Digital cholesterol

That's my new term for the performance-clogging stuff that big-enterprise IT departments automatically install to user desktops via the enterprise network. Every week, a bit more gets piped in without my foreknowledge or consent, gradually crippling my machine.

I do my serious work on my Ubuntu laptop, which is barred from my workplace's network; I download software from home and transfer my finished products to work by USB drive. At first that seemed like an unfortunate price I had to pay; now it's looking more like a blessing. My Ubuntu laptop sizzles along as fast as the day I first booted it, while my plugged-in Windows machine creaks and groans and is slowly becoming unusable.

sqlWrap and oraDifference, packaged right

In the past few months, I've written sqlWrap.py, a database connection convenience wrapper, and oraDifference.py (which depends on sqlWrap.py). I didn't have any particularly sane way to distribute them, though, and I apologize to anybody who made the attempt.

Well, it may amount to delusions of grandeur, but I registered them as a SourceForge project. Now they have

• A single, sane place for downloads, properly versioned
• A regular distutils python installer: unzip it, run

  python setup.py install

  , and everything goes where it belongs (sqlWrap.py in your Python library, oraDifference.py in your python Scripts directory)
• a Windows executable installer (oooh, aaah)
• Homepages with documentation: for sqlWrap.py and oraDifference.py

Because oraDifference.py depends on sqlWrap.py, I put them together in a single install for simplicity.

This has been my first time working with Python's distutils module (so much easier than I expected!) and Sourceforge (not so much). It's been fun!