Aftermarket Pipes

3 Simple Rules That Will Make You a REAL Superstar Developer

2011-11-11T08:38:00.001-05:00

In my experience there are two kinds of "rock star" software developers. There's the Neil Peart rock star developer, who combines a natural blessing of talent and intelligence with a relentless work ethic and humble attitude, and over time becomes the developer that people not only want to hire, but want to be. And then there's the "prima donna" rock star developer, who combines a modicum of

Mojo Reset (or, The Cunning Plan)

2011-10-26T13:40:00.007-04:00

For the past few months, I've been enjoying Mike Pirnat's monthly "mojo checks"--monthly checkups that turn weak "New Year's Resolutions" to like-a-boss mojo maximization.This coming month (November), I'm starting the same thing. Why November? Because I can, dammit. And I don't want to wait until January. And November is, of course, the mojo month, Why? Because this one goes to 11.A Target-Rich

Case Study: Python as Secret Weapon for C++ Windows Programming

2011-09-06T12:29:00.013-04:00

One of my favorite features of Python is its interactive shell. If you want to try something, you type in the code and try it immediately. For someone whose first coding environment was the equally-immediate Applesoft Basic, this is just as natural. But if your introduction to programming was C, C++, or Java, the benefits might not be apparent, especially if you're trying to do exploratory

Stages of Competency

2011-08-10T11:54:00.004-04:00

After doing "this programmer thing" for a few years now, I've noticed a pattern in how I acquire skills and techniques. It's surprisingly consistent, and consists of these stages: 0: Awareness I've heard of the technique and can regurgitate a definition and a couple of use cases. I can probably pass a really bad phone screen (and in my experience, most of them are). 1: Familiarity It's

Switchpy

2010-10-20T14:58:00.005-04:00

One of the consequences of the 2.x-to-3.x Python changeover is that I need to keep both versions around for a while on my Windows dev workstation.Actually, strike that: I need to keep many versions around:2.5.4, because that's the earliest version we support at work for some internal tools2.6.6, because one particular internal tool jumped the gun and started using the "with" statement before we

Language of the Year

2010-05-10T11:32:00.004-04:00

Several some many years ago, I decided to learn a new programming language a year. I don't subscribe to the "once you're a programmer, you can learn any new language in a few weeks" theory, so I didn't intend to get to guru status on any of them in 52 weekends and a few nights. Instead, the idea was to get good enough to be able to read code well, synthesize code at a decent level of competency,

Mpath: command-line path manipulation for Windows

2010-02-16T12:45:00.005-05:00

I'm a command line geek. Windows' style of installing everything in its own directory makes it easier to clean up after uninstallation, but it makes for very long PATH environment variables. If I put every directory containing command line tools in the system path, it gets too long for Windows to handle. So I usually end up doing "PATH=%PATH%;c:\somethingelse\bin" just before I use it. That also

Five Pycon 2010 Talks I Need to See

2009-12-07T10:12:00.005-05:00

Following the example of Catherine Devlin and Carl Trachte, I thought I'd put together a list of the five Pycon talks I need to see in 2010. But I couldn't--I struggled to get below a dozen. So here are the top five I need to see, plus the ones I'll probably kick myself for not seeing because they're undoubtedly going to be scheduled in the same slots as the top five:1. Import this, that, and

Five Things I Hate About C++

2009-10-17T22:20:00.006-04:00

A few years ago, the "five things I hate about my favorite programming language" went around. I think it originated with Brian D. Foy's post on Perl. I like his reasoning: if you can't think of five things you don't like about it, you probably don't know enough about it to advocate for it. Peter Siebel's recent post about the opinions of the folks he interviewed for Coders at Work made me

Buying or Building... Furniture

2009-10-15T12:49:00.016-04:00

Most software developers are familiar with the "buy-or-build" question: is it more effective to find existing software and try to make it work in your situation, or to build it to your exact specification and take on the burden of maintaining it? But sometimes it comes up in other contexts.Like office furniture.My current project at work is winding down, and I'm rolling over to a new one. As

How to be the most awesome Dad ever

2008-09-10T20:47:00.004-04:00

To be the most awesome Dad ever, capable of carrying out feats of skill and mastery usually reserved for the likes of the Avatar, James Bond, or the Doctor, requires just a few common ingredients:The locked, most secret diary of a pre-adolescent daughter (who has lost the key),The knowledge that all such cheap locks are the same,A set of cheap luggage locks with keys,A frantic pre-adolescent

Fun with itertools

2008-06-03T13:49:00.007-04:00

Sometimes it's hard to shake old habits, especially when you've burned them into your brain as the "standard" way to do things. For example, I've been doing network programming with C and C++ for a very long time. One of the standard pieces of code I've written again and again is the "connect with backoff" pattern.If a program needs a continuous network connection, and that connection is lost,

Git: what he said.

2008-06-02T13:06:00.003-04:00

About three months ago, I started writing a blog post on why my (development) life has changed for the better since I started using git for version control. It's been stewing in my "Drafts" folder for lack of time and attention.My main point was that git is optimized for messy reality, as opposed to an idealized view of software development that never really happened that way, but looks better

That Looks About Right

2008-04-18T10:11:00.002-04:00

tlesher@badwolf:~$ history | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head 109 ls 107 cd 78 git 26 sudo 14 rm 12 ssh 11 source 11 more 10 wget 9 ipython(via Chris and Tom)

Oh, look! A startup!

2008-01-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

This December, I took a deep breath and jumped. I left a great job at a great company, working on cool projects with fun people, and executed a perfect swan dive back into the tech startup blender. Now why would a thirty-something refugee from the tech bubble with a wife, two young kids, and a mortgage give up a good salary and stable, interesting job for the stress, uncertainty, and heavier

Sad Mac

2007-12-20T11:25:00.000-05:00

Now that, my friends, is a Sad Mac.

10 Things I Learned at MEDC

2007-05-07T09:08:00.000-04:00

In person, Sue Loh sounds exactly like you'd imagine from reading the CE blog.In person, Doug Boling sounds exactly like you'd imagine from reading his book (except his humor comes off better in person).Windows Mobile 6 isn't as big a deal as it first seemed (unless you happen to be a managed code developer, which I'm not).The Tao is worth seeing (if you can either get in on your own coolness, or

Ok, I give in.

2007-05-02T18:11:00.000-04:00

Just call me a sheep.

O Sole Mio...

2007-05-01T14:23:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I've missed PyCon for the past three years running because of work conflicts. But at least this year they've been nice enough to send me to the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded DevCon (MEDC) at The Venetian in Las Vegas.No "one more thing" announcements from today's keynote, but we did get an earful of how Microsoft wants to position the Windows Mobile family: "it's not just for business

Your Memex is here. Are you using it?

2007-04-27T11:15:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Research has put significant effort into implementing a near-literal version of Vannevar Bush's "memex" in its MyLifeBits project. I think we have the memex already: we just don't realize it.In 1945, the Atlantic Journal published "As We May Think", in which Vannevar Bush speculated that in the future, a machine--the "memex," or "memory extender"--would assist researchers by storing,

Slightly less perpetually behind

2007-04-23T08:57:00.000-04:00

Adam Rifkin says, "Having a blog means feeling perpetually behind." Well, today I'm slightly less behind. The Pipes have been blocked for a few months (you might notice that this happens every time a project at work goes into the home stretch), but now that pressure is off, and I'll be able to (finally) polish and post some items that have been languishing in the Drafts folder for a while.

TurboGears decorator madness: linkify

2006-09-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

One of the neat features in TurboGears is the @jsonify decorator. It uses RuleDispatch to define generic functions to convert data model objects into JSON notation for use in AJAXish applications. For example, TurboGears provides this default converter for the User identity class:@jsonify.when('isinstance(obj, User)')def jsonify_user(obj): result = jsonify_sqlobject( obj ) del result['

Yes, games ARE different.

2006-08-02T07:59:00.000-04:00

In the late 1990s, the game industry was starting to tackle "best practices". Basic techniques common in the rest of the software world (and mostly taken for granted now) weren't getting much traction in the game business. I often heard fellow game developers complain that those practices wouldn't work for games, because the industry was "just different." A decade later, I think they were

this test app can break

2006-06-15T09:56:00.000-04:00

Wow. I didn't expect a post about a little-used Windows API function to generate 30,000 page views. In any event, some folks still doubt the "IsTextUnicode()" explanation, so I'm putting up the test app that I used to validate my theory before I blogged it.Just run the app, and enter a string into the edit control. As you type, the app repeatedly calls IsTextUnicode() and shows both the result

this api can break

2006-06-14T13:50:00.000-04:00

Over at WinCustomize, someone thought they'd found an Easter Egg in the Windows Notepad application. If you:Open NotepadType the text "this app can break" (without quotes)Save the fileRe-open the file in Notepad Notepad displays seemingly-random Chinese characters, or boxes if your default Notepad font doesn't support those characters.It's not an Easter egg (even though it seems like a funny one

Competency and Layers

2006-06-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

Larry Osterman has yet another great network programming post on his blog. To sum up, he declares his second rule of "making things go fast on the network":You can't design your application protocol in a vacuum. You need to understand how the layers below your application work before you deploy it.An excellent rule. Actually, I've often heard (and used) a more general form:You can't be

Marketing Megaframeworks

2006-05-26T09:37:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I started experimenting with TurboGears, an all-in-one web framework for Python. It's had some rough patches, but it's finally coming together for a 1.0-quality release. It's sufficiently featured and stable that I'm using it for an internal project at work (a nightly build server), and the developers I've shown it to at work have been pretty enthusiastic about learning it and

Nowak vs. Wozniak: IT Journalism Continues its Slide

2006-03-03T11:47:00.000-05:00

You know, sometimes I think that IT journalism can be its own worst enemy.Last week, Peter Nowak published an interview with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, in which Woz appeared to make some pretty sweeping (if tactless) statements about Apple's recent strategy. Someone on an Apple-oriented mailing list noted the interview in his newspaper, and Woz, busy unpacking from his trip, sent off a quick

The State of IT Journalism?

2006-01-19T16:40:00.000-05:00

A blurb on Slashdot sent me over to an article on a site called IT Observer, entitled "Linux Users May Be Violating Sarbanes-Oxley." If you're not familiar with it, Sarbanes-Oxley is a piece of US legislation, passed in the aftermath of the Enron scandal, which requires public companies to generate reams of documentation in order to prove that they're not the next big scandal waiting to

Coming Up for Air

2005-12-28T12:53:00.000-05:00

They say that when a Microsoft blogger goes quiet, it means there's something big coming up. Well, that's not just for Microsoft. I'm back to blogging after two major, major releases at work: Vocollect Voice for Handhelds and the Vocollect Talkman T5 wearable computer. The T5 was a pretty exciting project--a high-performance, extremely ruggedized, Bluetooth- and 802.11b-enabled voice-controlled

Bad Marketing Theatre presents...

2005-09-01T16:56:00.000-04:00

Amongst my pet peeves are such diverse elements as bad science, acceptance of innumeracy, and marketing-without-thinking. Marketing-without-thinking means going through all the motions of what marketing textbooks or white papers say you should do, without really knowing why you're doing them. "Checklist-based" software design and meaningless "Feature/Benefit" tables are among the most common

A first taste of Spyce

2005-07-15T13:21:00.000-04:00

Like many programmers, I have a tendency to accumulate unfinished side projects. One of these is a web application. Over the years it's gone from WebWare, to Woven, to CherryPy 1, to Quixote + Cheetah, to Nevow, and finally landed on CherryPy 2 + HTMLTemplate + SQLObject + SQLite. Yes, continually rewriting the infrastructure code is probably the biggest reason it's a continually unfinished

Unsung Heroes of Python: asynchat/asyncore

2005-05-25T19:36:00.000-04:00

Python is known for its "batteries-included" nature. One of the batteries that gets too little attention, I think, the asynchat module.One of my pastimes is playing a certain web game, which features live chat. In a previous incarnation of the game, one of the players wrote a very useful "bot"--an automated pseudo-player that sat around in chat, and provided useful information when queried. She

Businesses can take hiring tips from Open Source

2005-05-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

Dave Friedman and Doc Searls had an interesting discussion on the difference between "hiring" in open source and business. Doc railed against hiring based on flawed measures like academic degrees and IQ tests; Dave concluded that businesses and open source projects are so different that the same practices can't work in both. I think there's a better way.Dave admits that academic degrees and IQ

The Googlemonster strikes again...

2005-04-27T17:36:00.000-04:00

...and now Alex Martelli has been consumed.The recent influx of "name" talent at Google reminds me of the projections we used to make in the mid-nineties of how many years, at current growth rates, it would take until Microsoft employed all of Washington State (where I was living at the time).

"Inexcusable" failures of technology

2005-04-15T15:38:00.000-04:00

David Berlind at Znet has listed his opinion of "Technology's 10 most inexcusable failures". His insights are valid, but I think he's missing the bigger issue.He cites problems like "why doesn't my phone automatically remember a number I get via 411?" and "why can't my email system automatically read contact information from emails without an a priori, standardized format like vCard?" The

Phoneblogging with RMS

2005-04-07T19:27:00.000-04:00

Two firsts today: a first attempt at blogging from my new phone, and the first time hearing Richard Stallman speak.Phoneblogging was easier than I had feared, although my phone insists I am clogging.RMS spoke at Pitt. On the one hand I was a little disappointed in the content of the talk: I was expecting more "current affairs" and state-of-the-FSF, but the bulk of the talk was right out of Free

Fun with Google Maps

2005-04-07T18:04:00.000-04:00

Ok, Google Maps, you know where here is... and you know where there is (although someone needs to tell you the Pitt university website is not at http://utexas.edu).So why can't you get there from here?

The Starbucks Delocator

2005-04-06T15:21:00.000-04:00

The Starbucks Delocator is an interesting concept: enter your zip code, and get back a non-chain coffeeshop near your place.On the other hand, I'm unlikely to drive 26 miles for a cup of coffee.

Spyce: Not Dead Yet?

2005-03-31T23:17:00.000-05:00

Now that the Python web framework discussion has heated up, it looks like the moribund Spyce framework is finally getting some love. Spyce is a PSP (Python Server Pages) framework with its own templating language. Jonathan Ellis's Spyced blog mentions recent checkins to a new Subversion repository, but I can't find a reference to it on the Spyce website.I've just about settled on CherryPy for

The Secret Lives of Pythonistas?

2005-03-29T16:54:00.000-05:00

You know, looking over the PyCon blogs, I suddenly realized that you never see Mark Lutz and Kai Krause in the same room...

When Financial Analysts Attack

2005-03-28T15:21:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, but I take perverse pleasure in seeing financial analysts outside the tech industry make colossal, sweeping predictions, basing them on incredibly wrong, sometimes borderline-supersititious premises. (I imagine they feel the same way when they see some random geek sounding off on The Motley Fool or Yahoo! Finance.)Thomas Hazlett of The Financial Times starts off with an

Choose Python spotting at Pycon?

2005-03-22T12:14:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned before, work duties and recent surgery conspired to keep me out of Pycon this year. If anyone happens to see a Choose Python or PySpotting shirt in the crowd, I'd be grateful for a digital snapshot. Thanks!

Google and Firefox: Cheap and Easy Feature Integration

2005-03-20T18:06:00.000-05:00

Recently I was reading a web page that, in passing, mentioned "The Yes Men." That tickled a memory--I recalled hearing of it, but couldn't recall whether it was a book, a band, a web site, a movie... so my reflex was to highlight it, right-click "Search Web for "The Yes Men" and click. Right--it's a movie; ctrl-F4 to close the tab and go back to reading.Firefox's "Search for " (and to

Comments and Templates

2005-03-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

Apologies to anyone who tried to post a comment recently; it looks as if blogger.com's recent comment changes broke some of my template code. I've reverted Aftermarket Pipes to a default template until I can figure out what went wrong.

Language Design by Consensus

2005-03-11T12:55:00.000-05:00

Guido van Rossum recently proposed a small addition to the Python language (any and all predicate functions). In the discussion that followed, he made an interesting comment:What worries me a bit about doing a PEP for this simple proposal is that it might accidentally have the wrong outcome: a compromise that can carry a majority rather than the "right" solution because nobody could "sell"

Microsoft PPC200x Developer Power Toys

2005-03-07T15:06:00.000-05:00

>>> self.happiness = sum([pig.happiness for pig in slop]) I can't believe it took me so long to find out these CE development tools exist.Among the goodies: A real command shell for Windows CE 4.x (ok, it's not bash, but it's better than nothing) A remote control app (no more stylus-mistapping-on-the-cradled-device nonsense). Even stranger, they appear to be reliable and solid.

"Choose Python" shirts available

2005-02-26T15:16:00.000-05:00

They're here... just in time for PyCon.Two weights of T-shirts, plus a golf shirt for the collarly-inclined, and two long-sleeved shirts (just in case DC is a bit chilly in March).All prices are only US$1.00 over cost; proceeds will benefit the PSF.Incidentally, a number of people have mentioned the Adminspotting shirts. I was aware of them, but I can't say that Adminspotting directly inspired

Ack... Blog Ads on the 'Pipes?

2005-02-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's a vertical strip of Google AdSense ads below the profile on the right-hand side of the blog. No, I'm not under any "make money FA$T" delusions.In the past, I worked for a brief stint in the, ahem, online ad industry. I'm curious how a company whose motto is "do no evil"1 goes about things, so I signed up for an AdSense account.I'll leave it up for a little while, and after I get a

Google Maps: Too Cool

2005-02-09T13:46:00.000-05:00

This is too cool: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=chinese%2015090

Jeremy Cole "On Employee Blogging"

2005-02-09T13:08:00.000-05:00

I haven't written anything on the Mark Jen story, because like just about everyone who is writing about it, I don't have all the details. Jeremy Cole remarked: Basically, I always follow these basic criteria when I blog about work: Is it about anything sensitive in any way?Is it disrespectful to either your employer or any coworkers?Would you flinch in the slightest if your boss, his boss,

Argh: too much fun, too little time

2005-02-04T13:32:00.000-05:00

I've accumulated way too many neat ideas I want to try out (mostly Python-related). In no particular order: Thinking about what it would take to make a true, single-executable py2exe on Windows Exploring Karrigell and CherryPy, benchmarking them, and contrasting them with Rails Thinking about how to make PyPI work more like CPAN or Gems Checking out the update of wxPython on

Python Reality Check

2005-02-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's hard to see yourself from the outside. I'm looking over the blog (especially the PySpotting hoo-ha), and I'm surprised to see how much here is about Python. Truth be told, I'm not a Python-über-alles fanatic. In my day job, I write C++ for an embedded device. [Insert obligatory corporate disclaimer here]. I've successfully proven that it's possible to run a Python interpreter

Choose Python.

2005-01-19T17:54:00.000-05:00

A little doodle I came up with whilst waiting for my C++ debugger to sync up with my target device. I think I'm going to have it made into a T-shirt:

PyWebOff: a Desperately-Needed Event

2005-01-18T13:18:00.000-05:00

From the site: PyWebOff is a compare-and-contrast exercise to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of some of the major Python web application frameworks.Thank you! This is something that we Pythonistas really need. So far, the answer to "how does Python support web programming?" has been "well, there's Zope, Webkit, CherryPy, Quixote, Woven..." There hasn't been much "If you want X, then you

Apologies to PlanetPython

2005-01-07T13:22:00.000-05:00

Ack. Apologies to the PlanetPython folks, who caught a bunch of ugly garbage from my blogspot feed. Blogspot creates some pretty ugly XHTML when you syndicate full content.

Leaky Abstractions and UI Toolkits

2005-01-06T19:51:00.000-05:00

Late last night, I was digging around in the bowels of ATL for some work-related research and got distracted into doing some wxPython digging, after which I got distracted into doing some Wax digging. (Long night). I like the clean and idiomatic Wax design. But when you commit to Wax, you're committing to a lot. For example, on Windows, your dependency chain looks like this: YourApp -> Wax ->

Joel on College

2005-01-05T13:59:00.000-05:00

I have a love-hate relationship with Joel Spolsky. I disagree with him as often as not, but his most recent essay, Advice for Computer Science College Students, is better than most.As usual, the essay is a mixed bag, but on his last point (getting a good internship), I agree completely. After my third year, I interned with a small startup company. This was way before the Internet bubble, so

Web games and Tsunami Relief

2005-01-05T13:17:00.000-05:00

Web games seem to be the last bastion of the days where "one designer working in a garage" could create something great. Content and marketing budgets are miniscule, you don't need ten thousand players to break even, and the technological and licensing barriers to entry are low enough that one guy with a good idea and a lot of energy can create a great game. I've been playing the web game

Perforce does Python

2004-12-30T14:55:00.000-05:00

At work, we're switching source control systems; we've settled on Perforce. I used Perforce years ago at a now-dead dot-com, but it's been a while, so I started reading the online docs to refresh my memory before the rollout. I was pleasantly surprised to find this in the standard client's command-line options: -G: Causes all output (and batch input for form commands with (-i) to be formatted as

Effbot on Bill Mill on Decorators

2004-12-22T14:12:00.000-05:00

Followup: What was even more interesting than Bill Mill's decorator rant was a comment to Bill's post, by the inimitable Effbot: I'm beginning to realize that the people who are the most enthusiastic about [recent Python additions] do not think in the same Python as I do..... I'm not even sure they think in Python; I suspect they think in something else, and translate that to Python when coding

Bill Mill on decorators

2004-12-22T13:55:00.000-05:00

Bill Mill chimes in on decorators: Please leave the decorators to other people, and write your code without the sugar. Make the world just a little bit simpler.I don't go as far as he did, and I suspect it's because we're each seeing a different part of the decorator elephant. It sounds like his reaction is more like my initial reaction (lost to the maelstrom of a PyDS bug) to metaclasses: "

Two for the Price of One

2004-12-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

The two Python IDEs I've been watching, DrPython and SPE, both got Christmas upgrades. The new DrPython release looks like mostly bugfixes, but the SPE release adds a neat new class diagramming feature. My earlier characterisation still holds: I like the speed and stability, but dislike the unPythonic coding style and awful GUI layout of DrPython. I like the shiny features, but dislike the

Why Debian Sarge Is Late...

2004-12-20T16:28:00.000-05:00

Because an issue like this turns into several hundred messages including this, this, and this, and culminates in a message like this.

From Linux to FreeBSD

2004-12-17T14:32:00.000-05:00

Goodbye, Linux. Hello, FreeBSD.About five years ago, when I was building out my home mailserver, I considered a couple of OS platforms. Windows 2000 was right out for resource reasons (the machine was a 90 MHz Pentium). I looked at the Debian, RedHat, and Mandrake distributions of Linux, as well as FreeBSD. Installing FreeBSD yielded a thoroughly broken system--probably my own mistake, but given

Going Back to Flint Axes

2004-12-07T11:12:00.000-05:00

I had a little project to do last night: a small GUI application, only needed to run on Windows, with just a few bells and whistles--nothing too complicated. Just out of curiosity, I decided to go to the Wayback Machine and code it in straight, honest-to-Petzold Win32 and C. Not C++, not Microsoft's C-in-C++'s-clothing MFC, but real C, with slash-star comments and all. Now, just for

Back in the Day

2004-12-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, but I've always loved reading old computer magazines and advertisements (old being ~10 years before whatever year it happens to be). One of my "one of these days" projects is to create a website dedicated to the unbridled optimism, fallen prophecies, and educated harrumphing of the "golden age" of personal computing (whenever I figure out when that is, was, or will be). Great

"Aftermarket Pipes"

2004-12-01T13:03:00.000-05:00

After the blog was up on pycs.net for about three months, Googling for "aftermarket pipes" came up with my blog rather than the more-appropriate bike shops or manufacturer sites. Enough people have asked me, "Why 'aftermarket pipes'?" that I have to have some kind of answer. Last year, when I was setting up the first incarnation of this blog (from my cubicle where I worked at the time), I got

Another beginning for the Pipes

2004-12-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

After two unexplainable data losses, a handful of strange errors, and a week of site downtime, I'm moving Aftermarket Pipes to blogspot. I like the PyCS and PyDS folks, and the system they're creating, but I'll take stability for right now. Now, if I can figure out a nice way to import the old blog entries, I'll be happy.

Steam-driven gaming

2004-11-11T18:28:00.000-05:00

[It's a shame Blogger doesn't do categories. Pretend this entry is in a "Gaming" category, and that you're not seeing it if you're just interested in the Python side of the 'Pipes. In any event, this is reposted from a backup I had from before I move Apipes to blogspot.]I have a habit of coming up with an idea, writing it down, forgetting about it, and then reading that someone else has had the

Can you fly that thing? Not yet...

2004-08-26T17:50:00.000-04:00

[republished 1 Dec 2004 from pycs.net] Every once in a while I notice something that reminds me of a scene from a movie. Generally, if it's a movie that has made me think a bit or consider things in a new light (Fight Club, The Matrix, and Pulp Fiction are a few), it means there's something worth chewing on in the situation. I'm no Matrix fanboy, but I had an experience that put me in mind of

The Contractual Obligation Post

2004-08-16T13:38:00.000-04:00

It appears that, as it has "Python" in the tagline, this blog is legally required to comment on the current decorator controversy in the Python community. I think Hans Nowak has the best and most thorough explanation of what the new decorator does (at least in its current implementation), and exploration of how you can use it in interesting ways. Certainly, it's been the explanation that fits my