Planet Firedrop

Raymond Hettinger managed to provide several of the highlights at PyCon UK. During a couple of his talks he extolled the virtues of class decorators which are new to Python 2.6 & 3.0. ... [621 words]

Last week I received an email from Microsoft: Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft MVP Award! ... [1131 words]

Resolver One is the incredible new desktop spreadsheet application I've been working on at Resolver Systems for the last two and a half years. It is written in IronPython and is 'highly programmable' (with Python of course). ... [572 words]

I've just discovered the attrgetter and itemgetter functions from the Python standard library operator module (both functions new in Python 2.4 with added functionality in Python 2.5). I wish I'd discovered them earlier as although they do very simple jobs they can make code cleaner and more readable. ... [569 words]

I've started watching a talk by Alex Martelli on Python and design patterns: Google Tech Talk: Advanced Topics in Programming Languages Series It's very interesting. Alex points out that design patterns can't be taken out of the context of the language (the technology) in which they are being used. ... [766 words]

At PyCon UK I gave a talk on functionally testing GUI applications. Functional testing involves interacting with an application in the same way as the user. ... [211 words]

PyCon UK 2008 is now over. It was exhausting but totally rocked! On the Saturday I gave a lighting talk: Metaclasses in Five Minutes. ... [245 words]

The other day I got annoyed with Microsoft's download URLs. For example you download the programmers documentation for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 from: http://www.microsoft.com/DownLoads/details.aspx?familyid=BCE7684A-507B-4FC6-BC99-6933CD690CAB&displaylang=en Bloody awful - and why? ... [276 words]

There has been a lot of good buzz recently about dynamic language performance; including Steve Yegge's Dynamic Languages Strike Back essay [1] and the more concrete demonstration in the impressive V8 Javascript Engine inside the google Chrome browser. Two of my favourite quotes on programming languages and 'the typing issue' come from Gilad Bracha [2]: "Only a subset of all possible programs can be written with statically typed languages. ... [1378 words]

At Resolver Systems we've been busy preparing for PyCon UK. As well as sponsoring the drinks for the Saturday evening dinner there are several of us speaking: Giles Thomas (the boss!) ... [305 words]

I've been dabbling in C# recently, and I'm afraid I like it. As statically typed languages go it's a good one. ... [1639 words]

The PyCon UK conference (national UK Python conference) draws inexorably nearer - just over a week to go now. We've currently got over 200 people registered and about 80 for the tutorials so it should be a great conference. ... [282 words]

Some time ago (about four months) I blogged about my difficulties with Fujitsu and Dabs.com; trying to get them to repair a laptop that failed. The short version is that the DVD drive fell out of the laptop a few months after I bought it. ... [1524 words]

After a delay of 3 months (sorry - new job, house fun etc !), Part 4 is now online - oddly the article was written and it was just a little coding required to complete. Part Four now online. ... [96 words]

Resolver One 1.2 has been released! As always, Resolver One is free to try and to use non-commercially and for open source projects. ... [965 words]

Django now runs on Jython which is great news. Jeff Hardy is also making progress running Django on IronPython. As usual the news sparked a plague of comments on Reddit. ... [582 words]

Raymond Chen has run a series of posts on the implementation of iterators (generators in Python speak) in C#. The C# compiler creates an inner class that acts as a state machine, which is nothing like as elegant as the Python implementation of course. ... [389 words]

Part of the power of systems that inherit a legacy from UNIX is their rich and flexible scripting system. Many desktop applications use this somewhere under the hood - either providing wrapper scripts as part of the application or even to implement core functionality. ... [580 words]

Around October of last year a bunch of us at Resolver Systems got imported iPhones and promptly jailbroke and unlocked them. The unlock process at the time was fairly arduous, so most of us have been running the OS version 1.0.2 since then. ... [949 words]

This blog entry is about changes to Mock - A Lightweight Mocking Framework for Testing, one of the projects (and thankfully small) that I will be working on once 'the book' is finally out of the way. Suppose you have the following code, how do you test some_method: {+coloring} class SomeClass(object): def some_method(self, arg): self.other = OtherClass(arg) {-coloring}Well, we could just call some_method, but what if OtherClass is expensive to construct (or establishes a database connection) and we'd really rather not do that in a unittest? ... [1061 words]

One of the longer term projects I'd like to work on is the Try Python tutorial. The website currently just shows Python in the Browser, which is an interactive Python interpreter running in an HTML textarea on the webpage. ... [420 words]

One annoying thing about spending the last year writing, is that I haven't been able spend much time on other projects (although I did recently manage to push out a ConfigObj release). I've already spent (in my mind) the spare time I will have once the book is done three times over. ... [481 words]

The last chapter of IronPython in Action is finally done. There is still work to do before the book is complete (appendices, index, updating the first chapter in light of the last year in IronPython), but chapters 12 (Databases and Web Services written by Christian Muirhead) through to 15 are now ready to go to the final review phase. ... [301 words]

PyCon UK is drawing closer, it's on 12th-14th September and now that most of the organisers are back from EuroPython [1] the list of talks and tutorials is now up. This is our second PyCon UK conference, and this year we start with a full day of tutorials on the Friday (don't forget to include the tutorials when you book). ... [403 words]

The first major update to Resolver One after our public release in January, was version 1.1 in June. The focus of the 1.1 release was performance improvements. ... [519 words]

Suppose you have an application that executes user code. You want to be resilient against errors in that code, you don't want to crash if exceptions are raised in user code, but you want to be able to report the errors. ... [549 words]

Interesting that this should come up at the same time as the last entry. I recently got asked to take part in the Inside the Blogosphere: Blogger Questionnaire. ... [745 words]

Scott Cowan, of the appropriately named Sleep Overrated blog, has tagged me, asking how I got started in software development. I say appropriately named, because it's now 3am and I'm facing a second night without sleep. ... [924 words]

I'm part way through creating a library of 'currency units' for use in Resolver One. I thought a good way to go would be to subclass Decimal [1], since you really don't want to be using floating point numbers for financial data (which basically all spreadsheets do of course). ... [856 words]

Edna kam gestern! Gemeint ist ein neus Point-and-Click Adventure von Daedalic: Edna bricht aus Alles in einem ein hübsches, handgezeichnetes Adventuer mit Witz und allem, was man so von Monkey Island kennt. ... [449 words]

One of the annoying things about writing a book is having to create my own diagrams. This was something I wasn't expecting when I started the project, I'm a good writer but awful at producing diagrams. ... [532 words]

Betrugsanschreiben Betrugsanschreiben - Antwortschnipsel Diese Anschreiben haben wir vor nicht allzu langer Zeit erhalten. Keine schlechte Betrugsmasche, oder? Ich darf mal zusammenfassen: Ein nicht näher identifizierbarer Absender aus Florida (PO Box), fordert uns in einem Anschreiben, das von nicht namentlich benannten Person(en) vier mal unleserlich unterschrieben wurde, auf, für eine unbekannte Leistung 20,-  € in Bar an einen nicht identifizierbaren Empfänger (PO Box) in Kanada zu schicken. ... [143 words]

A new version of ConfigObj is now available, version 4.5.3. This version is a minor bugfix release. It fixes a relatively obscure bug, where an exception could be raised when validating a config file with copy=True and __many__ sections [1]. ... [114 words]

Juhu! Meine erste Spam-Mail ist da! Low priced fashion and quality items It is hard to overestimate the importance of having at least one luxury watch. ... [59 words]

Diese Zahlen stehen für aktuelle Netzparanoia. Alles hat harmlos mit einem ICQ-Account ICQ-System angefangen, der bei (fast?) allen ICQ Benutzern aufgetaucht ist. ... [290 words]

Na? Wie lange ist das schon her? Mal von Hinten Mal von Vorne Seit 1993 gibt es Rolf nicht mehr, die fünfstelligen Postleitzahlen sind aber geblieben. ... [65 words]

The esteemed Mr Tartley has been up to his usual tricks. This time he has been playing with the Chipmunk physics engine and Pyglet to flesh out some prototypes for his 'summer-doss-out' game: Sole Scion project v0.1 : A 2D rigid-body Python game - "Version 0.1 merely bounces some circles off an inclined plane" In true freetard style he's made the code available so that you can have fun too, but with a typically odd name.... ... [197 words]

I've just finished chapter 14 of IronPython in Action - well, finished a version I can send to my editor anyway. I had more fun writing this chapter than I expected. ... [342 words]

A while ago I experimented with an interactive Python interpreter that ran in the browser using Silverlight. Unfortunately a couple of bugs with the version of IronPython for Silverlight prevented it from working properly. ... [361 words]

Python is my favourite language, by a very long way. That's not hard though, I've only done serious programming in Python, C# and Javascript and am familiar with the syntax (to lesser or greater degrees) of C, VB.NET and Ruby. ... [1106 words]

William Reade of Resolver Systems has announced a new release of our Ironclad project. Ironclad Home Page Download Binaries and Source for Ironclad Ironclad Mailing List Ironclad is a project to enable you to use CPython extensions implemented in C seamlessly from IronPython. ... [256 words]

This release represents four months of work and includes performance improvements, new features and bug fixes for Resolver One. Resolver One is an IronPython based spreadsheet development environment (fully programmable, object-oriented spreadsheet). ... [325 words]

Kermit - erleuchtet Gretel und die sieben Knüppel Rumpelfroschkönig Knüppelkönig Wie aktiviert man die bescheidene spezifische Dichtkunst Nicht-Germanisten? Man rufe eine Sommerparty aus (danke, K.!) ... [70 words]

Habe gerade zwei Stunden nach einem Fehler gesucht. Mein audacious leidete an einer merkwürdigen Form den Amnesie. Es vergaß immer seine Einstellungen. ... [74 words]

The London Geek Knights hold regular geek meetings on a range of subjects in the London Thoughtworks offices. They're open to all, and on 24th July I'll be presenting on IronPython and Silverlight. ... [67 words]

The May edition of the Python Magazine is out; and technically it's still May so that counts I guess. The major articles are: Handling Configuration Files with ConfigObj LDAP backed initScripts in Python Learning Python with PyGame: The Simplest Thing that Can Possibly Work Writing a Simple Interpreter/Compiler with Pyparsing Both the PyGame and and Pyparsing articles look interesting (I'd love to write a compiler sometime - it's on my list but I might settle for working on PyPy once my book is finished), but of course the most interesting one is the article on ConfigObj - mainly because I wrote it. ... [196 words]

PyCon UK is on 12th-14th September in Birmingham. This year I'm part of the planning committee, and the preparations are making good progress. ... [263 words]

I've finally finished the Silverlight chapter of IronPython in Action. When I started writing this chapter I thought it would be done quickly as I new the material I wanted to cover. ... [363 words]

Endlich mal wieder Zeit mit dem MacBook und Linux zu spielen. Jetzt habe ich herausgefunden, wie man unter Fedora die Fernbedienung in Betrieb nimmt. ... [33 words]

The PDF Toolkit is the Swiss Army knife for modifying PDF document. Among other things it can alter the PDF metadata, as author, subject or keywords. ... [135 words]

I feel very protected... ... [4 words]

William Reade of Resolver Systems has just announced the release of Ironclad version 0.3: Ironclad Home Page Download Binaries and Source for Ironclad Ironclad Mailing List Ironclad is an open source project that aims to allow you to seamlessly use CPython C extensions from IronPython. It basically provides a reimplementation of the CPython API in C#, and maps the C extension (unmanaged code) to creating IronPython objects (managed objects) rather than CPython objects. ... [664 words]

Brauhaus Bönnsch mit eigener Rechtschreibhilfe Pizza 'Propaganda' mit extra Schily, Koch und Springer (am alten Zoll) Heute mal zwei Fundstücke aus Bonn. Einfach mal sehen und schmunzeln... ... [34 words]

I've spent the last week writing a chapter on programming Silverlight with IronPython (which is how I managed a whole week without blogging!). Despite the title of this blog entry it's actually great fun. ... [449 words]

So much to blog about... so little time... one thing... Ever since I put together Mood News, I wanted (and people suggested) having a slider to 'mix' the level of the news. ... [72 words]

Three new chapters have been added to the Manning Early Access Program for IronPython in Action. There are now eleven out of fifteen chapters available. ... [130 words]

Kartrennenauswertung Neulich waren wir mal Kartfahren. Für mich eine Premiere, denn diese Teufelsdinger habe ich noch nie gefahren. Wir waren 11 Leute - das Maximum, was die Bahn gleichzeitig für Amateure hergibt. ... [289 words]

We've now announced the new features in the forthcoming Resolver One 1.1 release: We're now moving toward a feature freeze for Resolver One 1.1. Here's a foretaste of some of the changes you can expect to see: Major performance and memory usage improvements. ... [595 words]

In November 2006, Guido van Rossum gave a public talk at Google about Mondrian, a web tool for code review on the web that he was developing at Google. He was hoping to release it as an Open Source tool, but due to its popularity within Google it became to closely tied to Google's internal infrastructure to disentangle. ... [168 words]

Giles Thomas, the CEO & CTO (or 'dear leader' as he likes to be called) of Resolver Systems has put together some tutorials on using Amazon SimpleDB with IronPython and Resolver One: Amazon SimpleDB and IronPython Importing from Amazon SimpleDB into Resolver One Amazon SimpleDB is a cut-down database system, and as such it structures data quite differently to a normal relational database - in a manner that is actually quite similar to a spreadsheet. Each database is structured into "domains", which can be regarded as similar to worksheets. ... [966 words]

During conference season I fell behind schedule with writing IronPython in Action, so I've taken some time off work. I've just completed the first draft of "System Administration with IronPython" chapter, with only three more chapters to go. ... [616 words]

Part Three now online. A bit more to digest this time. Don't forget Part One and Part Two. Articles are aimed at programmers new to GUI work - anyone experienced in GUI programming should zoom right through them. ... [38 words]

Marta spotted this one... ... [4 words]

Feedburner allows me to monitor my RSS feed and see how many people are clicking through from my blog entry summaries to read the full entry [1]. Feedburner reports that I have a current average of about 830 subscribers. ... [544 words]

The latest issue of the Python Magazine is out. It's subscription only, but well worth it. This month's issue has some great articles: Dive into the gene pool with BioPython (mutable gene sequences - what horrors will this unleash on the world!) ... [383 words]

Recently I had the idea of writing a bit more on the XAML example I put together. Initially it was going to be on the wiki, then a blog post and now it looks like it will be 5 short articles . ... [178 words]

William Reade of Resolver Systems has just announced the release of Ironclad 0.2: Ironclad Download Page Ironclad is a project to implement the CPython C API for IronPython, allowing you to use compiled C extensions from IronPython. Ironclad targets IronPython 2 Beta 1 and CPython 2.5. ... [225 words]

The google summer of code projects are now up. As usual, the PSF has several projects. This year there I don't find many of them particularly exciting (although I'm sure others will). ... [452 words]

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about trying to get Fujitsu-Siemens to honour the warranty on my laptop. The laptop DVD drive fell out and (then later!) ... [446 words]

A couple of links about Python in the Pardus Linux Distribution showed up on the Python Advocacy Mailing List (thanks to David Boddie): Python in Pardus Speeding Up Linux: One Step Further With Pardus On why they chose Python: In simplest case of build operation (configure; make), there isn't much difference between alternative languages. But when cases get more complex, you'll definitely want a language with rich set of datatypes, native support for strings, clean and concise syntax and a standard library with a wide range of useful functions. ... [471 words]

The next Python bug days are going to be a bit different. Instead of just a bug day we're going for 'Sprint Weekends'. ... [229 words]

The Microsoft UK developer newsletter MSDN Flash, has published an article of mine on Getting Started with IronPython. This is one of their first experiments in publishing articles by non-Microsoft employees! ... [272 words]

This was the second year for the RuPy Ruby and Python conference in Poznan, Poland. Last year there were 80 attendees and this year the conference had grown to 250. ... [1328 words]

I've just returned home after a week away attending and speaking at the Expert Zone and RuPy conferences. I'm beginning to get sick of hotel rooms (poor me) and it will even be nice to return to work. ... [613 words]

Well I hadn't intended this to be my first blog entry after returning from RuPy and Expert Zone, in fact I should be going to bed. However, this blog entry on whether large test suites prove Python is not suitable for large projects is a subject dear to my heart. ... [912 words]

Some changes for this link dump - more description of the link from the feed. Is is too long? 'World peace' hitcher is murdered A female Italian artist hitch-hiking to the Middle East in a wedding dress to promote world peace is murdered in Turkey.... ... [1014 words]

There's been a fair bit of blogging about Twitter and people 'getting it' or not. Sure, it is a great networking site and far more fun than the likes of Bebo but that's not Twitters strength which lies in its API which makes a great platform. ... [211 words]

Executive summary: don't buy a Fujitsu-Siemens laptop if you anticipate the possibility of ever having to use the warranty. In January 2007 I bought an Amilo Pa1510 laptop to replace an ageing IBM Thinkpad T30 - a move that was a mistake in any case as the Thinkpad was the better machine... ... [447 words]

I've just returned from the ACCU Conference in Oxford. This is an annual occurrence, which started as a C/C++ conference but in recent years has had a thriving dynamic languages track (this year the 'flavour-de-jour' was functional programming). ... [886 words]

Two pieces of good news for Resolver Systems. Firstly we have a big corporate customer. This is great news for us. ... [846 words]

Internet News is running an article on 'Python in the Enterprise' (now there is a subject to chill the bones). It is based on interviews with me, Kevin Dangoor and David Goodger. ... [307 words]

Been playing around with IronPython and XAML lately. It is pretty cool to work with and the end results look really good. ... [99 words]

Ich habe mir ein ganz minimalistisches, kleines und flaches Piding Guifications Theme gebastelt. Es ist nichts großartiges, aber vielleicht ist es noch jemandem außer mir ein nützlicher Helfer. ... [38 words]

iserlohn.jpg">iserlohn-tn.jpg" alt="Fanka ze Bytomia" title="Fanka ze Bytomia" width="200" height="150" /> Fanka ze Bytomia Oj, jaki ten świat jest maleńki. Toż jesteś u kolegi na weselu w{}- bądź co bądź niemieckim{}- Iserlohn i co znajdujesz w gablocie lokalu? ... [57 words]

Eiskruste aus dem Kühlschrank Schon mal ein Kühlschrank in der Uni gesehen? Ich meine von Innen? Es kann eine bewegende Erfahrung im Leben sein... ... [72 words]

I'm giving a talk at the ACCU Conference 2008 next week, on IronPython & Dynamic Languages on .NET. I've finished my talk slides (well - 3rd or 4th draft at least) and just need to practise now. ... [275 words]

Harry Pierson recently twittered about how he missed the Powershell syntax, for piping objects between commandlets, in Python. After exchanging emails with him, he actually prefers something like the F# syntax - which uses '|>' rather than '|' as a pipe. ... [870 words]

Just a collection of interesting links from the intarwebz today: Report: Mac sales up 60% in February The report shows growth in Mac unit sales up 60 percent from 2007 In dollar terms, NPD has Apple capturing a full 25 percent of the U.S. computer market last month. ... [162 words]

A week before PyCon [1] I was at a very different conference: the Academic IT Festival organised by three universities in Krakow, Poland. I was also accompanied by my erstwhile colleague, Jonathan Hartley (who has currently abandoned us for Mexico to get married.) ... [1940 words]

BBC apologizes for erroneous reporting on Israel Solution sought over embryo vote views.py for wikinear.com SkySails Test Results In! 20% Fuel Savings! ... [108 words]

A tree fell down in our nearby park. Oddly it wasn't windy but probably the cold that brought it down, the inside of the trunk was hollow near the base. ... [43 words]

After PyCon I stayed on for the sprints, spending most of the time with the core-Python guys. Brett's introduction to developing Python was very good. ... [950 words]

I really enjoyed PyCon. It was great that the conference has grown so much but still has a real 'community' feeling where you can stop and talk to people you don't know. ... [729 words]