Pardon my long absence from the blogosphere. One cause has been that my workplace blocked access to Blogger, all Blogger-hosted blogs, all mailing lists anywhere, etc. I'm becoming thoroughly frustrated. The message it seems to send is, "We don't desire the fruit of your work as much as we value our infantilizing mistrust of your professionalism. We pay for the services of skilled adults yet believe that we got delinquent children instead."
But anyway. That's not why I'm posting. I've been fairly nomadic lately, migrating my work from machine to machine and experimenting with various operating systems, and it's made me crave some good organizational software. Since my birthday is coming up, I thought I would ask the Universe to produce it and see what happens.
1. I need help keeping track of the difference between files I've worked on - stuff I want to keep when I move or rebuild - and stuff I can leave behind because I just downloaded it from somewhere and I'll just download it afresh on a new system anyway. Then it'll be easy to back up and transfer my work. This software will note when I modify a file with a text editor, IDE, image editor, OpenOffice, or whatnot, and will flag it as my own personal work - a "keeper". Stuff that comes from downloads, from expanding zipfiles, automated processes and loggers, etc. will all be flagged "ephemeral".
2. I need help reorganizing my folder structure. I'd like something that can scan my drive and notice that my photos are scattered in four different places, short text notes are all over, I've got four copies of the same file in four directories under three names, etc., and propose and facilitate a consolidation plan.
3. A nice tag-based file access system That could actually replace #2 and be a key component of #1.
If you know of this stuff already existing, speak up! If you want to write it, hooray! If you want to wait several years until I have the skill and the time to do it myself, well... keep reading my blog, I guess. If you are saying, "You wouldn't need any of this if you exercised organizational discipline when creating your files", then please note that I am Sticking My Tongue Out At You.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
get a job, sha na na na
If you're reading this and you're interested in switching jobs, let me know...
... because I'm constantly being asked these days whether I know people looking for work. It's a good feeling, but it would be a better feeling if I had somebody to refer them to. And I'm sure I'm not the only one getting these inquiries, so if you've felt stuck writing boringCode for a pointy-haired boss, it's a great time to let your friends know.
This applies to Python people as well as Oracle. That's a neat change; when I got involved in Python a few years ago, the assumption was that most Python programmers had day jobs using more boring languages, and could only use Python in their passion-driven midnight coding sprees. Now, employer interest is very high - it seems employer interest has actually grown faster and overtaken the population of Python coders. That's especially noteworthy when you consider how quickly someone can become a Python programmer.
Anyway, good times for Py and Ora geeks. Woo hoo!
... because I'm constantly being asked these days whether I know people looking for work. It's a good feeling, but it would be a better feeling if I had somebody to refer them to. And I'm sure I'm not the only one getting these inquiries, so if you've felt stuck writing boringCode for a pointy-haired boss, it's a great time to let your friends know.
This applies to Python people as well as Oracle. That's a neat change; when I got involved in Python a few years ago, the assumption was that most Python programmers had day jobs using more boring languages, and could only use Python in their passion-driven midnight coding sprees. Now, employer interest is very high - it seems employer interest has actually grown faster and overtaken the population of Python coders. That's especially noteworthy when you consider how quickly someone can become a Python programmer.
Anyway, good times for Py and Ora geeks. Woo hoo!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Kubuntu
For Feisty, just to learn something new, I thought I'd try Kubuntu (KDE Ubuntu) instead of Ubuntu this time around.
And... and... I think I'm a believer.
For what I've done so far, the extra information KDE provides is very well thought-out, just what I need to know when I need to know it. For instance...
And... and... I think I'm a believer.
For what I've done so far, the extra information KDE provides is very well thought-out, just what I need to know when I need to know it. For instance...
- When I want to remove a USB drive or somesuch, but something is still using it, Ubuntu (like Windows, including Vista) only tells me that something is using it. Kubuntu tells me what is using it.
- Alt-Tabbing through my open windows gives more information than just the icon of each running program - enough so that I can distinguish between my eight different command prompt windows.
- Hovering over an icon pops up the file properties. Nice! I mean, why else would I be hovering over an icon, except that I was fumbling for the right-mouse button so I could find out more?
- Clicking my networking icon provides all the information I need to choose at a single glance, and then one more click connects me. Also, Kubuntu seems to jump to conclusions and do the right thing for networking - when there's only one wireless network around, Kubuntu just connects me without waiting to be asked.
- I really liked Ctrl-+ to increase the font size of GNOME windows. That's important when trying to read laptop screens in adverse environments (like outside). I haven't found a KDE equivalent.
- The built-in text editor, Kate, bungles the spaces/tabs in Python files. That's one good reason to install Komodo (free editor or the real thing) immediately.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Extensible CheckBox List
Introducing a brand-new widget for TurboGears: Extensible CheckBox List!
To use it:
Unfortunately, the new items will appear beneath the "Other:" box, not above it, unless you upgrade your MochiKit to 1.4. Details on how to do that and more are here.
Developing it was lots of fun - it really shows how easily a relative amateur can contribute to TurboGears. I hope to write up a "Developing and Contributing TurboGears Widgets for Dummies" document soon, based on the experience.
To use it:
easy_install xcbl- In your controller.py,
from xcbl.widgets import ExtensibleCheckBoxList - In your form's WidgetsList,
pets = ExtensibleCheckBoxList(options=['cats','dogs','turtles'])
(exactly the same as you would for an ordinary CheckBox List widget)
Unfortunately, the new items will appear beneath the "Other:" box, not above it, unless you upgrade your MochiKit to 1.4. Details on how to do that and more are here.
Developing it was lots of fun - it really shows how easily a relative amateur can contribute to TurboGears. I hope to write up a "Developing and Contributing TurboGears Widgets for Dummies" document soon, based on the experience.
cleansing table and column names
What kind of joker thought "BASE POC'S" would make a good column name? Sheesh, MS Access. (Not to mention apostrophe abuse. See Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots.)
To my surprise, I googled "script rename invalid columns oracle" and got nothing useful. So here's a chance to play with Oracle regular expressions.
You may be thinking, "If they're illegal column names, how can they get in the database in the first place?" With "quotation marks", that's how. In fact, you can
Anyway, here's a PL/SQL cure for bad table and column names.
(link to code)
To my surprise, I googled "script rename invalid columns oracle" and got nothing useful. So here's a chance to play with Oracle regular expressions.
You may be thinking, "If they're illegal column names, how can they get in the database in the first place?" With "quotation marks", that's how. In fact, you can
CREATE TABLE "!!!My Rockin' Table!!!"
( "*^@(@ @!!!" VARCHAR2(30)
CONSTRAINT " -- d00d --" PRIMARY KEY,
"miXiNG CASE is TEH KEWList" VARCHAR2(30) );
Anyway, here's a PL/SQL cure for bad table and column names.
(link to code)
/*
Renames tables and columns to be Oracle-legal.
SET LINESIZE 200 before running to avoid unwanted page breaks.
Run from an account with privileges to
- access v$reserved words
- alter the appropriate tables
Thanks to Eddie Awad for his description of v$reserved words:
http://awads.net/wp/2007/01/10/what-does-reserved-y-really-mean/
Catherine Devlin, catherinedevlin.blogspot.com, 11 May 2007, v0.1
*/
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cleanse_names IS
new_obj_name VARCHAR2(30);
CURSOR tbl_names IS
SELECT owner,
table_name
FROM all_tables
WHERE dropped = 'NO';
CURSOR col_names IS
SELECT owner,
table_name,
column_name
FROM all_tab_columns
JOIN all_tables USING (table_name, owner)
WHERE dropped = 'NO';
PROCEDURE do(this IN VARCHAR2) IS
BEGIN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(this || ';');
-- Uncomment if you're feeling decisive
-- EXECUTE IMMEDIATE(this);
END do;
FUNCTION legalize(name IN VARCHAR2, replacement_letter IN VARCHAR2)
RETURN varchar2
IS
new_name VARCHAR2(30);
is_reserved NUMBER(11,0);
BEGIN
-- must begin with a letter
new_name := REGEXP_REPLACE(name,'^[^[:alpha:]]',replacement_letter);
-- and contain only letters, numbers, #,_,$
new_name := REGEXP_REPLACE(new_name,'[^[:alnum:]#_$]','_');
-- and mixing case is evil
new_name := UPPER(new_name);
-- and we must respect Oracle reserved words
SELECT count(*)
INTO is_reserved
FROM v$reserved_words
WHERE keyword=new_name
AND (reserved='Y' OR res_semi='Y');
IF is_reserved > 0
THEN
new_name := SUBSTR(new_name, 1, 29) || '_';
END IF;
RETURN new_name;
END legalize;
BEGIN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('set scan off');
FOR col IN col_names
LOOP
new_obj_name := legalize(col.column_name, 'C');
IF new_obj_name != col.column_name
THEN
do('ALTER TABLE ' || col.owner ||
'."' || col.table_name ||
'" RENAME COLUMN "' || col.column_name ||
'" TO ' || new_obj_name);
END IF;
END LOOP;
FOR tbl IN tbl_names
LOOP
new_obj_name := legalize(tbl.table_name, 'T');
IF new_obj_name != tbl.table_name
THEN
do('ALTER TABLE ' || tbl.owner ||
'."' || tbl.table_name ||
'" RENAME TO ' || new_obj_name);
END IF;
END LOOP;
END cleanse_names;Larry Wall, God, Lois McMaster Bujold
Part of what got me thinking about my last post is that I'm suffering a little crisis over Larry Wall. I'm really admiring his spirit. For instance, I like his way of expressing his Christianity.
As if that weren't enough, he's into The Lois, as quoted here:
So, anyway. Yaaaay, Larry. But there's no getting around this: I prefer Python. Perl is great, Ruby is great - all dynamic languages contribute to each others' success, I think, because the prominence and respect won by each rubs off the others, so we can get our necktie-level blessing. But, when it comes down to what I use, I can't write anything else these days without wishing it were Python.
As if that weren't enough, he's into The Lois, as quoted here:
Note how we still periodically hear the phrase "serious literature". This is literature that is supposedly about Real Life. Let me tell you something. The most serious literature I've ever read is by Lois McMaster Bujold. Any of you read her? It's also the funniest literature I've ever read. It's also space opera. "Genre fiction," sneers the Modernist. Meaning it follows certain conventions. So what? Nobody in the world can mix gravity and levity the way Bujold does in her Vorkosigan books. It's oh so definitely about real life. So what if it follows space opera conventions. Sonnets follow certain conventions too, but I don't see them getting sneered at much these days. Certainly they were always called "serious".Yes, I'm a Lois fan, too. I once drove hundreds of miles to an SF con purely because she would be there...
How long till Bujold becomes required reading in high school? Far too long, in my opinion. Horrors. We wouldn't want our students actually enjoying what they read. It's not--it's not Real Life.
As if the Lord of the Flies is real life. Feh.
So, anyway. Yaaaay, Larry. But there's no getting around this: I prefer Python. Perl is great, Ruby is great - all dynamic languages contribute to each others' success, I think, because the prominence and respect won by each rubs off the others, so we can get our necktie-level blessing. But, when it comes down to what I use, I can't write anything else these days without wishing it were Python.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
getting a bit philosophical
Have you had the experience of struggling with a problem for hours, going to ask for help with it, and then realizing the answer to the problem while you're in the middle of asking the question?
Of course you have. It's an amazing phenomenon. It really shows how much the brain depends on language to think clearly. It's one reason I'm such a junkie for user groups and conferences! And it's not good enough to just hear it or read it - you have to speak it or write it to really engage your brain. Similarly, sometimes it seems like you never really understand a subject until you have to teach it to somebody else.
Meanwhile, it's become an axiom of conversational politeness that politics and religion are to be avoided in most contexts. Which means... which means that we're forbidding ourselves to use our most powerful means of stimulating clear thought... for some of the most important ideas we have to think about. Hmm...
Of course you have. It's an amazing phenomenon. It really shows how much the brain depends on language to think clearly. It's one reason I'm such a junkie for user groups and conferences! And it's not good enough to just hear it or read it - you have to speak it or write it to really engage your brain. Similarly, sometimes it seems like you never really understand a subject until you have to teach it to somebody else.
Meanwhile, it's become an axiom of conversational politeness that politics and religion are to be avoided in most contexts. Which means... which means that we're forbidding ourselves to use our most powerful means of stimulating clear thought... for some of the most important ideas we have to think about. Hmm...
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Microformats
As I work more on the Geek Event Aggregator and similar projects, I'm getting really fascinated by movements like microformats and POSH - efforts to make web content more semantically meaningful and machine-readable, without trying to radically reinvent the web. Just small tweaks to the HTML we've been writing all along can make a world of difference - indeed, often just using HTML best practices that have been around (and largely ignored) forever. Interesting stuff! I'll probably be blogging about it more in the future.
One related concept is blogchalking, so here goes.
Let's see, I have about three more months before I have to update that age category.
One related concept is blogchalking, so here goes.
This is my new blogchalk:That's for machines to read. Humans, avert your eyes.
United States, Ohio, Dayton, Brookville, English, German, Catherine, Female, 31-35, Python, environment. :)
Let's see, I have about three more months before I have to update that age category.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Unicode error with TurboGears and Oracle
Thanks to kap_ravi's comment, I tracked down a surprisingly big and poorly-documented stumbling block for folks using TG with Oracle.
I've updated the original TG+Oracle blog post to reflect it, but the gist of it is that you're likely to get
Configuring Oracle for proper Unicode use may avoid the need for this; I'm not sure. My dreadfully mononational working environment has prevented me from developing any Unicode experience.
I've updated the original TG+Oracle blog post to reflect it, but the gist of it is that you're likely to get
SQLError: (NotSupportedError) Variable_TypeByValue(): unhandled dataerrors unless you include
type unicode
sqlalchemy.convert_unicode = Truein your .cfg files.
Configuring Oracle for proper Unicode use may avoid the need for this; I'm not sure. My dreadfully mononational working environment has prevented me from developing any Unicode experience.
Monday, April 23, 2007
good errors vs. bad errors
One of the things I love most about PostgreSQL is its beautiful error messages. For instance, let's say I've inexplicably forgotten to add my home state to a table of states, thus violating a foreign key constraint when I try to insert a Minnesotan city. Here it is in Oracle:
OK, that doesn't suck. In this case, it's pretty easy to figure out the problem, especially since I gave my constraint a meaningful name. However, there are cases where the foreign key is not so obvious - maybe it involves multiple columns - and I'm sometimes sent off to look up details on what FK_CITY_STATE involves. Since DESCRIBE won't work on a constraint, that means either an intricate query joining several V$ tables, or a graphical tool like Toad or SQL Developer.
Now I'll make the same mistake in psql.
Now that's clarity! It's one of the things I love about PostgreSQL. After all, the database has all this detail easily accessible to it; why shouldn't it deliver it to me along with the error message? It's even more important when an error like this is thrown from somewhere deep inside some code, where it may not be obvious to me which statement or which row is responsible for it - having the offending value displayed is incredibly convenient. It's considerate programming - no more, no less.
I'll say this for Oracle, though - Oracle's standardized ABC-12345 error codes are really handy for looking them up, for searches on Metalink or Google.
In any case, either of these SQL environments have good error reporting. But what about Oracle Enterprise Manager?
Where am I supposed to go with this? Shall we go search on Metalink for "An error has occurred"? Does someone at Oracle imagine that this message is, in some mysterious way, useful? Maybe there's some logfile somewhere on the server that will tell me more... maybe... somewhere. Maybe. Somewhere.
Seriously, folks. OEM has been around for a long time now. It still throws lots of errors, often for no apparent fault of the DBA (I got this one simply by trying to access the "Administration" tab.) But I would forgive throwing lots of errors, if the errors were clear, and if they included information to facilitate finding out more. This, however, I cannot forgive, and it is all too typical of my experiences with OEM. (Well, a few years back, the errors tended to be screenfuls of Java error-stack vomit; now most of those seem to have been "cleaned up" into these poker-faced non-messages. That's progress? It's like Windows 3.1 all over again.)
So, if you see me rolling my eyes next time an Oracle rep shows a slide telling us how wonderful lovely OEM makes DBAs' jobs so much easier... this is why.
SQL> insert into city values ('International Falls','MN');
insert into city values ('International Falls','MN')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-02291: integrity constraint (MYSCHEMA.FK_CITY_STATE) violated - parent key not found
OK, that doesn't suck. In this case, it's pretty easy to figure out the problem, especially since I gave my constraint a meaningful name. However, there are cases where the foreign key is not so obvious - maybe it involves multiple columns - and I'm sometimes sent off to look up details on what FK_CITY_STATE involves. Since DESCRIBE won't work on a constraint, that means either an intricate query joining several V$ tables, or a graphical tool like Toad or SQL Developer.
Now I'll make the same mistake in psql.
mydb=# insert into city values (2,'International Falls','MN');
ERROR: insert or update on table "city" violates foreign key constraint "fk_city_state"
DETAIL: Key (state)=(MN) is not present in table "state".
Now that's clarity! It's one of the things I love about PostgreSQL. After all, the database has all this detail easily accessible to it; why shouldn't it deliver it to me along with the error message? It's even more important when an error like this is thrown from somewhere deep inside some code, where it may not be obvious to me which statement or which row is responsible for it - having the offending value displayed is incredibly convenient. It's considerate programming - no more, no less.
I'll say this for Oracle, though - Oracle's standardized ABC-12345 error codes are really handy for looking them up, for searches on Metalink or Google.
In any case, either of these SQL environments have good error reporting. But what about Oracle Enterprise Manager?
Where am I supposed to go with this? Shall we go search on Metalink for "An error has occurred"? Does someone at Oracle imagine that this message is, in some mysterious way, useful? Maybe there's some logfile somewhere on the server that will tell me more... maybe... somewhere. Maybe. Somewhere.
Seriously, folks. OEM has been around for a long time now. It still throws lots of errors, often for no apparent fault of the DBA (I got this one simply by trying to access the "Administration" tab.) But I would forgive throwing lots of errors, if the errors were clear, and if they included information to facilitate finding out more. This, however, I cannot forgive, and it is all too typical of my experiences with OEM. (Well, a few years back, the errors tended to be screenfuls of Java error-stack vomit; now most of those seem to have been "cleaned up" into these poker-faced non-messages. That's progress? It's like Windows 3.1 all over again.)
So, if you see me rolling my eyes next time an Oracle rep shows a slide telling us how wonderful lovely OEM makes DBAs' jobs so much easier... this is why.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Hello Penguicon
I'm having a fantastic time at Penguicon so far...
except, of course, for being unable to connect my laptop to the projector for my talk. Aaaaaaaaaah!
If you were in my audience, 1) thank you for bearing with me, 2) I hope you managed to get something out of it, and 3) I'm so glad you came here!
The full tarball of talk material is available here. You can use it to look through the plain-text version of the talk (independently available here), or install vpython on your system and run the demos (I recommend running 'python solarSim4.py', then looking at the code), or actually install Bruce on your system so you can run 'socrates.py pyIntro.soc' and see the presentation the way you should have seen it at the con.
Thanks for being a great, involved - not to mention forgiving - audience!
except, of course, for being unable to connect my laptop to the projector for my talk. Aaaaaaaaaah!
If you were in my audience, 1) thank you for bearing with me, 2) I hope you managed to get something out of it, and 3) I'm so glad you came here!
The full tarball of talk material is available here. You can use it to look through the plain-text version of the talk (independently available here), or install vpython on your system and run the demos (I recommend running 'python solarSim4.py', then looking at the code), or actually install Bruce on your system so you can run 'socrates.py pyIntro.soc' and see the presentation the way you should have seen it at the con.
Thanks for being a great, involved - not to mention forgiving - audience!
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Excel reports from TurboGears
Last week, I had the chance to design, build, and deploy a TurboGears application to outside customers for the first time ever. It was awesome! It was a simple survey form - well, simple in concept, but various questions were dependent in various ways on the answers to other questions, so I did have to get into the JavaScript, praise be to MochiKit.
The application owner wanted to see his survey results in (hmm, can you guess?) MS Excel. "No problem", I said, and then was surprised at how much trouble I had figuring out how to do that straight from TG. AFAIK, TurboGears doesn't have a handy way to output CSV. I could certainly produce a webpage with CSV data, and even use the default method in my controller to serve it with a .CSV extension ("http://myserver/report.csv"), but it still had webpage-type headers and thus Excel still didn't know what to do with it. And no, I wasn't about to tell him to cut-and-paste.
What I eventually hit on was to provide the results as a simple HTML table, then take advantage of the fact that Excel can open a webpage that contains (only) a table rather nicely. Then I gave him a batchfile that simply said
... double-clicking it gets a live view of the data.
If he'd been cooler, the batchfile could just as well have said
- I tried that, too, it works.
Actually, I didn't serve it under http://myserver/report, I served it under https://myserver/reportWithHideousGUIDblahblah4242rtfm22hike. That was my quick-and-dirty way to provide some basic security - the report URL is unguessable, so unless he shares the link, it should be safe. On the other hand, anybody who can sniff his request can extract the magic URL and use it. Can anybody comment on how much of a risk that is? There's no real sensitivity to the data in this case, but it would be nice to know if this the-URL-is-the-password scheme is a worthwhile shortcut or is terribly dumb.
The application owner wanted to see his survey results in (hmm, can you guess?) MS Excel. "No problem", I said, and then was surprised at how much trouble I had figuring out how to do that straight from TG. AFAIK, TurboGears doesn't have a handy way to output CSV. I could certainly produce a webpage with CSV data, and even use the default method in my controller to serve it with a .CSV extension ("http://myserver/report.csv"), but it still had webpage-type headers and thus Excel still didn't know what to do with it. And no, I wasn't about to tell him to cut-and-paste.
What I eventually hit on was to provide the results as a simple HTML table, then take advantage of the fact that Excel can open a webpage that contains (only) a table rather nicely. Then I gave him a batchfile that simply said
"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\excel.exe" http://myserver/report... double-clicking it gets a live view of the data.
If he'd been cooler, the batchfile could just as well have said
"c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.2\program\scalc.exe" http://myserver/report- I tried that, too, it works.
Actually, I didn't serve it under http://myserver/report, I served it under https://myserver/reportWithHideousGUIDblahblah4242rtfm22hike. That was my quick-and-dirty way to provide some basic security - the report URL is unguessable, so unless he shares the link, it should be safe. On the other hand, anybody who can sniff his request can extract the magic URL and use it. Can anybody comment on how much of a risk that is? There's no real sensitivity to the data in this case, but it would be nice to know if this the-URL-is-the-password scheme is a worthwhile shortcut or is terribly dumb.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Presenting at Penguicon
Well, two weeks from Friday, I'll be presenting on Python in Michigan... wearing a Starfleet uniform, if the vendor area opens in time.
Yes, I'll be at Penguicon. It's an open-source convention - it's an SF convention - it's a dessert topping! Troy, MI, April 20-22. I've never been there before, and I expect to enjoy it. The schedule included two higher-level Python talks, so it seemed to me like somebody should introduce Python so newbies could get the background they need to absorb the higher-level stuff. Wish me luck!
My presentation will be more or less a repeat of the one I gave at Dayton Perl Mongers - it went well there, and the planetary theme should be even more appropriate for Penguicon. In fact, now that I've got a good talk to give, I'm starting to look around for any old place, any old audience in the area I can introduce Python to. Suggestions are welcome! centralOH@python.org is gaining membership pretty nicely, but we're still going to need more to turn it into a really thriving in-person group. Hopefully I can lure a bunch of new people into the joys of Python.
Yes, I'll be at Penguicon. It's an open-source convention - it's an SF convention - it's a dessert topping! Troy, MI, April 20-22. I've never been there before, and I expect to enjoy it. The schedule included two higher-level Python talks, so it seemed to me like somebody should introduce Python so newbies could get the background they need to absorb the higher-level stuff. Wish me luck!
Introduction to Python, April 20 7:30 - 8:30 PM, Catherine DevlinI also hope to make it to
Django the Python framework for rapid web app development, April 21 9:30 - 10:30 AM, Dan Scott
Patterns of Data Access implemented in SQLAlchemy, April 21 6:00 - 7:00 PM, Mark Ramm
PostgreSQL & Explaining Explain, April 20 10:00 - 11:00 PM, Aaron Thuland to sit on the Constructed Languages panel (I'm an Esperantist)... and not to sleep, apparently.
My presentation will be more or less a repeat of the one I gave at Dayton Perl Mongers - it went well there, and the planetary theme should be even more appropriate for Penguicon. In fact, now that I've got a good talk to give, I'm starting to look around for any old place, any old audience in the area I can introduce Python to. Suggestions are welcome! centralOH@python.org is gaining membership pretty nicely, but we're still going to need more to turn it into a really thriving in-person group. Hopefully I can lure a bunch of new people into the joys of Python.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Feeling the love from Oracle
The Oracle Technology Network has rolled out two new features deeply gratifying to the PyOraGeek...
- The Scripting Language Technology Center is devoted to articles about Python and Ruby. Keep an eye on it - more articles are in the pipeline! (Including one by me... oops, now I mentioned it publicly, now I really have to get cracking on it.)
- They established an OTN Forum page just for Python.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Intro to Python presentation
I've put the presentation for tonight's Intro to Python talk here.
It's not exactly the "slides" - it's a Bruce presentation. Bruce is great for live demos, especially for Python. Unfortunately, there's no "slide deck" that you can review statically - if you want to use it, you have to install Bruce and run it. The TAR I posted has a README with some basic instructions.
Since many conference organizers want a slide deck, one nice addition to Bruce would be a way to generate a slide deck. (No, I'm not volunteering... yet.) The other wart I ran into was the difficulty of changing the font sizes for the interpreter. Setting values in Socrates !CONFIG directives and config.py didn't work; I had to dig down into baseinterp.py and hard-code new font size values. That one, I probably could patch, if I get time.
Anyway, I did end up using Visual Python to do some fun solar system simulations. That should hold audience attention, I think...
It's not exactly the "slides" - it's a Bruce presentation. Bruce is great for live demos, especially for Python. Unfortunately, there's no "slide deck" that you can review statically - if you want to use it, you have to install Bruce and run it. The TAR I posted has a README with some basic instructions.
Since many conference organizers want a slide deck, one nice addition to Bruce would be a way to generate a slide deck. (No, I'm not volunteering... yet.) The other wart I ran into was the difficulty of changing the font sizes for the interpreter. Setting values in Socrates !CONFIG directives and config.py didn't work; I had to dig down into baseinterp.py and hard-code new font size values. That one, I probably could patch, if I get time.
Anyway, I did end up using Visual Python to do some fun solar system simulations. That should hold audience attention, I think...
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Dayton, meet Python. Python, Dayton.
I'm giving an introduction to Python at the next Dayton Perl Mongers meeting:
March 14th 7pm to 9pm 2007 —
Introduction to Python at Dayton Perl Mongers—
at 119 Valley St. Dayton, Ohio, USA
(Caution: the hCalendar creator didn't work for me with Opera or IE, only Firefox.)
If you're in the area, and still haven't learned Python (how have you put up with this blog?), please drop by!
I think that, to keep some visual interest up, I'll use Python's turtle module for some of my demonstrations. Not exactly snooty enterprise stuff, but turtle graphics are cute. Either that, or possibly vPython, which is certainly more impressive - but a bit more complex and less intuitive, possibly wrong for an introduction.
(I haven't forgotten my promise to post about PyCon. I'm waiting for presentation links to be published so I can refer to them.)
March 14th 7pm to 9pm 2007 —
Introduction to Python at Dayton Perl Mongers—
at 119 Valley St. Dayton, Ohio, USA
Introductory talk on the Python programming language
This hCalendar event brought to you by the hCalendar Creator.
(Caution: the hCalendar creator didn't work for me with Opera or IE, only Firefox.)
If you're in the area, and still haven't learned Python (how have you put up with this blog?), please drop by!
I think that, to keep some visual interest up, I'll use Python's turtle module for some of my demonstrations. Not exactly snooty enterprise stuff, but turtle graphics are cute. Either that, or possibly vPython, which is certainly more impressive - but a bit more complex and less intuitive, possibly wrong for an introduction.
(I haven't forgotten my promise to post about PyCon. I'm waiting for presentation links to be published so I can refer to them.)
Monday, March 05, 2007
Geek Event Aggregator design notes
I finally created a central page for the Geek Event Aggregator - mostly it's design notes, but it's also a home less ephemeral than a bunch of blog posts:
http://catherine.devlin.googlepages.com/geekEventAggregator.html
http://catherine.devlin.googlepages.com/geekEventAggregator.html
Monday, February 26, 2007
Thanks to Google
... the Geek Event Aggregator is working again. Shortly after my post about the upload to gCal not working, I got an email from Ryan Boyd, of Google's Calendar team:
With that information, I was able to get it working again, so go ahead and check out that APL conference near your uncle in Kalamazoo.
Better yet, I was able to give my Lightning Talk on it, and it was very well received. The Lightning Talks are so popular that PyCon doesn't even schedule anything opposite them anymore, so basically the entire conference body of 593 people (!!!) was there; I've never spoken before so many in my life. I'm glad that didn't occur to me until afterward.
In the talk, I briefly outlined the architecture. At some point I'll post about it here. The basic principle is: HTML interpretation is hard, let's go datetutils.parser.parse()ing!
Yeah, PyCon! I just got back, and I've got so much to say; expect a flurry of blog posts as soon as I can get to it. I'm as happy as a clam. As several clams! As several unusually happy clams!
Someone brought the following post to my attention and I thought I'd follow up and see if I can be of any assistance... The problem that you are experiencing (500 error: Cannot access the calendar you requested) is due to the large size of (number of events in) the calendar.Wow! Thanks to whoever passed my whining on to him... let me never speak ill of this social web stuff!
With that information, I was able to get it working again, so go ahead and check out that APL conference near your uncle in Kalamazoo.
Better yet, I was able to give my Lightning Talk on it, and it was very well received. The Lightning Talks are so popular that PyCon doesn't even schedule anything opposite them anymore, so basically the entire conference body of 593 people (!!!) was there; I've never spoken before so many in my life. I'm glad that didn't occur to me until afterward.
In the talk, I briefly outlined the architecture. At some point I'll post about it here. The basic principle is: HTML interpretation is hard, let's go datetutils.parser.parse()ing!
Yeah, PyCon! I just got back, and I've got so much to say; expect a flurry of blog posts as soon as I can get to it. I'm as happy as a clam. As several clams! As several unusually happy clams!
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Geek Event Aggravator
I swear to you, the code that gathers data for the Geek Event Aggregator is running great. It's harvesting over 5,000 events, with ever-improving completeness and accuracy.
Unfortunately... the code that ships the harvested data up to Google Calendar - which worked perfectly at first - is now falling flat, with gCal returning
"Error: Cannot access the calendar you requested."
when I try to ship the new data up, or to clear out the old data - thus the redundant entries. (No, it's not a simple password problem, I did check that...)
I suspect that I triggered something at gCal that said, "Hey, there's way too much activity on this calendar, it must be some evil bot, lock it down."
I guess this is the problem with mashups. It's great to springboard off the work of total strangers - but you're at the mercy of a black box. Maybe I can buttonhole somebody from Google at PyCon next week (holy cow! PyCon next week!) and ask for a contact somewhere in the bowels of the gCal team who might be willing to help me troubleshoot. The sad thing is, this pretty much sinks my plan to do a Lightning Talk on it.
So anyway, my apologies if you've been trying to use the Aggregator and have found only stale and redundant information. My box is overladen with fresh, hot event data; I just have to figure out a way to get it out to you. I tried Swivel, but can't seem to get the data there, either. And the old-fashioned solution - the app running in the Oracle Application Express sandbox - can only receive data by manual uploads, and then only in small chunks; I would have to do about fifty mouse clicks every time I wanted to refresh the Aggregator's data, and I'm sorry, but I'm not a clicker.
The ultimate solution, of course, is to build my own app on my own web server, or on a web host with permissive policies on installing software. I don't have those resources right now, unfortunately. (sigh)
[I apologize; Blogger has gone loony on the line breaks for this post, and I can't seem to fix it. Grumble. All my web resources are letting me down today.]
Unfortunately... the code that ships the harvested data up to Google Calendar - which worked perfectly at first - is now falling flat, with gCal returning
"Error: Cannot access the calendar you requested."
when I try to ship the new data up, or to clear out the old data - thus the redundant entries. (No, it's not a simple password problem, I did check that...)
I suspect that I triggered something at gCal that said, "Hey, there's way too much activity on this calendar, it must be some evil bot, lock it down."
I guess this is the problem with mashups. It's great to springboard off the work of total strangers - but you're at the mercy of a black box. Maybe I can buttonhole somebody from Google at PyCon next week (holy cow! PyCon next week!) and ask for a contact somewhere in the bowels of the gCal team who might be willing to help me troubleshoot. The sad thing is, this pretty much sinks my plan to do a Lightning Talk on it.
So anyway, my apologies if you've been trying to use the Aggregator and have found only stale and redundant information. My box is overladen with fresh, hot event data; I just have to figure out a way to get it out to you. I tried Swivel, but can't seem to get the data there, either. And the old-fashioned solution - the app running in the Oracle Application Express sandbox - can only receive data by manual uploads, and then only in small chunks; I would have to do about fifty mouse clicks every time I wanted to refresh the Aggregator's data, and I'm sorry, but I'm not a clicker.
The ultimate solution, of course, is to build my own app on my own web server, or on a web host with permissive policies on installing software. I don't have those resources right now, unfortunately. (sigh)
[I apologize; Blogger has gone loony on the line breaks for this post, and I can't seem to fix it. Grumble. All my web resources are letting me down today.]
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Presenting at Dayton-Cincinnati Code Camp
Yay! Be in West Chester, OH (i.e., Northern Cincinnati, basically) on March 24 for a fun, free day of Code Camp. Most of the content is .NET, but they're very gracious about encouraging other content, too.The following topics you submitted have been selected to be included in this year’s Code Camp:
· Data in Python, from ASCII to ZODB
My talk is going to be a broad survey of ways you can get data of various sorts into and out of Python programs - not just RDBMS, but everything from the simplest to the most elaborate of data infrastructures. It's a lot to take on in an hour, but I think it'll be good for raising awareness of the breadth of possibilities - even for non-Python programmers (you poor things). I know I've learned quite a bit already just outlining the talk.
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