).
What I may do, for a giggle, is have Django write a copy of the rendered page to the filesystem and server all content as static. Hm.. maybe not. What might be good is to version the pages - add a post-save so that we keep some amount of history.
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