Tech Blog of Michal Karzynski

Check Google Analytics unique visitors from Python

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

You may want to check your Google Analytics data programmatically. This allows you to write some logic around your analytics data, such as sending e-mails in certain situations or just providing a status update for you to inspect without the hassle of logging into your account with a browser. You can do this easily using Google's data API and client libraries for Python. Here's how...

How to run multiple websites from one Django project

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

It is sometimes beneficial to run two or more web sites or subdomains of a site from a single Django code base. Each Django app in the project can then power a website on a different domain, but all the apps can still share a single database with a single administrative interface. This tutorial will show you to configure such a set up.

Browser usage statistics - past, present and future

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Every web developer knows this story... Microsoft arrived late to the Internet party, but they huffed and they puffed... and they bundled their browser in with their dominating OS... and they blew down the house which Netscape built. After this, they congratulated themselves for winning the Browser wars and proceeded to sit on their laurels for over half a decade. Now we are stuck with Internet Explorer, but there are some good news...

Install Linux inside Windows using VirtualBox

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I made a video tutorial on how to make a Linux virtual machine on Windows using Virtual Box. Take a look...

My informative shell prompt

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The shell prompt in your Terminal is very highly customizable and can display a wide variety of useful information. This is what my prompt looks like and how to create it. [09:10:11] user@host ~/Desktop +

mdadm GUI - A graphical interface to Linux software RAID via Webmin

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Anybody who cares about their data understands, that data "is not safe, unless it exists in at least two copies". This redundancy can be achieved by keeping various backups, but it's clear that the only backup scheme which works is the "set it and forget it" kind. If you are technical enough to build your own NAS, or if you run Linux on your desktop, you probably know about RAID, fake RAID, and software RAID. Using RAID makes your backup strategy completely transparent and your data safe and happy.

Tweaking the Dock in OS X

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The Dock in OS X has quite a few hidden features, which are not accessible through its simple System Preferences panel. Here are some of them.

MAC address spoofing on OS X

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Sometimes you need to connect to a network, which is designed to only allow connections from certain network interface cards, filtered by their MAC address. This filtering can be avoided by changing or spoofing your computer's MAC.

Show hidden files in the Finder

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

It's sometimes necessary to view and manipulate files hidden in your system. Unfortunately the Mac OS X file browser, the Finder, does not display these files by default and has no easy way to access this option. This simple hack allows you to choose whether hidden files are displayed or not.

Using APT from the command line

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) has been ported over to Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions. There are many useful graphical user interfaces to the system such as Synaptic, but sometimes it's faster or easier to use it from the command line. Here's how.