A Computer Science textbook that uses Python as its core language was released, I believe, this year. However, I CAN’T FIND IT! I searched google, amazon, bn.com, and used all the terms you’d normally think of using, and I can’t find this book anywhere. The book is black, and has a picture of a snake’s…
Month: November 2008
Where Can I Go That Isn’t Twitter?
In the few years since Twitter’s launch, they have shrunk the number of ways you can interact with it, shrunk the number of hours in the day when you can reliably get or send messages through it, and, now, shrunk the number of useful web-based services by two, with the announcement that stikkit and I…
Linux on Laptop = Epic Fail
I brought my MacBook Pro in for a warranty repair yesterday around noon. Since then I’ve been using a Lenovo T61 to get basic work done, and also to see if any progress has been made in the area of Linux support for my laptop. I bought this laptop specifically because a website said that…
Help me pick a new feed reader
I’ve been using Google Reader since it was created. I really love the *idea* of Google Reader. I like that scrolling through the posts marks them as read. I like that you can toggle between list and expanded views of the posts. I like that you can search within a feed or across all feeds…
MacBook Pro: Should I Just Get a Refurb?
I hate glossy screens. I’ve tried them. I don’t like them. It’s true that it would probably be good for my eyes in some way, since I do a lot of reading on the laptop and things *are* sharper with the glossy screen. However, there’s just no way I can deal with having a glossy…
Boto 1.5b glitch, and workaround
Boto is a Python library for interacting with Amazon’s web services. I’ve used it in the past, and am currently using it for an ‘s3get’ implementation based on a simple example I found buried in a post on Patrick Altman’s blog. While testing my code, I noticed I was getting import errors from boto/connection.py, because…
MySQL Problem and Solution Posts: r0ck.
Taming MySQL is… challenging. Especially in very large, fast-growth, ‘always-on’ environments. It’s one of those things where you seemingly can never know all there is to know about it. That’s why I really like coming across posts like this one from FreshBooks that describes a very real problem that was affecting their users, how they…
On Remote Workers and Working Remotely
I’ve been on both sides of the remote worker relationship. On the manager side, I’ve managed some good-sized projects using an all-remote work force. Indeed, I’ve hired, managed, fired, and promoted workers without ever knowing what they look like. On the worker side, I do most of my work remotely, and I have for some…
Reunion with Drupal, Break from Django
My Drupal Reunion I started using drupal maybe 3-4 years ago. At the time I wasn’t all that impressed. I liked it better than Joomla (Mambo, at that time), and it was a little more featureful than PHP-Nuke. But even back then I hated that this thing was really making some sweeping, grand assumptions about…
To PyWorks Speakers and Attendees
I’ve gotten several emails over the past couple of days about meeting up at PyWorks. This is reasonable, since I was the main engine initiating contact with prospective speakers back in the June-August timeframe. However, much to my disappointment, I won’t be attending PyWorks this year. The story is basically that, in September, the startup…