tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58498151207465323432012-01-28T12:37:26.457-08:00Chicago web design and development blog includes news and updates about web design firms in Chicago, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), interaction design, site optimization and web usability in Chicagoland. Tips for readers, buying guide and information on making money online and Internet marketing.ricknoreply@blogger.comBlogger2471100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-21487841513804011272011-02-07T18:32:00.000-08:002011-02-07T18:36:36.793-08:00

How much does Matt Drudge / Drudge Report do in revenues per year? The estimate is $10-15 million. Can you believe that? For one page. For posting links to stories. LOL. You can't beat that for Making Money Online!Drudge is the #82 site on the internet for US traffic. He reaches about 13 million people each month according to Alexa and Quantcast.

ricknoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-6624502230757414252011-02-07T18:30:00.000-08:002011-02-07T18:32:06.739-08:00

Here's a juicy little tidbit. Astonishingly Facebook alone has more than 10% of the market for all online display ads! I hate that site!Armstrong has been trying to turn AOL into a go-to place for a wide variety of news since he was hired to revamp the company in April 2009 while it was still a part of Time Warner. The makeover is designed to give people a reason to visit AOL's websites more

ricknoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-86033879016505352592011-02-07T18:28:00.001-08:002011-02-07T18:30:20.916-08:00

Supposedly the 25 most valuable "blogs" in America. Some of these aren't blogs.But the list includes:cheezburgerdrudgehuffpoetchttp://www.wealthvest.com/blog/wade-dokken/the-twenty-five-most-valuable-blogs-in-america-%E2%80%93-2010-247-wall-st/But there are some ideas there if you want to Make Money Online!

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-16367362332684836672011-02-07T18:22:00.000-08:002011-02-07T18:26:53.069-08:00

Via chron:The Huffington Post ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites and draws 25 million U.S. visitors each month. It has built its popularity by compiling news from a wide selection of other media outlets, with links to articles and video on everything from politics to style to food. The site combines that type of aggregation with original work by its own small staff

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-72696176961413697902009-06-17T15:29:00.000-07:002009-06-17T15:29:02.450-07:00

Tiger Technologies: Remote MySQL Connections: "Unfortunately, remote access to MySQL is not very secure. When your remote computer first connects to your MySQL database, the password is encrypted before being transmitted over the Internet. But after that, all data is passed as unencrypted 'plain text'. If someone was able to view your connection data (such as a 'hacker' capturing data from an

ricknoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-61060004799981444282009-06-17T15:26:00.000-07:002009-06-17T15:26:44.908-07:00

basic class for using S3 with django david / django-storages / source — bitbucket.org: "Support for many storages (S3, MogileFS, etc) in Django."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-13849966379292387542009-06-16T23:53:00.000-07:002009-06-16T23:53:00.208-07:00

Since this blog is ostensibly the Chicago Web Design blog, I'll mention a Chicago Web Designer whose work I like:Patrick Algrim, the proprietor of P41 studios.

ricknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-1543391862637776782009-06-16T23:50:00.000-07:002009-06-16T23:50:00.178-07:00

Are they good affiliate programs? I don't know but they have them.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-39967624440150346672009-06-15T15:55:00.000-07:002009-06-15T15:55:45.066-07:00

lethain's lifeflow at master - GitHub: "A full featured and opinionated blogging solution using Django"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-55793080039943258472009-06-15T15:54:00.000-07:002009-06-15T15:54:31.337-07:00

Which is best for Django? Lighttpd or Nginx? Or maybe something else? - Server Fault: "mod_wsgi is recommended way to get Django application into production. Apache's mod_wsgi is much better than nginx. You can't find official package (in current Linux distributions) for nginx's mod_wsgi and You need to compile it by yourself. I like nginx but if You want to play safe, play with Apache mod_wsgi."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-77999765909801580312009-06-15T15:52:00.000-07:002009-06-15T15:52:31.582-07:00

how to nginx virtual servers fcgi for django? - Stack Overflow: "There have been two pretty good blog posts lately about setting up nginx, but both are using nginx to serve static (or cached) content and apache mod_wsgi to serve Django. I prefer this myself because mod_wsgi makes process management so much easier than fcgi (among other advantages)."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-54931584576470249132009-06-15T15:45:00.000-07:002009-06-15T15:45:57.225-07:00

HOWTO: Install WordPress on Nginx | ElasticDog.com: "Apache is a very well-establish web server that can handle just about any situation. Unfortunately, that flexibility comes at the cost of size and relatively high demands on server resources. Nginx (“engine x”) is a lightweight web server/reverse proxy that is very efficient and perfect for hosting WordPress. Read on to see how that can be done

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-67530501165355125492009-06-15T15:37:00.000-07:002009-06-15T15:37:58.615-07:00

Using nginx to serve cached files from WP Super CacheHow To Speed Up Wordpress With Nginx And WP Super Cache | tech.nocr.at: "What we have essentially done is taken the load of serving static files like images, css, and js files off of apache and passed it on to Ngnix which runs a lot faster and leaner than apache for serving static content. All requests for any dynamic content like php still

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-35391907144751345942009-06-13T23:42:00.000-07:002009-06-13T23:42:00.316-07:00

Have you ever said that before? I'm sure you have. ANyway check this out:Speed up slow Rails development in vista

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-43461250763624038722009-06-13T20:44:00.001-07:002009-06-13T20:44:56.064-07:00

find out when your site goes downFree website monitoring service: Montastic: "Website monitoring made cool:Get an email when your site goes downGet an email when it goes back upRead statuses via RSS or Mac & PC widgetsFun, easy and elegant user interfaceUp to 100 websites monitoredNEW! Support for https and port number"

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-75963406972353714282009-06-13T20:44:00.000-07:002009-06-13T20:44:32.798-07:00

free website uptime monitoring Free Websites Performance, Availability, Traffic Monitoring: "Monitor 24x7 websites, network devices and moreInstantly reports your site outage and response time.Ensure ultimate web experience"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-5729370593012581122009-06-13T20:37:00.000-07:002009-06-13T20:37:12.125-07:00

wp_cron � simonwheatley.co.uk: "This is where the pseudo come in, with the WordPress pseudo-Cron we’re relying on a constant flow of visitors to trigger WordPress into checking for scheduled tasks. The upshot of this is that we cannot rely on WordPress to precisely schedule events, but the system is good enough for most things. (We can always increase the frequency of visitors artificially by

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-441049304935957202009-06-12T23:40:00.000-07:002009-06-12T23:40:01.407-07:00

Here are some Django blog apps for those who are looking for blogging software written in Django / Python:ByteflowMightyLemonDjango basic apps

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-21050129367910557222009-06-12T17:07:00.000-07:002009-06-12T17:07:56.668-07:00

Steven Harms' Blog � The Cherokee Webserver: "The project I am working on has a web browser on kiosk machines, and runs Django on the backend. I was in need of a fast, secure web server. I have always used Apache in the past, and have used Nginx, so I figured I should investigate Cherokee.Enter the Cherokee Web ServerCherokee has performed great as an embedded webserver which serves my django

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-34927398727849988662009-06-12T17:02:00.000-07:002009-06-12T17:02:53.902-07:00

Optimize your Apache VPS for WordPress | Jestro: "If you made the decision to move your WordPress install from shared hosting to a shiny new VPS you should consider optimizing Apache by making some tweaks to your httpd.conf file. Apache is a fast, reliable, and flexible server but is heavy on resources by default. If you are running a small VPS, and using it just for WordPress, you can make some

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-18990370695204453322009-06-12T16:54:00.000-07:002009-06-12T16:54:53.939-07:00

Hosting Git Repositories on Dreamhost | tail -f development.log: "First, if you take a look at the DH wiki entry for Git, you will see the very first method described is to run Git on your DH account using WebDAV. If you’re like me, thinking about doing Git over WebDAV probably just left you scratching your head. I think the reason why this is advocated, is because of the way DH setups SSH

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-27281700412721483572009-06-12T16:17:00.000-07:002009-06-12T16:17:16.085-07:00

YouTube - How to Set Up Linux Distribution for Newbies - VPS BIBLE Pt 2: ""

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-28778552269323296592009-06-12T16:12:00.000-07:002009-06-12T16:12:15.290-07:00

A Django deployment guide for Ubuntu | Ventanazul: "This is an easy to follow and very focused guide for developers who know how to handle their servers so I won't consider security issues, memcached, Django installation, databases or basic GNU/Linux, Apache and DNS settings. Of course all of those subjects are important and you should take care of them."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-48299227268198880742009-06-11T23:38:00.000-07:002009-06-11T23:38:00.200-07:00

Byteflow is a django blog application.Byteflow is a blog engine, written on Python, using Django. Why should you choose it over competitors? It has very clean codebase and developers, which are struggling to keep it so (that ease learning code and adding features for python programmers and those who sympathize ;). It has a lot of cool features, which you can't get in other blog engines or will

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-7477305730971211082009-06-10T23:36:00.000-07:002009-06-10T23:36:01.166-07:00

MightyLemon is a django blog app.Check out the readme.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-29774101996600046782009-06-10T16:48:00.000-07:002009-06-10T16:48:19.506-07:00

pysmell - Google Code: "PySmell is a python IDE completion helper.It tries to statically analyze Python source code, without executing it, and generates information about a project's structure that IDE tools can use.There is currently support for Vim, Emacs and TextMate. Feel free to contribute your own favourite editor bindings, or to improve the existing ones."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-29233492499033971232009-06-10T00:08:00.000-07:002009-06-10T00:08:12.713-07:00

Apparently a 3x gain in speed is possibleCherokee Web Server: "Django & Cherokee 0.6 x3 speed"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-82333320197481610752009-06-09T23:55:00.000-07:002009-06-09T23:55:25.911-07:00

mod_wsgi is faster than mod_python, but not by that much.Django an Unscientific Benchmark between mod_python / mod_wsgi / aspen and runserver: "Tests are executed with Apache's ab2 tool running on the same machine as the server was. There is no explicit caching done in Django. CachingMiddleware was not enabled and otherwise default settings where used.Test System, workstation:core2duo 6700 2 x

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-30010397231356210542009-06-09T23:34:00.000-07:002009-06-09T23:34:00.691-07:00

In the market for some netbooks? Here's a review of the MSI Specs X-Slim X320, X340 and Wind U123They're very thin laptops!

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-14391328356070991382009-06-09T18:58:00.000-07:002009-06-09T18:58:00.558-07:00

use the |safe filterDjango | The Django template language | Django Documentation: "To disable auto-escaping for an individual variable, use the safe filter:This will be escaped: {{ data }}This will not be escaped: {{ data|safe }}Think of safe as shorthand for safe from further escaping or can be safely interpreted as HTML. In this example, if data contains '', the output will be:"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-10287049920566635152009-06-09T18:33:00.000-07:002009-06-09T18:33:34.638-07:00

Exclude fields from the Django admin form.Django | The Django admin site | Django Documentation: "ModelAdmin.excludeThis attribute, if given, should be a list of field names to exclude from the form.For example, let's consider the following model:"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-71593602507429062632009-06-09T18:21:00.000-07:002009-06-09T18:21:37.776-07:00

Minor customization of Django admin form.brad's blog: A Custom form for Django's Automatic Admin.: "The problem here is that when I create or edit a Book object using the Automatic Admin, the author field is represented by a select element, whose options contain ALL User objects... listed by username! Wouldn't it be nice if we could have that listed as 'firstname lastname' or even as 'lastname,

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-74374396426419452042009-06-09T18:19:00.000-07:002009-06-09T18:19:10.419-07:00

Good little tutorialJannis Leidel - A WYSIWYM editor widget for Django's admin interface: "Although it’s more or less the defacto standard, I’m not going to use TinyMCE this time, partly because it feels a bit like bloatware and partly because it’s not based on jQuery — the JavaScript framework of choice of the project where I also want to use it: django-page-cms. The editor I’m going to use is

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-15035419277782730812009-06-09T18:18:00.000-07:002009-06-09T18:18:11.496-07:00

A fair alternative to markitup, tinymce, etc.WYMeditor: "WYMeditor integration example"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-53172704594440161982009-06-09T17:25:00.000-07:002009-06-09T17:25:24.584-07:00

Generic domain extensions can be worth a fortune. $185,000 is not a high price to register and own something that can be worth millionsMost firms unaware of Web domain changes - survey| Technology| Reuters: "The price of $185,000 will initially limit applications to the largest corporations and organisations, said Tom Savigar, Strategy and Insight Director at The Future Laboratory.�"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-59118364103149101582009-06-09T16:45:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:45:46.994-07:00

Very nice, flash-based stock charts.amCharts: flash charts, stock charting software: "Stock Chart's main purpose is to display financial charts. However, it can also be used for visualizing any date-based data. Line, column, candlestick, OHLC, step line and area - all these types of charts can be displayed with this application. The features include a very comfortable scrollbar, data grouping

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-4592659221593909882009-06-09T16:21:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:21:13.858-07:00

Extensive thumbnail gallery of all you can do with matplotlib. Impressive!Thumbnail gallery — Matplotlib v0.98.6svn documentation

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-40427096816484529422009-06-09T16:19:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:19:27.028-07:00

candlebar chart in python with matplotlibpylab_examples example code: finance_demo.py — Matplotlib v0.98.6svn documentation

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-67299675266666725012009-06-09T16:14:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:14:09.896-07:00

ChartDirector license is $99. Looks pretty good...ChartDirector Chart Gallery - Finance Charts

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-10612724254093016212009-06-09T16:11:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:11:47.556-07:00

Matplotlib can make nice stock charts.Screenshots — Matplotlib v0.98.6svn documentation: "matplotlib.ticker"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-75729762840238970982009-06-09T16:05:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:05:33.580-07:00

GPL licensedDemo - SOLMETRA: "Below is a demonstration of SPAW Editor PHP Edition v.2 with�standard core features (except floating toolbar). Click here to see an advanced demonstration of SPAW Editor .NET Edition v.2.�You need Microsoft Internet Explorer v.5.5 or higher, Firefox 1.x or�higher (or other Gecko engine based browsers like Mozilla or Netscape), Opera 9 or higher or Safari 3 or higher�

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-77972282510776639252009-06-09T16:01:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:01:46.348-07:00

very nice flash maps, but not free or open sourceamMap: Interactive flash maps: "AmMap is a tool for creating interactive Flash maps. You can use this tool to show locations of your offices, routes of your journeys, create your distributor map, etc. Photos or illustrations can be used as layers and backgrounds of maps, so you can make different presentations, e-learning tools and more."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-58509645822113828072009-06-09T16:00:00.000-07:002009-06-09T16:00:39.532-07:00

This is version 2 of Open Flash Chart. Looks great.Open Flash Chart - Home: "Hello, this is the Open Flash Chart project.Note: 'Open Flash Chart 2' is LGPL.OK, Open Flash Chart 1.x was great and it works like a dream. But I made some little mistakes which over time grew and anyoyed me and made the source code weird. So I decided it was time to re-jigger the code and make it pretty again. The big

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-14008989910555543662009-06-09T15:50:00.000-07:002009-06-09T15:52:35.885-07:00

Last update on this project was 1/3/08, but the screenshots look good.SourceForge.net: iTrade - Trading and Charting System: "Trading system written in Python including Quotes Management, Historical and live data, Import/Export data, Charting, Candlestick, Technical analysis, automated alerts, portfolio management, risk management, currency exchange, and much much more ."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-28255605279406812662009-06-09T15:48:00.000-07:002009-06-09T15:48:48.068-07:00

Example of accessing Yahoo's stock prices with Python.Weekend Projects of a Geek: Online Stock Quotes - Using Python S60: "The Yahoo! finance service http://quote.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv is a very simple yet powerful service. The user can control the fields in the stock quote data through a format string. The return data contains stock data fields in CSV format. The fields and their order is based

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-39581585479540476762009-06-09T15:34:00.000-07:002009-06-09T15:34:14.131-07:00

Look like a good general purpose charting library for Python.matplotlib: python plotting — Matplotlib v0.98.6svn documentation: "matplotlib is a python 2D plotting library which produces publication quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and interactive environments across platforms. matplotlib can be used in python scripts, the python and ipython shell (ala matlab or mathematica), web

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-85436537226557938822009-06-09T15:32:00.000-07:002009-06-09T15:32:58.540-07:00

Looks like a drag and drop UI designer sort of like Microsoft Visual Studio, but used for wxWidgets, including wxPythonwxGlade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "wxGlade is a program for creating wxWidgets GUIs. It can generate layout code for C , Python and Perl.wxGlade is a GUI designer written in Python with the popular GUI toolkit wxPython which helps create wxWidgets/wxPython user

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-64875326092132521622009-06-08T23:24:00.000-07:002009-06-08T23:24:01.356-07:00

The most efficient way is to use a list comprehension like so:def method6(): return ''.join([`num` for num in xrange(loop_count)])See the whole rundown on the 6 possible ways to do it and their relative efficiency.I sort of like method 4...

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-75056008499768790072009-06-07T23:23:00.000-07:002009-06-07T23:23:00.102-07:00

Here's a good introduction and tutorial on python eggs.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-30132114218637188812009-06-07T18:46:00.000-07:002009-06-07T18:46:02.051-07:00

Need to give this a try sometime.matthiask's feincms at master - GitHub: "FeinCMS is an extremely stupid content management system. It knowsnothing about content -- just enough to create an admin interface foryour own page content types. It lets you reorder page content blocksusing a drag-drop interface, and you can add as many content blocksto a region (f.e. the sidebar, the main content region

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-2379886153568373892009-06-07T18:44:00.000-07:002009-06-07T18:44:21.540-07:00

Mercurial has no --amend option!Git vs. Mercurial: Please Relax � Important Shock: "In contrast to git’s philosophy of providing a flexible platform built out of individual components, Mercurial is monolithic and (relatively) inflexible. Developers who like to keep their system clean will probably appreciate the fact that hg installs one binary in contrast to the 144 that make up git, and

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-88389689200293988632009-06-07T18:32:00.000-07:002009-06-07T18:32:20.405-07:00

Github for Mercurial distributed version control system.Mercurial hosting — bitbucket.org: "Bitbucket.org is a premium platform for doing just that. See why over 10200 users already signed up, and be more productive, today."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-19725664963123502012009-06-07T17:54:00.000-07:002009-06-07T17:54:32.096-07:00

Django and Pinax.How to Write Reusable Apps for Pinax and Django | Code Spatter: "My example will be to create a list of books and allow them to be tied to any object using Django’s ContentType framework. The books could be recommended reading for the members of a tribe (pinax group), a class, or anything in your project and will include title, description, and tags (requires django-tagging). In

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-90437763179227270312009-06-07T17:39:00.000-07:002009-06-07T17:39:05.943-07:00

This page contains most of the documentation for django photologue.ImageModel - django-photologue - Google Code

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-49289538639529004962009-06-07T17:13:00.000-07:002009-06-07T17:13:13.371-07:00

Newer versions of django-photologue will be using this.jdriscoll / django-imagekit / wiki / Home — bitbucket.org: "Automates image processing for Django models. Resize, process and cache multiple versions of your image files. Access newly created files with a standard API. Supports alternate storage schemes such as Amazon S3."

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-19831513614770346022009-06-07T16:56:00.000-07:002009-06-07T16:56:14.413-07:00

If you get an error like this when using Django-Photologue, it's probably beucase you forgot to add photologue's urls to your urls.py"TemplateSyntaxError at /admin/photologue/photo/ Caught an exception while rendering: Reverse for 'pl-photo' with arguments '(u'starter-9',)' and keyword arguments '{}' not found.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-59776200108380265582009-06-07T15:57:00.000-07:002009-06-07T15:57:52.985-07:00

I've been wondering about this issue of using reusable apps and what to do when you need a new version. Forking is one way to deal with it:Reusable Django Apps and Forking | Django Web Development - Lincoln Loop: "Since then, I’ve started forking many of my apps for individual projects. While at first I thought I was losing all the benefits of reusable apps, I quickly realized they were still

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-47531426148658621902009-06-07T15:51:00.000-07:002009-06-07T15:51:48.357-07:00

I guess this is sort of a framework on top of a framework (Django)Pinax: "Pinax is an open-source platform built on the�Django Web Framework.By integrating numerous reusable Django apps to take care of the things that many sites have in common, it lets you focus on what makes your site different.Video of Talk on Pinax at PyCon 2009Video of Talk on Pinax at DjangoCon 2008While our initial

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-69914554559054165862009-06-07T15:49:00.000-07:002009-06-07T15:49:20.360-07:00

django-friends - Google Code: "django-friendsMany websites allow users to assert relationships between other users, to upload contacts and to invite their contacts to become users.The project aims to provide a Django app for this sort of functionality. This includes:relationships between users (possibly with different types of relationship)sending and acceptance/rejection of

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-77550495806145738572009-06-07T15:37:00.000-07:002009-06-07T15:37:06.672-07:00

Interesting tidbit here on how to keep versions of apps used in your Django project.Django, Pluggable Apps, and Code Re-Use - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog: "My thoughts on code reuse were to create a repository of apps that you can just plug in. For example, for stuff that I work on, I'll probably create a 'jeremymjones.apps' package and have something like jeremymjones/apps/gallery/work/ and

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-3785882369386704232009-06-06T23:19:00.000-07:002009-06-06T23:19:00.413-07:00

Here's an introduction to functional programming called Why Functional Programming Matters (pdf).Apparently, it can give you more concise code and you get as much done in half as much code. The basic idea is that there's no state so you don't have to worry about issues that come out of that.Here's a thread on Stack Overflow that answers the question about why would you would care about stateless

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-4825290762146747512009-06-06T21:59:00.000-07:002009-06-06T21:59:23.432-07:00

RantRave - Get Paid to Post: "Revenues are paid utilizing Google Adsense. If you don’t already have a Google AdSense account, you’ll need to sign up for one. (learn more more about Google Adsense accounts here). Four types of AdSense slots are available on each Rant or Rave post. These slots are shared equally between RantRave and you, alternating with each page view."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-3528115271501872462009-06-06T19:38:00.000-07:002009-06-06T19:38:06.977-07:00

Processing 1.0: "Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-41804470935578052192009-06-06T19:35:00.000-07:002009-06-06T19:35:16.181-07:00

newbie question about breadcrumbs - Django users | Google Groups: "The breadcrumbs for your own apps should not involve pulling anything from the admin. �Just put the top two breadcrumbs (/ and /mysite) in your site-wide base.html, then pull that into your app templates using {{ block.super }} and append the app-specific breadcrumbs. Carl"That sounds ike a good idea.This one looks way more

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-17380153922137355232009-06-06T19:16:00.000-07:002009-06-06T19:16:57.651-07:00

how to implement breadcrumbs in a django template? - Stack Overflow: "In most cases, a well-defined URL can be trivially broken into a nice trail of breadcrumbs. Indeed, that's one test for good URL design -- the URL can be interpreted as breadcrumbs and displayed meaningfully to the users.For a few view functions, where we present information that's part of a 'many-to-many' join, for example,

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-61408257967433361552009-06-06T19:07:00.000-07:002009-06-06T19:07:33.442-07:00

Processing 1.0: "Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-77958403096173804072009-06-05T23:17:00.000-07:002009-06-05T23:17:00.621-07:00

Windmill is a web testing tool designed to let you automate and debug your web application thoroughly and efficiently.Originating at the Open Source Applications Foundation Windmill was built to help QA keep up with the rapid release cycles of the Chandler Server Web UI (Cosmo) project. As the Cosmo client is heavy in JavaScript and AJAX functionality, Windmill makes the communication between the

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-3181202428343588132009-06-05T02:32:00.000-07:002009-06-05T02:32:32.899-07:00

Lard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "However, despite its reputation, lard has less saturated fat, more unsaturated fat, and less cholesterol than an equal amount of butter by weight.[2] Unlike many margarines and vegetable shortenings, unhydrogenated lard contains no trans fat."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-84726853569141943302009-06-04T23:11:00.000-07:002009-06-04T23:11:00.875-07:00

Wouldn't it be cool if you could just copy more than one thing to the clipboard? So for example if I need to copy two things on a website and paste it into two separate fields on another website, I would be able to copy both of those things and then paste each of those into their own fields on the other site.Unfortunately, there's no way to do it, barring software that does way more than that and

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-79909080950313806862009-06-03T23:56:00.000-07:002009-06-03T23:56:50.947-07:00

Mainly classical sheet music. Free open source, creative commons.The Mutopia Project: "The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain, and include works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and many others. A team of volunteers are involved in typesetting the music by computer using the LilyPond

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-29709204140776684242009-06-03T23:07:00.000-07:002009-06-03T23:07:00.911-07:00

Found an open-source (BSD) Django shopping cart application called Satchmo. Haven't tried it out yet but looks intriguing. I like the stores it's powering including this cool tote bag store.Here are instructions for installing Satchmo on WebFaction.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-26168941024666179982009-06-03T22:32:00.000-07:002009-06-03T22:32:04.707-07:00

Free web hosing on Yola, but they require a link back to their site apparently.Yola | Build a Free Website: "SynthaSite is now Yola.Over a million of you know us as SynthaSite. We now go by Yola. It's short. It's easy to remember. It also includes all the great features you're used to."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-68164249501684161632009-06-03T19:34:00.000-07:002009-06-03T19:34:31.180-07:00

Never heard of this web hosting service before, but sounds interesting. Sort of like Amazon web services. Not sure how they differ on pricing. Will have to look into it later. Have heard some good things about Mosso.Cloud Solutions, Cloud Service, Clustered Servers @ Mosso: "Backed By RackspaceWhat we wanted to do was pretty complex, so luckily, we had the support of Rackspace, an industry leader

ricknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-42740915777463330022009-06-03T18:42:00.000-07:002009-06-03T18:42:49.299-07:00

Efficient String Concatenation in Python: "Building long strings in the Python progamming language can sometimes result in very slow running code. In this article I investigate the computational performance of various string concatenation methods.In Python the string object is immutable - each time a string is assigned to a variable a new object is created in memory to represent the new value.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-42747720144818322912009-06-03T14:47:00.000-07:002009-06-03T14:47:54.043-07:00

This may fix it or a simple reboot. Network icon vanished from system tray - Vista Forums: "The following steps worked for meDelete the 2 keys as per the screenshot[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify]"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-4484543379941562582009-06-03T13:11:00.000-07:002009-06-03T13:11:32.352-07:00

Wow, I had no idea you could make that much money on Facebook applications.FT.com / Companies / Media - Facebook brings in payment system: "Users are increasingly spending real money buying virtual goods and credits on the applications that run on Facebook’s platform. Zynga, the largest applications developer on Facebook, with 42m users of its games, is reported to be nearing annual sales of

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-69339606174421071962009-06-03T04:23:00.000-07:002009-06-03T04:23:42.979-07:00

To toggle between the last edited buffer in Vim, the keyboard shortcut is control-shift-6Alt-b-p and ALT-b-n don't work for toggling.

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-6648528219488394212009-06-03T04:08:00.000-07:002009-06-03T04:08:23.668-07:00

15 Must-Have Bookmarklets For Web Designers And Developers: "Bookmarklets are a great way of saving time when used regularly. With just a click, they can provide so much information / help.Here is a list of 15 very handy web designer / developer bookmarklets which includes:"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-82727535363652404822009-06-03T04:04:00.000-07:002009-06-03T04:04:36.643-07:00

Good basic photo editor for those who don't have Photoshop. Surprisingly loads much faster than Photoshop as well...

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-11001277069418783392009-06-03T03:53:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:53:55.787-07:00

"ImpishIdea via kwout"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-2448808021843500842009-06-03T03:45:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:45:50.081-07:00

Awesome way to clip out parts of a website without having to use snagit or an image editor. Just wish it had a way to upload to Flickr or other sites.kwout | A brilliant way to quote: "'kwout' is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map.To use this service, all you need is to add our bookmarklet to your favorite browser."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-60490133985857718502009-06-03T03:33:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:33:23.028-07:00

In order to send screen captures directly from snagit to Flickr, you need to install the Snagit Flickr profiles.Snagit Profile for Flickr: "How the Snagit to Flickr Profiles WorkThe Snagit to Flickr profiles are contained in a single, free download for current Snagit users.Once the profiles are installed, choose a Snagit to Flickr profile to take a capture, and then click the Done button in the

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-91032942679865465172009-06-03T03:30:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:30:42.586-07:00

"gtkShots is a python/GTK application to capture screenshots continuosly.gtkShots is a python/GTK application to capture screenshots continuosly. It is a hand tool to automatically save the screenshots in a (un)specified period of time, with the possibility to schedule it and to choose options for each screenshot to be saved, such as the size, the parent folder and the time interval between

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-79597639573644179552009-06-03T03:25:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:25:56.194-07:00

Lifehacker - Download of the Day: Flickr and WebImager - Downloads: "Free program Flickr and Webimager takes screen captures and uploads them directly to your Flickr account.Capture a section of your screen, rotate and resize and insert a cursor on the image with Flickr and WebImager. Once you're done editing, click on the upload arrow and the image is off into your Flickr account. Flickr and

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-86269313038014939142009-06-03T03:24:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:24:17.455-07:00

Quick way to take screen captures or screenshots and upload them to Flickr apparently...flickr and WEBIMAGER

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-77840114322813968212009-06-03T03:16:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:16:08.447-07:00

This looks cool.FireShot :: Firefox Add-ons: "FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part).Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers,

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-73215913119450815962009-06-03T03:09:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:09:37.275-07:00

Take a screenshot via a python script. [Linux] - Stack Overflow: import ImageGrabimg = ImageGrab.grab()img.save('test.jpg','JPEG')

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-4522366425106093942009-06-03T03:05:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:05:19.702-07:00

Cybso. � Blog Archive � Create screenshots of a web page using Python and QtWebKit: "From time to time you may want to create a screenshot of a web page from command line, for example if you wish to create thumbnails for your web-application. So you might search for such a program and find tools like webkit2png, which is for Mac OS X only, or khtml2png, which requires a lot of KDE stuff to be

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-76033314894276972062009-06-03T03:00:00.000-07:002009-06-03T03:00:07.890-07:00

Browsershots is done in Python and is an open source project apparently. Let's you grab screenshots of websites programmatically using Python.Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test - Browsershots: "Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-18167314026498583262009-06-02T23:01:00.000-07:002009-06-02T23:01:00.906-07:00

Since I was looking at Blender recently. I thought it would be interesting to see what the actual cost of making a feature-length computer animated movie would be.Using the calculator on this render farm's website, I found the cost for rendering a 90-minute movie is $22,000So computer-generated movies can be sort of expensive to produce. Even though you're not using cameras or dealing with film

ricknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-68276547894194522002009-06-02T20:10:00.000-07:002009-06-02T20:10:06.212-07:00

Whether opening a new tab or new window, you use window.open()A Quick Tutorial on JavaScript Bookmarklets: "If you wanted to create a bookmarklet to open a new window or tab, you’d do it like this:javascript:(function(){ window.open(’http://www.cnn.com/’); })();so the actual bookmarklet link that would appear in your HTML asCNN"

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-28562770347396850372009-06-02T19:58:00.000-07:002009-06-02T19:58:31.824-07:00

This is a good way to compare different programming languages, because it includes recipes for the same thing done in multiple languages.Don't know how up-to-date this project is though because they are saying the latest version of Python is 2.4. ActiveState is another place for recipes. That's the main source for the Python Cookbook.PLEAC-Python: "Following the Perl Cookbook (by Tom Christiansen

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-46357896612239366422009-06-02T16:44:00.000-07:002009-06-02T16:44:59.065-07:00

Just a basic way to do crop circles using Photoshop. Still on the hunt for a better tutorial that produces a more realistic alien crop circle made by UFOs.Photoshop Fake Crop Circles

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-1901114890206215492009-06-02T15:59:00.000-07:002009-06-02T15:59:57.701-07:00

I saw this on Stack Overflow. The render_to decorator seems handy.offline / django-annoying / wiki / Home — bitbucket.org: This is django application that try to eliminate annoying things in Django framework.Featuresrender_to decorator - reduce typing in django views.signals decorator - allow use signals as decorators.ajax_request decorator - returns JsonResponse with dict as content.autostrip

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-74932380333551593962009-06-02T15:57:00.000-07:002009-06-02T15:57:07.450-07:00

The example I saw of this used it for making model diagrams. Not sure if it's the best solution for financial charts and so on.Overview — PyGraphviz v0.99.1 documentation: "PyGraphviz is a Python interface to the Graphviz graph layout and visualization package. With PyGraphviz you can create, edit, read, write, and draw graphs using Python to access the Graphviz graph data structure and layout

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-5304503997038886782009-06-02T15:55:00.000-07:002009-06-02T15:55:15.167-07:00

These are extensions for Django, including command extensions (for commands issued in the shell), model field extensions, model extensions and admin extensions.Has significant number of people on the project.django-command-extensions - Google Code

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-19992690820394983382009-06-02T15:53:00.000-07:002009-06-02T15:53:24.902-07:00

Jinja2 is similar to the templating language used by Django but is said to be more flexible and powerful.Jinja2 Documentation: "This is the documentation for the Jinja2 general purpose templating language. Jinja2 is a library for Python 2.4 and onwards that is designed to be flexible, fast and secure.If you have any exposure to other text-based template languages, such as Smarty or Django, you

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-84112120894815078722009-06-02T15:51:00.000-07:002009-06-02T15:51:32.090-07:00

Some good tips for working in Django and Python.Favorite Django Tips & Features - Stack Overflow

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-23214300255509931462009-06-02T14:27:00.000-07:002009-06-02T14:27:14.280-07:00

Glad there's a solution for Firefox at least:Johan: Disabling mailto links in Firefox: "Set network.protocol-handler.external.mailto to false in about:config to disable mailto links. Works in Firefox 2 and 3."

ricknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5849815120746532343.post-34853569543925069872009-06-02T03:30:00.000-07:002009-06-02T03:30:55.140-07:00

This is a pretty good introduction to writing a bookmarklet.Juhu Kinners � How to Write a Bookmarklet: "What are Bookmarklets?All web browser support the special “javascript” URL protocol. If you type “javascript:” followed by JavaScript code into a browser’s location bar, the JavaScript will be evaluated in the context of the active web page (host page). Such strings are handled by the browsers

ricknoreply@blogger.com0