For Some Value of "Magic"

Another United Web Screw-Up

2009-06-27T07:29:00.003-04:00

So, wanting to answer a question about my flight times for EuroPython I clicked on an email link to "My Itineraries". Thanks, United, this couldn't be clearer.

Links for 2009-06-25 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-26T00:00:00-07:00

Priming the pump of efficiency
An interesting take on change and inertia

My God, I Have Fans

2009-06-23T22:56:00.004-04:00

I've been putting out links on delicious.com for a while now (when I started it was del.icio.us, which I personally still prefer as a domain name, though probably it was too esoteric for the non-geeks). It's a great system, and I have a program that searches my feed for the last seven items I tagged with "python" and makes those the front-page news item on holdenweb.com.

Most of my interactions with delicious go through the Firefox add-on, so I was a little surprised today to discover that my delicious network page shows that my feed has 44 fans. This means I now have a bunch of feeds to start looking at. I am going to have to stop sleeping ...

Looking at the network page I was also quite interested to see the top 10 tags list of the things I have tagged most frequently.


python           194 
web               96 
programming       80 
design            71 
development       58 
tools<            49 
politics          46 
webdesign         44 
marketing         40 
open<             40

That gives you a fair idea of my interests. Don't tell Guido about the marketing ...

What Would We Do ...

2009-06-19T18:09:00.001-04:00

... without the EFF?

Technology for Keeping People Honest?

2009-06-18T13:45:00.004-04:00

Simon Willison and his team at the Guardian in the UK have brought a dream a step nearer to becoming true for me with his new Investigate Your MP's Expenses site. After looking at government profligacy in the USA I decided the only thing to do was to open up public accounts to public scrutiny.

Simon's site (quite independently conceived) is a practical demonstration of the idea's feasibility on a large scale. All we need now is a sponsor with deep pockets and an interface to Mechanical Turk. The next election is going to be interesting.

Links for 2009-06-17 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-18T00:00:00-07:00

Embedding IronPython as a scripting language
Nice demonstration of scripting Windows applications in IronPython

Seth Godin Says A Mouthful

2009-06-17T23:49:00.003-04:00

You will probably be aware if you are a regular reader that while I'm not wild about marketing generally, I do see value in some things some marketers do and say. Seth Godin had a blog post recently called You Matter that describes quite well the kind of spirit I want to foster in the Python community.

As tummy.com said on their PyCon sticker this year: "Python will save the world! I don't know how, but it will." Isn't it up to us all to help Python do that?

Ubuntu 9.04 Wireless on Dell Precision M6300

2009-06-11T08:42:00.006-04:00

The best laid plans of mice and men have yet again gone agley. For a couple of years now I have been running Vista on my Precision workstation. In order to move to the Linux platform I bought a 320 GB 2.5" disk (amazing value at $90) and planned to install Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope on it then migrate the Vista disk to a VirtualBox virtual machine accessing a raw patition which contained a Ghost copy of the original Windows partition.

Alas I couldn't get the virtual to boot, and anyway the Vista load is starting to show signs of instability (hardly surprising in a Windows installation that's been poked and prodded as heavily as mine has), so I have bitten the bullet and am reinstalling Vista from scratch with a virtual filesystem. The partition that was going to host Vista is now an ext4 filsystem which can host whatever I want or need to put on it. I have installed VirtualBox, and Vista loaded up like a champ.

The only (current) fly in the ointment is that for the life of me I can't get wireless networking to work. Unfortunately Command Line Idiot appears to be right when he or she writes:

There are roughly 19 billion tutorials for how to do anything you would ever want to do with Ubuntu. Unfortunately, they are all written by a 12 year old who knows even less than you.

Some of the advice I have seen is so cryptic as to be incomprehensible, some refer to drivers I don't have and don't seem to be able to download, the majority of it its either apparently irrelevant or clearly wrong.

So, crazy fundamentalist or not, I'll be happy to hear from you if you can tell me how to get the wireless networking going.

Links for 2009-06-14 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-15T00:00:00-07:00

jQuery TOOLS - The missing UI library for the Web
Nice addition to the jQuery stable

Not My Day with Microsoft

2009-06-10T22:20:00.005-04:00

Well, I guess I won't be downloading SharePoint Designer just yet, then ... even the best-run and largest organizations have problems.

You know, I really wish the free software/open source world would come up with something as easy and effective as SharePoint. Maybe it will soon. SharePoint has become as popular as it is (and it's making Microsoft over $1 billion a year now) because, like Office, it's broad enough to meet the majority of most people's needs.

It's complex, but not really complicated, and I know it's not beyond the skills of the free software/open source community. Support, of course, would be something else. Now that would be a company I'd like to start ...

Links for 2009-06-09 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-10T00:00:00-07:00

Google Open Source Blog: Introducing Android Scripting Environment
Android apps for the rest of us? Now script Android apps in Python!
The CSS Box Model
Good box model explanation
An lsof Tutorial / Primer
Worth a read, especially if you are new to lsof
Gender Guesser
Interesting Javascript application: does it know what gender you are?

Links for 2009-06-08 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-09T00:00:00-07:00

DRY Poster
To remind us not to repeat ourselves :)
Top Ten Images from The Hubble Space Telescope
Awesome. No need to invent a God to create all this - just wonder at its splendor. It dwarfs all out piddling human aspirations.

Links for 2009-06-07 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-08T00:00:00-07:00

20 Excellent AJAX Effects You Should Know
Some interesting features for web sites here
20 More Excellent AJAX Effects You Should Know
More of the same - great stuff again, though not AJAX
Monty Python's Silly Walks Generator
Very Pythonesque

Links for 2009-06-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-07T00:00:00-07:00

gapingvoid posters coming
An Algorithm That Synthesizes the Soothing Gurgles of Virtual Water | Popular Science
Interesting computations here
Beautiful HTML
Some suggestions for HTML authors and tool writers
CrossSlide - A jQuery plugin to create pan and cross-fade animations
Nice jQuery plugin
Manufacturing Cost of Prescription Drugs
Makes you think. Even factoring in research costs, how is this right?
ISS Now
Interesting simulation fo the current view from the International Space Station

Google Wave: A Reason to Learn Java?

2009-06-05T23:02:00.002-04:00

I've just (finally!) finished viewing the developer preview video of Google's Wave project from the recent Google I/O gathering. If I had time I would be brushing up my Java right now. I understand that the Java world was somewhat upset that Google App Engine supported only Python as a programming language for so long. Well, Wave is based on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), a fascinating development platform that allows you to program in Java and deliver AJAX applications automatically translated (on the client side) into JavaScript. So now it's time for us Python guys to stand in line.

Wave is an amazing demonstration of where the web is going, and our lives are going to be richer for it. It's an entirely new approach to personal communication, and clearly demonstrates that open architectures are (pun intended) the wave of the future. Google are actively looking for people to get involved with the project already.

More later. For now I am too blown away to do much more than sit here thinking about the potential. I am also excited that this represents a bundle of opportunities for the open source world to demonstrate technical leadership. Unless other vendors have come up with some competing web-based technology I'm not aware of, and I'd be happy to learn about that too.

Information about the Wave platform (and, of course, the open source code) is on Google Code. The open Wave protocol details are on a separate site. Look for Wave's public arrival later in the year. Nice job, Google.

Something Smells

2009-06-03T07:20:00.004-04:00

If you were at PyCon you probably noticed that netbooks are becoming more popular. PyCon delegates being geeks, I don't remember seeing a single one that wasn't running some form of Linux, though Microsoft do support the little machines with Windows XP. This in itself is an admission that Vista, their current operating system, is a resource hog. As a Vista user all I am prepared to say is "get me out of here", though the day-to-day experience is made bearable [short pause while all applications lock up for 90 seconds and the disk hammers away madly at I know not what] by the (open source) Cygwin command shell and the (open source) VirtualBox virtual machine that lets me operate virtual Linux hosts.

I don't have a netbook yet (though I have already bought one for my wife), but it's only a matter of time. I currently lug 6.6 pounds of laptop around with me for the large 17" screen that I find useful for development and the 4GB of memory, which was a lot for a laptop a couple of years ago. I may extend the life of the machine by upsizing the drive to 500GB, but I definitely want my next portable machine to be lighter, and lighter means smaller (though nowadays not necessarily much less powerful). In other words, it's the coming trend.

The manufacturers (who are all in the far East, naturally) have detected this trend, and are pushing out new hardware faster than a sow can push piglets. All of this new hardware can run at least three different operating systems: Linux, Windows and Android. Users have been expressing their discontent with the higher price of Windows systems in the desktop market, but didn't have a lot of alternative. However, Microsoft realized that if they charged their usual premium for Windows XP on the netbooks people would just laugh and buy a system with one of the alternatives loaded.

So the bottom line is that Microsoft are almost giving XP away (and why wouldn't they, the money it's already made them) just as a damage-control measure. It's vital to Microsoft that Linux and Android aren't seen as viable alternatives to Windows, particularly since the beta program of Windows 7 is making it seem like an operating system whose principal selling-point is the ability to switch its features off.

Enter the Taiwanese Computex trade show that opened yesterday. Qualcomm were showing a new Asus netbook running the Android operating system, but on the Asus stand there was no sign at all of this startling new development. In fact Asustek's vice chairman John Tsang said, shortly after sharing the stage with Intel and Microsoft representatives, that the Android notebook was not a priority. Android still has a way to go to be totally user-friendly on a netbook, but if Qualcomm could show it, why couldn't Asus? Were they, perhaps, being polite to a major business partner?

The UK PCWorld chain also said it is stopping selling anything but Windows through itsbricks-and-mortar stores, though mail-order buyers still have the Linux option. When I see press releases like that I am always intrigued about whether they are induced purely by market forces or whether some backroom maneuvering isn't involved.

One thing's certain. No matter what they have done for Mac sales, Apple's long-running TV adverts have positioned Windows (synonymous in the public mind with "PC") as an unstable, unreliable, bug-ridden inconvenient platform. Now it's beginning to look as though the hardware industry is becoming more independent of Microsoft for the software necessary to run its devices, which I see as a good thing.

Microsoft stockholders may, of course, disagree. I wouldn't necessarily sell your Microsoft stock right now. Just don't buy too much more.

PyCon is Popular!

2009-05-31T15:04:00.004-04:00

Regular readers will know that this year's PyCon went extremely well. Not only was it excellent value for money, but we finally got our video recording act together, to the point where most sessions' video was available on blip.tv less than a week after the end of the conference.

I just learned that there have already been over 180,000 views of the material since it was uploaded roughly two months ago, which works out at around 3,000 per day. It just goes to show that there is a lot of demand for material about Python!

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T01:00:00.001-04:00

No matter what you think about the US's current wars (and I think they are an abomination) one can have only the utmost respect for those who choose to serve their country in the armed forces. This post is published as an expression of my admiration for the country's servicemen and women, with sympathy and deepest condolences to all families whose loved ones have been lost in action.

See Cartoons by Cartoon by J.D. Crowe - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

EuroPython Booked

2009-05-22T17:14:00.003-04:00

So the flights and hotel are booked and it's confirmed: I am going to EuroPython. This will only be my second attendance, and since it's in England this year close to where my one of my sisters lives I expect to feel reasonably at home. It won't be a long trip, but John Pinner tells me he'd like me to give a talk about the PSF and an after-dinner speech, and that "we may like you to join a panel or two, Open Space etc as well if that's OK".

Since the conference is paying my travel and accommodation it would seem ungracious to refuse. So it looks like I'll be busy. I am already looking forward to it!

One of the nice parts of visiting the Midlands will be a chance to sample some British beers. If you have any recommendations or suggestions please be sure to let me know!

Trying Again

2009-05-21T03:06:00.004-04:00

I believe my typesetting confusion of recent days was due not, as I had feared, to my advancing years and inability to solve technical problems, but rather to a discrepancy between Blogger's preview and the final display of the blog, plus the absence of div tags.

The output of the program in Blogging Python Output: A Challenge should have displayed as

<__main__.MyCls object at 0x024217F0>

Let's see if this survives being saved and published, as so few have before it.

Factory Functions

2009-05-21T01:03:00.005-04:00

In the last entry we discussed passing callables (using functions and classes) as arguments to functions, and calling them within the body of the function. This time we'll look at how functions can return more esoteric objects - again including functions and classes.

Beginners sometimes ask how a function can be made to return "more than one object". The strict answer is that it can't. The single object it returns can be a container, though, allowing several values to be extracted from the returned object. If you want a function to return three values the easiest way to arrange this is to have it return a three-element tuple, and then extract the individual values using an unpacking assignment. Here's a simple example.

def powers(a):
return a, a*a, a*a*a

a, square, cube = powers(10)
print(a, square, cube)

This prints 10 100 1000, showing that the three returned values have indeed been assigned to individual variables. Functions can return more complex objects than simple containers, though. A frequent example in the programming literature is a function that returns some newly-created function each time it is called. Typically the function returned will vary according to one or more of the arguments passed to the call that creates it.

def make_fun(power, debug=False):
def pow(x):
  result = x ** power
  if debug:
      print("power(%s, %s) returned" % (x, power), result)
  return result
return pow

squarer = make_fun(2)
cuber = make_fun(3, True)

print([f(9) for f in (squarer, cuber)])

A call to make_fun() results in a function being defined as make_fun's function body is being executed. This function (whose local name is pow) contains references to the arguments passed to make_fun, and is returned by the call to make_fun to be assigned and eventually called. The calls to the function are inside a list comprehension just because that's the easiest way to call a set of functions with the same argument(s).

The output from this is

power(9, 3) returned 729
[81, 729]

The debugging output from cuber is seen before the list comprehension because all calls have to return their values before the list comprehension is complete and ready for printing.

You may be familiar with the concept of a mixin class. Such classes are designed to take advantage of Python's multiple inheritance features to add functionality to any chosen classes, by creating a new class which is a subclass of both the mixin and the chosen class. You can see an exellent example of this in the socket library, where a ThreadingMixIn class is defined and can be used to extend the features of the basic UDPServer class like this:

class ThreadingUDPServer(ThreadingMixIn, UDPServer): pass

Note that the newly-declared ThreadingUDPServer class doesn't specify any behavior of its own, it merely inherits - first from the mixin and then from the base class, meaning that methods defined in the mixin take precedence over those defined in the base server class. One problem with this, however, is that it doesn't allow for any variation in the mixin classes - by the time you use them they are already created, and it's too late.

In the same way that we can parameterize functions, however, we can parameterize classes as well. Suppose we want to provide a trivial mixin to print the class's name in either upper- or lower-case. Not very inspiring, but the simplest example I could think of to get the point over, so please bear with me if you can think of simpler ways to do this. One possibility is this.

def mixin(cls, lcase=True):
 class Mixin:
     def nprint(self):
         if lcase:
             print(str(cls).lower())
         else:
             print(str(cls).upper())
 class Result(Mixin, cls):
     pass
 return Result

class FirstClass:
 pass

Cl1 = mixin(FirstClass, True)
cl1 = Cl1()
cl1.nprint()

mixin(FirstClass, False)().nprint()

Here the function first defines a mixin class, then creates a new class from the mixin and the base class provided as an argument. The interpreter cares not at all where the class definitions come from - classes are first-class objects just like functions and strings, and can just as easily be passed as function arguments as obtained any other way.

The output from the program, which I am sure you are waiting for with bated breath, is

<class '__main__.firstclass'>
<CLASS '__MAIN__.FIRSTCLASS'>

which shows that the program runs, and that the mixin class's behavior is conditioned by the function's second argument.

Now you might choose to argue that this isn't a very natural example, and I'd be inclined to agree with you. All I have to say besides that is, you try coming up with these examples and see how you like it. If anyone chooses to contribute a more natural example that can be expressed without too much extra code I'll be happy to write about it.

Blogging Python Output: A Challenge

2009-05-20T07:45:00.009-04:00

I spent half an hour yesterday in a battle with Bogger, trying to get it to render the output of this Python 3 program:

class MyCls:
   pass

obj = MyCls()
print(obj)

Unfortunately, despite batting to with HTML entities for less than and the like, and even changing all spaces to non-breaking spaces*, the best I seem to be able to do is:

<__main__.mycls>

It starts out looking OK, but once I preview it, or publish it, Blogger just throws away everything after the first space up to the closing angle. Who can tell me what I am doing wrong? Or is Blogger being unfair.

* don't even think about blogging the actual entity codes: they'll be mangled too.

[The program will run, producing slightly different output, under Python 2. I suspect Blogger will mangle that output too]

Everything's an Object

2009-05-20T01:22:00.015-04:00

"Everything's an object" is a truism for truly object-oriented languages, and Python is truly object-oriented. You may meet some purists who try to tell you that only [their favorite language] can really be called object-oriented, because Python doesn't have this feature or that feature, but don't take any notice of them. Religious zealots are everywhere, and their only interest is to convert you to their faith. In the Python world we don't tend to hold with religious zeal, and much prefer irreverent comedy sketches and making fun of things. Particularly religious zealots.

Newcomers to the language are sometimes surprised to find that you can pass all kinds of things as arguments to functions, and use them quite naturally inside the functions. The classic example is functions themselves. Let's write a program containing an innocuous little function that takes a function as its first argument and returns the result of calling the function on its second and third arguments.

def caller(f, a, b):
   return f(a, b)

def adder(x, y):
   return x+y

print(caller(adder, "abc", "def"))
print(caller(adder, 123, 456))

class MyCls:
   def __init__(self, first, second):
       self.first = first
       self.second = second
   def method(self):
       return self.first*self.second

obj = caller(MyCls, "=", 10)
print(obj, obj.method())

The adder function adds two arguments, and pass that as the first argument to caller a couple of times. If all has gone to plan the first two lines of output will look like this:

abcdef
579

The first argument to adder isn't constrained to be a function. It just has to be something that can be called.We can take advantage of the fact that a call to a class creates an instance of the class to have caller create the instance for us. The MyCls class has an __init__() method that takes two arguments (as well as the ubiquitous self that the zealots will try and persuade you isn't necessary).

The call to caller returns an instance of MyCls. When that instance's method() is called it uses the remembered arguments to print out a string of ten equals signs:

==========

The generality that this demonstrates can be difficult to get used to if you haven't come across anything like it before. Once you appreciate it, though, it gives you a flexibility that is hard to match in many other languages. That's one of the reasons why the Python world often talks about "callables": we don't care whether it's a function or a class, we only care that it can be called.

This is one aspect of polymorphism, one of the foundations of object-oriented programming.

[The code will run under Python 2, but the output shown here was produce by Python 3. The output from Python 2 will differ slightly].

Who's Up for a Sprint, Then?

2009-05-19T07:00:00.001-04:00

It's now a good long time since Need for Speed (three years, I find, rather to my surprise), and I have settled back into a more or less regular routine after my move back to the USA. So I am starting to wonder whether it might not be time for another speed-focused sprint, and this post represents a first attempt to run the idea up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

There have been many interesting developments on the VM front in the intervening years, and it seems like there's a distinct possibility that the current speed limits are going to be history in a year's time. That being the case, I would be prepared to put some effort into getting sponsorship and doing the administration and organization.

I was wondering about Amsterdam as a venue. Given the required lead times to recruit sponsors, get sprinters on board and ensure adequate accommodation I am thinking that the best time might betowards the end of the year - say October or November.

Who thinks this could be helpful? Who'd like to join in and sprint? Who would contribute funding to make it happen? All these questions are important, and only you can answer them!

Is It Installed or Not?

2009-05-19T06:00:00.001-04:00

[Notes for a while back, as can be seen by the version numbering]

Hmm. What could be the problem here?


sholden@bigboy ~
$ easy_install-2.5 SQLAlchemy
Searching for SQLAlchemy
Best match: sqlalchemy 0.4.2dev-r3811
Processing sqlalchemy-0.4.2dev_r3811-py2.5.egg
sqlalchemy 0.4.2dev-r3811 is already the active version in easy-install.pth

Using c:\python25\lib\site-packages\sqlalchemy-0.4.2dev_r3811-py2.5.egg
Processing dependencies for SQLAlchemy
Finished processing dependencies for SQLAlchemy

sholden@bigboy ~
$ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, May 18 2007, 16:56:43)
[GCC 3.4.4 (cygming special, gdc 0.12, using dmd 0.125)] on cygwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sqlalchemy    
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in 
ImportError: No module named sqlalchemy
>>>

Simple, once realized: the easy_install I was running was based on Python for Windows, so running it under Cygwin still reported the state of the Windows installation! That's one slight down-side to Cygwin picking up so mcuh from the Windows side of things: sometimes it gets holds of things it shouldn't.

Simple Object Interactions

2009-05-18T22:32:00.004-04:00

Here's a relatively simple piece of code that shows how easy it is to have Python objects interact. It's fairly standard stuff, so it probably won't be interesting to old hands, but if you haven't been using object-oriented programming very long then it might make a point or two.

Note that the code is in Python 3, though it will actually run on earlier versions, the printing will just be slightly different.

#
# Calling all reactive agents (with apologies to William Burroughs)
#
class Simulation:

def __init__(self, howmany):
    self.agents = []
    for i in range(howmany):
        self.agents.append(Agent(self, i))

def showImportant(self, agent):
    return "Agent: %d simulation: %d" % (agent.number, id(self))

def listAgents(self):
    for a in self.agents:
        a.showMe()

class Agent:

def __init__(self, sim, number):
    self.sim = sim
    self.number = number

def showMe(self):
    print("Agent", self.number, "reporting:")
    result = self.sim.showImportant(self)
    print(result)

s = Simulation(3)
s.listAgents()

So, we start out with a class whose __init__() method is called with one argument, the number of agents to create. It creates a list of that many agents as its agents attribute. Note that when the Agent is created the Simulation instance passes itself as an argument to the Agent creator, and the Agent.__init__() method saves the reference to the Simulation instance as the Agent's sim instance variable.

Colloquially we could say that each Agent "knows" which Simulation it's a part of. So an Agent is able to call the methods of the simulation that it's a part of. This makes it possible to devise agents that call various simulation methods, and to incorporate them in several different simulations which implement those methods differently.

When building large data structures with this kind of pattern, by the way, it's important to note that the references are circular (simulations refer to agents, and agents refer to simulations). The garbage collector in older versions of Python would have real difficulties with structures such as the ones created in the code above. In essence it would say to itself "Well, I can't delete the simulation until I have deleted all the agents it refers to." Then it would look at all the agents, and for each one it would say to itself "I can't delete this until I have deleted the simulation it refers to". An unintelligent garbage collection might get stuck in an infinite loop here, but Python's garbage collector has never been that stupid.

Nowadays, I am happy to say, in Python 2 or 3 the collector is able to recognize these cyclic references and, as long as there are no references to such a structure from the outside, will (eventually) reclaim the space.

Next time we'll consider how a simulation might use several types of agents, still providing common behavior for them all.

Python is So Versatile

2009-05-17T23:36:00.005-04:00

Even though I use Python all the time, and I am well-connected in the Python world, so much is happening that it's difficult to stay in touch with everything Python. Taking a look at the Python Package Index, in just the last 24 hours there have been over 40 submissions. Not all of them will be new releases, but it's instructive to take a look at what's come in to PyPI as an indication of the breadth of applications in which Python is used. Rather than list all 40 submissions available from the RSS feed, let's just take a look at some of the more interesting items.

You could use the new release of Dumbo to write programs in Hadoop, the language for specifying massively parallel map-reduce computations. With AMFast you could create rich Internet applications using Flash remoting. If you wanted to write a Unix daemon in Python you could use the python-daemon library that implements PEP 3143. You could write a network time client with ntplib.

If you wanted to add automated image processing to your Django web application you could do it with django-imagekit, or you could add AJAX with Dajax. To make it useful to a broader audience you could add django-bidi-utils to handle bi-directional text.

You might want to analyze some PDF files, in which case you could use pdfminer. If you are more interested in structural bioinformatics research then Biskit might be more your cup of tea. With all this complex software flying around you might need a program to handle a structured to-do list, and Task Coach would be ready and waiting for you.

There's also a slew of Zope and Plone components to add to these already very capable systems. Python is just so versatile!

Python Booth at OSCON

2009-05-16T17:10:00.003-04:00

For the first time this year Python will have a booth at OSCON, thanks to the good offices of Aahz. If you'd like to keep the Python banner flying over the exhibition hall I am sure he could do with some help.

What's the point? Well, certainly it will help to raise awareness of the language, which can only be a good thing. Having a booth puts a human face on Python and gives people a chance to get first-hand information rather than being filtered through other people's prejudices. OSCON is probably the largest open source conference in the world, so it's a good place to advertise the best open source language in the world.

The Python Software Foundation will be funding a large banner, and whatever else is required. I am sure Aahz will be happy to have suggestions and (most especially) offers of assistance. I've spent time in the past manning exhibition stands, and while it's interesting to meet a wide range of people it can be surprisingly tiring, so a one-man effort won't be enough. You can subscribe to the Python OSCON mailing list if you are interested in helping with either or both of the planning and execution.

Help Files Should Help, Right?

2009-05-14T10:49:00.008-04:00

Microsoft Documentation Sucks
God knows I've had my complaints about Microsoft documentation in the past. Often about manuals consisting mostly of descriptions of the following nature:

Threep Nardling
To nardle threeps, select the Threep tab and check the Nardling checkbox.

Frankly this kind of documentation is worse than useless - it elevates statement of the bleeding obvious to new heights, and frustrates all users with at least one eye and half a brain. If you don't know what a threep is, or when it might usefully be nardled, the implication is that you are in the wrong place (though quite where else you would be expected to go for this information escapes me).

Ubuntu/Gnome Documentation Sucks
That said, I hope I am setting myself up for a fall here. I've just installed a number of Ubuntu 8.04 virtuals (because I want to be compatible with a client environment, since you ask), and I have been having problems getting the network interfaces to behave. So I go to the help file for the GUI-based networking tool so kindly provided, and the main portion is filled with this sort of idiocy:

The really annoying piece is that I went to the help file to try and get an understanding of the roaming mode, only to discover that this steaming pile of placemarkers* masquerading as documentation contains zero mention of the one interface feature I needed to know about. They could at least have had a section saying "Check this box to put the interface into roaming mode".

I am really hoping that this documentation has improved a lot in the two versions of Ubuntu that have been released since 8.04. If not, then it's time somebody (either at the Gnome Foundation or at Canonical) started to give some serious attention to documentation. Help files that don't help are a major source of end-user frustration.

Somebody, please put me out of my misery and tell me that this nonsense is gone in more recent releases. Otherwise I might just have to go home and bang my head against the wall.

The Real Problem
All of this is merely subsidiary to the real issue, which is how to I get a VirtualBox Ubuntu guest running under a Windows Vista host to track changes in the Vista internet connectivity. It seems like every time I change locations I have to spend time tweaking settings on the virtuals, rebooting uselessly and generally poking things until I get them to work without any clear idea of the eventually successful strategy.

So, dear lazyweb, please help me. If there's a manual that explains this I'd be happy to make a donation to its author. The open source world should, in my less than humbe opinion, value good documentation as much as (or more than) good code. Once you get past the obvious, the docs help you more than the code.

* Admit it, you though I was going to write "dung" there, didn't you? I am trying to eschew the obvious.

SCO's Inevitable End Moves Closer

2009-05-10T17:16:00.003-04:00

A recent development in SCO's Chapter 11 bankruptcy takes the company still closer to its inevitable final demise. Groklaw reports that the US trustee has filed a motion to convert the bankruptcy proceedings from Chapter 11 (reorganization under protection from creditors) to Chapter 7 (liquidation of the business).

Darl McBride, somewhat predictably, is quoted as saying he was surprised by the decision, and that the company will fight it. This doesn't hide the fact that a banrupt strategy will lead to a bankrupts company. The current stock price of $0.15 capitalizes the company at just over $3 million. How are the mighty fallen.

Another Award for Python

2009-04-30T20:48:00.004-04:00

With the month of May comes notification from Linux Journal that Python has won their 2009 Readers' Choice Award for Favorite Programming Language, narrowly beating C++ and Java. The favorite scripting language was bash.

Last year there were some fairly obscure rules about what constituted a programming language and a scripting language. This year the readers themselves decided, and Python also did quite well in the second category.

“In an industry conceived, created and driven by peers, an accolade from the community is the highest compliment you can get,” said Linux Journal publisher Carlie Fairchild. She's right, and it's nice to know that Python's mindshare continues to increase.

God Bless, Mum

2009-04-28T18:55:00.006-04:00

You may remember that last year I entered (walked) the Race for Hope, a charity even in support of the attempt to find a cure for brain tumors. It was particularly appropriate as a family friend had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and we didn't at that time know what her prognosis was. Happily it looks as though she will survive, albeit with some attendant problems.

I am entering the walk again, but this year I will be making a personal contribution as I have another charity in mind for a more public appeal. Some readers may know that my mother died recently (on Saturday March 28, in fact, the middle day of PyCon). She'd been in failing health, so her death didn't come as a surprise, but if you'd been wondering why I wasn't my usual bubbly self at PyCon that was the reason why.

Rather than have people send flowers to the funeral the family decided we would look for a deserving charity, and ask people to make contributions to that instead. Mum was a midwife, with a healthy interest in the third world—she even took Urdu lessons at one point, and so the charity we chose was Safe Hands for Mothers. I hope that readers will support them through this page (for US donors the CAF link is easiest if you want to give money, just remember to click the "I don't live in the UK" button before entering your address).They are trying to help communities like those in sub-Saharan Africa, where mothers face a 1 in 16 chance of dying during pregnancy and childbirth.

Their web site doesn't have any way to record donations against a particular name, so I'd appreciate it if you would add a comment here should you decide to make a donation. We have so much in the way of material wealth in the United States and the rest of the Western world, and our gifts can make a huge difference to less fortunate individuals. Over 1,400 mothers die every day, many of them from avoidable complications. Please try and help them if you can. Thanks.