Paul Smith's Blog

Greasemonkey Script to Use Trunk Version of Django Docs

2011-03-02T17:07:00.000-05:00

On every page in Django's online docs, there's a little search field on the left so you can quickly look for the topic you're befuddled about. There's also a little drop-down that lets you pick which version of Django you're interested in. Recently, it was changed so that by default, the little drop-down is set to Django 1.2.

Right now, I'm much closer to trunk.

So. Here's a little GreaseMonkey script I wrote to ensure that I'm looking at the right docs even if I forget to switch the little drop-down thingy, and that I don't go insane trying to track down non-existant bugs.

 

// ==UserScript==

// @description Changes the default django search version

// @name django-docs-trunk

// @include http://docs.djangoproject.com/*

// @namespace http://www.blinkylights.org/gmscipts

// ==/UserScript==







sb = document.getElementById("id_sidebar_search_release");

sb.selectedIndex = 3;

Why Google Should Avoid Violating Net Neutrality (As Illustrated with Google Charts API)

2010-08-07T11:24:00.002-04:00

Paul Smith Disambiguation of the Week: Jul 26, 2010

2010-07-24T09:00:00.032-04:00

Bet you didn't know there's a Paul Smith who is not me who is also a movie star. I'll be honest: neither did I, really. But I'm sure you'll recognize Paul L. Smith from such films as Red Sonja, and others. I did my usual round of Paul Smith research, and it turns out that Paul L. Smith is actually really mean. Seriously mean.

Who wouldn't be? Sure, he seems happy enjoying a cocktail as Rabban in David Lynch's Dune, but everybody knows that Baron Harkonen likes Sting better. And check out this scene where Paul L. get swindled by Maverick. I don't want to jump on the Mel Gibson hate-train, but jeeze, what an a-hole.

OK, that stuff's bad, but what was it exactly that turned nice normal Paul L. Smith into sadistic prison guard Paul L. Smith from Midnight Express? Could it have been Wonder Woman? I bullshit you not: he's the main bad guy in an episode of Wonder Woman, right? But the poor guy does not get his ass kicked by Wonder Woman (which might have made the whole thing worth it - why else be the main bad guy on Wonder Woman?), instead he gets thwarted by nerds at a sci-fi convention while Lynda Carter golden-lasso's his henchmen. How exactly is that fair? (BTW: fast-forward to 42:30 or so to see Paul L.'s WTF-face)

No, I think the origin of Paul L.'s meanness is this: rejected, lonely, swindled, socially awkward, and not as good-looking as Sting, Paul L. (as Bluto in Robert Altman's Popeye) lowers his sights and makes a pass at Shelley Duvall's Olive Oyl... and still gets rejected in favor of a squinty guy with a speech impediment.

Harsh.

Check out this revealing moment from the same film. "I'm so mean I had a dream of beating myself up / Broke my nose, broke my hand, I wrestled myself to the ground / and then I choked myself to death / I broke the choke, then woke up / ARRGH!"

That guy is mean.

Paul who?

Paul Lawrence Smith

Paul is a...

Hollywood actor

How to tell us apart:

Paul L. is totally mean
Paul L. no longer goes by Paul L. He and his wife, Eve, moved to Israel and now call themselves Adam and Aviva Eden. Since her name was already Eve, I have to assume that "Aviva" is somehow even more biblical.
Paul L's action figure comes with a bazooka and a big knife, whereas my action figure comes with a coffee mug, nerd glasses and a laptop:
Paul L. had a speaking part in David Lynch's Dune with Kyle Maclachlan, while my part as an extra in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (with Kyle Maclachlan) was edited out. I guess it's clear which Paul Smith David Lynch likes better. bitch.
Did I mention that Paul L. is mean?

Great Talk on Programming Literacy

2010-07-11T09:06:00.000-04:00

In 2007, I had the great fortune of being present at PyCon for Robert Lefkowitz' keynote talk entitled "The Importance of Programming Literacy". Seriously, seriously, seriously: if you spend any part of your personal or professional life thinking about technology, education or politics, you owe it to yourself to check this out:

Find the audio from the talk here, and slides from the presentation can be found here.

Paul Smith Disambiguation of the Week: Jan 17, 2010

2010-01-17T19:05:00.002-05:00

OK, so near as I can tell from this article in the Palm Beach Post, Michael Beasley, a 21-year-old professional basketball player who plays for the Miami Heat, is an extraordinarily talented young man who has, like many before him, fallen victim to the temptations that come with such great success at such a young age.

But give Michael some credit: he has enrolled himself in Alcoholics Anonymous, gotten himself back on track, and has been on the wagon since last August.

With me so far? OK, well when you go into AA, you give them a not-real name (you know, like you're anonymous, get it?). Turns out Michael's AA name is (you guessed it) Paul Smith.

Gonna go ahead and take the high road here, say nothing snarky, and just wish "Paul" all the luck in the world in staying clean and sober. If I may be so bold as to speak for all us Paul Smiths, if our name can be of some help in your recovery (and as long as you're careful with it) you're more than welcome. (Although I guess it's not really all that anonymous, since it's in the Palm Beach Post, but anyway).

My only caveat is that if, God forbid, I should ever find myself in a position where I feel like I need to join Alcoholics Anonymous, I am totally giving my name as Michael Beasley.

Paul who?

Michael "Paul Smith" Beasley

Paul is a...

~~NBA basketball player~~ Anonymous person

How to tell us apart:

"Paul" is about seven feet taller than me
"Paul" makes about seven figures more than me
"Paul" scores about 16 pts per game, my NBA average is somewhat lower
My name is Paul Smith
"Paul" doesn't drink - I'm on my second right now

Paul Smith Disambiguation of the Week: Bonus Edition

2010-01-14T15:51:00.000-05:00

In today's Paul Smith news, it's being reported that the world's largest iPod has been presented as a gift to British fashion designer, Sir Paul Smith (who I promise will be disambiguated in a future episode of Paul Smith Disambiguation of the Week).

The iPod was designed by Jonathan Ive, the principal designer behind lots of Apple stuff (like iPod, iPhone and lots of Mac laptops). Fulfilling its promise as world's largest iPod, the pink iPod gifted to Sir Paul is undeniably really, really large.

It's unclear at this point if Sir Paul intends to design a ginormous iPod case for it.

Paul Smith Disambiguation of the Week: Jan 11, 2010

2010-01-10T14:50:00.024-05:00

This week's Paul Smith Who is not Me, is Paul Charles Smith, a singer/songwriter/musician formerly of the Imperials, and now enjoying a successful solo career. Paul C. mostly sings about Jesus, and you can hear a few song snippets on the "Official Paul Smith Website". Paul has a new album out, Soli Deo, which you can (I gosh-darn you not), get on iTunes for $9.90. For all you heathens, the latin phrase "Soli Deo Gloria" means, "Glory to God", and if you're sensing a theme, you'd be correct: Paul C. Smith is quite squarely Jesus-oriented - something that will become very clear when you read his bio (which doesn't have it's own URL - you'll have to poke around in the Official Paul Smith Flash Movie).

Paul who?

Paul Charles Smith

Paul is a...

Christian musician

How to tell us apart:

Paul C. has a much nicer singing voice
Paul C. has a ministry, I've been known to listen to Ministry
Paul C. has won multiple "Dove" awards (which is like the Grammys for gospel music), whereas I have yet to be nominated
One of us considers his Paul Smith Website, "The Official"
For Paul C., a Website that is one big Flash movie positioned on the page with a table is somehow OK - I would get fired
One of us seems not to realize that inline VBScript makes baby Jesus cry

Worst Three Softwares of the Decade

2010-01-06T17:42:00.003-05:00

3. Internet Explorer 6

2. Internet Explorer 6

1. Internet Explorer 6

Google App Engine: Mobile Phone Required

2009-12-30T13:22:00.006-05:00

For no particularly good reason that I can ascertain, you're required to verify that you have a mobile phone capable of receiving SMS messages before you can start creating applications with Google App Engine. Also, once you've provided your mobile phone number for this purpose once (say, for your personal Google account), you will not be able to use that phone number again for another Google account (say, your Google Apps account).

Lame. I wonder how many times this has happened:

Geek: (to self) WTF? SRSLY?

Geek: (to Non-geek) Hey, can I borrow your phone number?

Non-geek: My phone number? What's wrong with yours?

Geek: I want to give your number to Google so they'll turn up my Google App Engine access.

Non-geek: You want to give my phone number to Google for a whatsa-who?

Geek: It's no big deal, they'll just send you an access code via SMS...

Non-geek: Access code. NSS. Riiight. You want my Social Security number too?

Geek: No, no! It's just a...

Non-geek: Uh-huh. Um... fuck off, R2D2.

WTF is a "blinkylights"?

2009-12-30T12:18:00.001-05:00

People ask me all the time what a "blinkylights" is. I've owned the domain for years and at various times, I've used blinkylights.org for hosting my own mail, DNS, Web servers, for infrequent blogging, etc. It's been what I use for learning, experimentation, silly programming tricks and just fooling around.

The name comes from back when I was in networking. I worked at an ISP in Raleigh, NC as a Network Admin. Occasionally, I'd work 3rd shift - it was something I didn't really mind back then, because it gave me a chance to goof off (which turns out to be a great way to learn stuff). Anyway, among the techs, working the overnight shift was sometimes referred to as, "watching the blinky lights" because mostly what you did was just keep an eye on things in case something went wrong (like when something starts/stops blinking at you).

So there you go, blinkylights.org, 'cause that's what lights do, and because .com and .net were taken.

No. It's not for sale. :)

Innovation Happens

2009-12-19T17:52:00.001-05:00

Probably the most overlooked aspect of innovative thinking is that its something almost everyone has the capacity for. Innovation doesn't exclusively exist in the realm of executives, innovation gurus and the Harvard Business Review. Except for robots, everyone who works is looking to get it done a little faster, do the same job with a little less work and earn a little more from their efforts. Some of the most innovation-minded people I've worked with during my career were front-lines 9-5 people just trying to do their jobs.

That is not to say, of course, that these people insightfully assessed their employers' and customers' needs and created new innovations for the purpose of increasing corporate value. More often, I've had to stop to admire the creative innovation a co-worker has applied to avoiding work.

Here's the thing. It has always been my experience that positive, purposeful innovation only happens in the presence of smart, forward-thinking leadership, and that it's almost always the do-ers rather than the leaders that do the actual innovating.

So, for leaders the question isn't how to get workers to engage in innovative thinking - they're already doing that. I promise. (Take a look at the policies in place where you work... ask yourself how many of those policies are designed to stop people from engaging in innovative thinking.) The question, instead, should be how good leadership channels the innovative thinking that's already happening into positive outcomes.

A Generalist's Three Virtues

2009-12-01T20:53:00.002-05:00

1) A Generalist understands, and is comfortable with his limitations.

2) A Generalist understands that expertise is not about knowing everything, but rather, having the confidence and patience to figure it out.

3) When a Generalist feels his limitations, and is not confident he can work it out on his own, the Generalist knows there is ALWAYS some wacko Specialist out there who's spent way too much time on it, who can't wait to tell you all about it.

Adding Widgets to Blogger

2009-07-11T10:40:00.012-04:00

Adding Google Gadget widgets to Blogger is pretty straightforward... in your settings, all you have to do is pop in a widget slot, choose a widget to go there, place it in your page, and there you go.

The selection of widgets is pretty nice... lots of stuff there. Of course, I want to try out making my own widget, so I followed the Hello World example here. There are a couple of ways to host your own Google Gadget - for now, I'm using the Google Gadget Editor. I added the editor to my iGoogle page to make it easier to find.

The first real Gadget I created was one that shows my last three tweets on Twitter. Using the docs, GGE and some Twitter-supplied JavaScript for doing just this very thing, I was able to get this working in about 45 minutes.

After I was done, I realized there's already a Gadget for Twitter in the list you can choose from. Looks almost just like mine. :)

Theirs:

Mine:

Why Hasn't Twitter Already Failed? Openness FTW!

2009-07-11T09:54:00.002-04:00

Note from Paul: I wrote this back in March 09, before this summer's extraordinary events in Iran. It seems relevant to the discussion here.

A hundred and forty characters and a tiny headshot.

Why does this even exist? How on Earth has an idea so simple become such a pervasive thing, so widely used and discussed?

It's not like Twitter is one of those bright new things that turns up on TechCrunch, picks up a bunch of users and then disappears all in a few months. If you're still predicting (or hoping) that Twitter will soon disappear, consider that it has survived competitors like Jaiku and Pownce that were, in most people's opinions, better apps. Consider also that Twitter has survived extended periods of frequent outages, something that by all rights should have killed it off for good.

Oh, and it doesn't make any money.

Ask some of your real-life friends about Twitter, and it won't be hard to find someone who'll tell you about how they don't really care about what others are doing right now, and that what they themselves are doing right now isn't anybody's business.

It's strange to think that we even need a Twitter at all when the demographic that is most likely to use it is also the same demographic that's on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning, Orkut, etc., etc., all of which have some sort of, "what are you doing now" feature already built in. And in each of those other places there's a context in which these little messages can spawn actual conversations, while this isn't an obvious or robust thing with Twitter.

W, as the young folks say, TF?

I'm sure there are plenty of opinions out there about why Twitter has succeeded despite not actually being all that new or innovative. It's certainly not as time-consuming as blogging, and in my opinion, actually seems much less in-your-business than Facebook.

But I prefer to believe that Twitter, despite having lots of reasons to fail, is continuing to grow not because it's cool or innovative or even necessary (I would argue that it is none of those things); rather Twitter succeeds because of it's uncompromising, relentlessly aggressive openness.

Twitter succeeds on the same principal Google Maps used to overtake MapQuest - it has a thorough, well-documented Application Programming Interface - a set of hooks that allow programmers to connect to and use Twitter's functionality in their own programs.

"Oh, Paul," I hear you saying. "It's so cute how your little computer nerd brain works. Don't you know there's barely one in ten thousand Twitterers who has any idea what an Application Whatever Thingy is?" That's true. However, while there are relatively few people programming against Twitter's API, those that do are building the mobile apps that people use to Twitter from their phones, and desktop apps like twhirl and TweetDeck that are more usable than the Web page. The API also allows for interesting mashups and visualizations, like the one the NY Times did for the Super Bowl a few months back.

The actual numbers are a secret, but anecdotally, Twitter's API gets about ten times the amount of traffic that it's Web site does.

No one can deny that Twitter has claimed a huge amount of mind-share, and I'm convinced that this is due to it's openness. It succeeds for the same reason that other free, popular internet technologies have flourished - extensibility. Unfortunately, I think the things that have fueled Twitter's popularity and the channels they might pursue to make Twitter profitable are at odds. Twitter owes a lot of its success to the fact that it hit critical mass before someone figured out a way to monetize it out of existence. I'm glad I'm not the one who has to figure out how to monetize Twitter - I suspect that it can't be done without undoing the things that have made it work.

Web as Platform: Google to Produce an OS

2009-07-08T09:23:00.006-04:00

Well, that's weird.

For a while, I've been feeling a real shift in how we build and use the Web on the horizon. It's not hard for me to imagine a time in the not-so-distant future where everything from desktop apps to authentication to hosting - even text editing might happen in the cloud.

Back in May, I used up my training budget at work getting out to San Francisco for the Google IO Developer Conference, not because I'm already an expert in Google's suite of technologies (Google Apps, Google App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, etc.), but because I sensed that these are things that I should understand better - things I need to know if I'm going to adapt to a new, "Web-as-platform" paradigm.

In the past week or so, I spotted some folks who are interested in starting up a local user group for Google technologies, TriGTUG, and I eagerly offered to join in.

Over the long July 4th weekend, I decided I'd finally commit to getting more serious about learning my way around OpenSocial, writing widgets, learning Friend Connect, investigating development for Blogger vs. Wordpress, etc. All things I think are going to become building blocks in a new approach to getting stuff done.

Then this morning, I saw this:

Introducing the Google Chrome OS

Now I wish I'd started 12 months ago.

Some Blogger Surprises: Themes and Widgets and Custom Domain

2009-07-05T10:31:00.003-04:00

I'm a little bit surprised.

I've seen lots of blog sites that were obviously housed on Blogger. I was fairly convinced that it would be outside of my control to get rid of the fugly blue Blogger-bar thing, and I was pretty sure I'd be stuck with some limited variation on one of the built-in themes. Not so - in fact, I've done pretty much exactly what I would have done with Wordpress. I started with a default theme, learned some stuff from it, went out and downloaded a free theme that was in the ballpark, and customized it a bit.

The theme you're looking at now is called "The Journalist", and was developed by Lucian Marin for Wordpress, then adapted to Blogger by FernandoC, and only slightly modified by me. Of course, I'm a long way from being able to say there's enough flexibility here to do anything I want (um, where do I store images if I want them?), but better than I expected.

There's a small but resonable selection of widgets that you can add to the page. They're pretty run-of-the-mill, but they include a widget for Friend Connect (pretty cool), and widgets for adding arbitrary HTML, JavaScript and even your own Google Gadgets.

I'm also pleasantly surprised to learn that I can use my own domain name without needing some premium-level service.

Blogger?

2009-07-04T16:24:00.007-04:00

Kinda interested in whether Blogger amounts to a viable blogging platform for the kind of work I do.

I make Web sites - lots of them. These days, almost every time I build a site for someone, there's some kind of blog or "blog-like" feature lurking in my requirements list. Being a developer, I can certainly appreciate how interesting it can be to look for all the different ways you can approach the problem (hubris). On the other hand, repeating yourself is kinda lame (laziness).

I mean, Blogger seems like it would be awesome for just a personal journal kind of blog. What I'm looking for isn't whether it can do posts, comments, etc., but how well it stands up as a development platform... whether it can be a tool I can use to satisfy clients' more strategic, specific, detailed (and sometimes capricious) requirements.

There's been this sneaky suspicion growing in my mind that the most important new skill a Web developer like me ought to be pursuing just now is how to leverage Google-the-platform. But before I can rationalize using something like Blogger in a world where there's a Wordpress... well, I'm going to need to do some experimentation.

Here we go.

Web Turns 20: Nobody Notices

2009-03-16T07:30:00.001-04:00

This past Friday was the twentieth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee’s paper, “Information Management : a Proposal”, the genesis of what we now call the World Wide Web. It seems odd to me that the day passed with so little fanfare or recognition. It got me thinking about how differently this sort of technical innovation works now than it did 20 years ago.

I can’t help thinking how much better the world in 2009 is because of what people like Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris have done, and how none of these guys are household names.

Without their contributions, it’s not too difficult to imagine a dystopian what-if nightmare of hyperlinked Word docs connected with proprietary networking protocols: a place where more famous technologists may have taken us. Imagine how much farther along our mobile technologies would be today if they weren’t mired in a tangled jumblefuck of competing corporate interests.

These guys were pioneers, and it’s probably safe to say that the pioneer days of the internet are mostly behind us. In all likelihood, the Tim Berners-Lee’s and Vint Cerf’s of today are at SXSW this week trying to scare up some VC cash.

But while we technologists are a lot more comfortable looking ahead than looking back, it’s nice every once in a while to acknowledge the people who got us here.

Thank you, Tim.