August 2005
Aug. 2, 2005
Review: The Impact of Inequality (via) Fascinating.
objc_msgSend. Crazy hardcore optimization story.
Jeff Barr on Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey for "Enterprise Application Integration".
Despite the odd name, Greasemonkey embodies a very cool and somewhat unique concept, something that I am starting to think of as low-budget, client-side application integration. In the late 90’s, “EAI” or Enterprise Application Integration, was all the rage. Companies that had the need to make disparate applications work together would spend tens of thousands of dollars on complex, fragile software to make it happen. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. When it didn’t, they would call in armies of even more expensive consultants.
Now, I’ll be the first to say that Greasemonkey in its present form isn’t quite ready to replace expensive, commercial EAI software. However, I do believe that it belongs in the enterprise developer’s tookit of possible solutions, and I also believe that Greasemonkey will gain features, power, and respect over the coming months and that now is the time to learn more about it.
Aug. 3, 2005
Adrian is leaving the Journal-World. This opens an excellent Python job opportunity in Kansas.
Multiple CSS backgrounds in Safari. The first comment includes a link to a demo.
Beautiful Code, Spring 2003: Syllabus (via) Ka-Ping Yee’s Python course. Learn from the best.
Exciting developments with Django
The amount of activity surrounding the Django web framework since its not-quite release a few weeks ago is amazing. Adrian, Jacob and Wilson have been working over-time, with 395 check-ins to source control since the 13th of July. They’ve added WSGI support, a development web server, unit-tests, a ton of documentation, SQLite support, database introspection and dozens of other feature tweaks and bug fixes. Check out the project Timeline for an idea of just how frenetic things have been.
[... 271 words]Aug. 4, 2005
decaffeinated: Multiplicity. Outstanding multiple background demo—Safari 1.3+ only.
MagicLine. Greasemonkey + microformats killer app. You just HAVE to check this out.
Mozilla Corp. in 12 simple items. Daniel Glazman clears up the confusion.
Aug. 12, 2005
Chapter 4. Common Patterns [Dive Into Greasemonkey]. Greasemonkey patterns.
Dallas PyCon 2006 (via) It’s over a weekend, February 23rd to 26th.
Aug. 15, 2005
How Django processes a request
I’ve decided to kick-start some architecture documentation for Django by describing how the core request handling mechanism in Django works. I’m talking about the part of Django that takes a request from a browser and turns it in to a response—I won’t be discussing the template system, object-relational mapper or automated admin interface, which are all separate components; in fact, you don’t need to use any of those to build a Django application.
[... 674 words]Aug. 16, 2005
A comparison of Django with Rails. Nails the differences pretty well.
Aug. 18, 2005
Django and Rails London meetup
Here’s a date for your diary: Sam Newman is arranging a meetup for Django and Rails enthusiasts (and anyone else with an interest) on Monday the 5th of September at 7pm in Smiths of Smithfield. If you want to attend, leave a comment on Sam’s entry to give an idea of numbers. I’m signed up—it should be a fun evening.
[Greasemonkey] Monkey Do. User script that automatically posts interesting things to del.icio.us.
Ruby, Python, “Power”. AN excellent comparison of various language features.