Welcome to zerokspot.com, the personal website of Horst Gutmann.

Archive for 2010

  • Seeing a Python through your Windows?

    OK, the title might be a bit vague so let me first describe what this is all about: I've been working on Unix and Unix-like systems more or less exclusively for the last nearly 10 years. I switched from Windows to Linux right after the new millennium started and only started to look back a bit thanks to Windows 7. So now, for about three weeks, I can call a Windows-PC my own again (look what Starcraft2 can do to you). Since I'm still very much a Python guy (although I really like quite a few other languages) I naturally want to continue coding Python even on Windows.

    This works pretty well if you don't do one of two things: (1) Prefer Powershell over cmd.exe or (2) require some C-extension for Python (like keyring's Windows integration). Getting all this working will definitely take some time, so in this post I want to write about some of my first steps and impressions.

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    2010/08/29 at 20:38:45

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  • Packt Open Source Awards 2010 announced

    Nice! Seems like Packt Publishing once again launched their Open Source awards to support OSS projects out there. The awards are a bit CMS focused with two out of six categories being about content management solutions, but far less so than in previous years thanks to three new categories:

    • E-Commerce applications
    • JavaScript libraries
    • Graphics software

    So together with "Hall of Fame CMS", "Open Source CMS" and "Most Promising Open Source Project" there is quite a lot in the pot for the whole community with the winning project in each category receiving $2,500. For more information head over to the PacktPub.com.

    Now I just have to come up with a list of projects to nominate myself. There is just too much great stuff out there :D At least I still have some time. The nominations will close on September 17.

    2010/08/26 at 15:45:55

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  • EuroPython2010 videos online

    With every conference each attended faces at least once the problem that there are multiple interesting talks you'd like to attend at the same time. Since splitting yourself is still not an option (although, I'm pretty sure that someone is working really hard on solving that problem right now) I'm always extremely happy when I see some sort of video equipment in the session rooms since then I can probably watch all these missed talks later on.

    And now I can finally watch for instance the Guardian talk I missed at EuroPython2010 thanks to the work of Michael Shanks et al. on blip.tv :D

    2010/08/14 at 06:23:19

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  • EuroPython 2010

    Better late than never, I guess. It's now been two weeks since this year's EuroPython in Birmingham (UK) ended and I somehow never found to time to write at least a short summary. Well, at least now I will try to write a not so short summary instead :-)

    Compared to most other conferences I've attended in recent years this was by far the longest. I've so far never been at a conference with 4 days full of talks and while I couldn't even listen to one talk in each slot, I still managed to learn many, many new and exciting things (at least to me). But let's go through the program day by day... or at least only through the most memorable talks.

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    2010/08/08 at 19:35:00

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  • Django 1.2 E-Commerce

    Once again I received a review-copy of a book from Packt, for which I'm again really grateful :-) This time it was Django 1.2 E-Commerce by Jesse Legg. The book tries to introduce you in a tutorial style to how to write a simple e-commerce store using Django core components and some selected 3rd-party reusable apps.

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    2010/07/14 at 20:53:57

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  • Javadoc for JavaScript?

    For personal but also work-related projects I'm currently looking into different coding styles for JavaScript and especially into how to document the source files. As someone who knows Java I was kind of looking for something similar to javadoc. Wikipedia provides a great overview of documentation tools, alby not a complete one. For instance, I couldn't find YUI Doc or pdoc in there.

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    2010/07/11 at 21:13:57

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  • dotLess on a Mac

    I'm more the sass/compass kind of guy but after having heard so much about doless from Daniel, I thought, I should at least try to get it running on OSX. Infrastructure-wise it sadly doesn't really fit into my usual projects but it's always great to have a choice :D Luckily the two are more or less equal feature-wise. That's sad, scoped variables in (dot)less are really nice ;-)

    So let's get to it ...

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    2010/07/03 at 19:07:34

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  • Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server

    If you've read my post about the latest rewrite of this site, you know that the search engine working in the background here is Solr, an opensource search server originally developed by CNet. During that migration I kind of learnt the basics of working with it on its own (without some of the fancy wrappers that do the whole configuration for you by looking at your model layer) but the schema.xml still was kind of scary to me. So when Packt gave me with "Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server" by David Smiley and Eric Pugh - once again - the chance to review a book about something that I wanted to learn, I couldn't resist :-)

    Read more about "Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server" ...

    2010/06/20 at 19:01:41

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  • Eine Python-Usergroup für Graz

    Irgendwie ist es seltsam. Graz ist eine Studentenstadt und auch in technischer Hinsicht mit Einrichtungen wie Joanneum Research und der TU-Graz nicht von schlechten Eltern. Aber so richtig viele Entwickler-Usergroups habe ich noch nicht gesehen. Soweit ich gehört habe, gabs zwar einmal Bestrebungen, da auch eine Usergroup für Python ins Leben zu rufen, aber das ist scheinbar im Sand verlaufen. Zumindest konnte ich bis jetzt nur eine Gruppe in Wien finden.

    Auf der DjangoCon.eu traf ich Dorian Santner und gemeinsam mit Armin Ronacher meinten wir dann auch, wir könnten es zumindest einmal versuchen, eine Python-Usergroup in der steirischen Landeshauptstadt aufzubauen. Eine Mailinglist gibt es schon einmal und wir suchen noch nach Vorschlägen für einen Stammtisch (so als ersten Schritt).

    Eine Usergroup macht natürlich nur dann Sinn, wenn es auch User gibt. Falls du also Interesse hast, bitte melde dich bei der Mailinglist an und mach mit!

    2010/06/16 at 21:35:13

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  • EuroPython 2010 Schedule announced

    Primary link: www.europython.eu

    And finally there is a timetable available for this year's EuroPython conference in Birmingham this July. And it will be quite packed: Four days full of talks about tools like eventlet and twisted and literally a whole day for testing techniques alone :D But not only are the topics great, the list of speakers is highly impressive as well with Guido van Rossum, Mark Ramm, Raymond Hettinger and Andrew Godwin, just to name a few. Combined with an awesome venue and two sprint days this is going to be a truly great week :-)

    2010/06/03 at 17:34:11

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