Twitter Updates for 2008-08-31
- Checking out Orbius #
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“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Remember this quote whenever you are debugging software.
I haven’t posted any django information in a while because I haven’t had any time to mess with it. Today, I dove back in.
I wanted to get a fresh start with the project I’m working on so I thought I’d clear out the database. Why for the life of me I couldn’t find the proper incantation to make this happen I’ll never know.
After searching for about 10 minutes I found it. I’m posting it here so I can reference it the next time I have a brain lapse.
Are you ready? Here it is…
manage.py flush
This will reset the database to the state immediately after it was created.
To the superdelegates either supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton or who are undecided:
I have looked at the two candidates as equals for most of this race. They are of the same party and, as such, have policies that align with my political viewpoint. Recent comments by Sen. Clinton have changed my opinion.
Politics is a bloody game, and I realize that if you wish to play you might get bruised. In that spirit, I realize that much of Sen. Clinton’s behavior in recent weeks can be dismissed as typical campaigning. Her recent endorsement of Sen. McCain was a serious breach of protocol that crossed the line from politics to outright betrayal of her party’s beliefs.
Her comments remind me of what has been so wrong about our country over the last eight-plus years. It is time to say “no” to any politician who puts self-interest over the needs of the country or their party.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political rivals. When Adams lost the election to Jefferson, some wondered if he would leave office. This was the first time that a president had lost an election. His decision to leave or stay was an early test of our new republic. On the eve of Jefferson’s inauguration, Adams got in a carriage and rode away. In that single act he showed just what kind of man he was. He had faith in the system, and despite his differences with Jefferson, he did what was right.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is Sen. Clinton really putting the country’s needs above her own?
Please reconsider your endorsement of Sen. Clinton. Do not disenfranchise the majority of people who support Sen. Obama.
Joseph Cotellese New Britain Township
Last week Hillary Clinton release a fear mongering ad that I would typically associate with Karl Rove and some in the Republican party. Here it is:
Here is Bill Clinton’s response:
Check out these amazing 3D facial animations from Mova.
Mova is a motion capture company, whose Contour Reality Capture system uses an array of cameras to create 100,000 polygon facial models that are accurate to within a tenth of a millimeter. Unlike traditional motion capture technology, Mova doesn’t rely on reflective balls taped to the capture subject. The advantages to this are a higher resolution image and lower cost motion capture. The results are pretty wild.
When I was a kid, I remember every year checking a book on monster costumes out of the school library. I did this every Halloween. The pictures in the book looked awesome (at least to a twelve year old boy) but after mixing up multiple batches of some kind of goo made of jello and Quaker Oatmeal, my make up effects never looked liked the picture. I thought of this today when I came across this article talking about how to create creature makeup effects for under 50. I’ve bookmarked the page so that this year when my son and I are arm deep in jello and Quaker Oats, we can look back to it for inspiration.
“Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” -Walter Chrysler
Funny talk given by Gever Tulley on why letting your kids do some dangerous things is good for their development.
Sega’s recent announcement that it will be incorporating mind-reading technology from NeuroSky into some games prompts the question: Is the age of brain control upon us? Not quite – the tech needs work, but many companies plan to incorporate it into games and gadgets.
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Fans of the excellent Python based web application framework Django will be happy to find out that Christmas has come early this year. Apress has just published The Django Book. Every good framework needs excellent documentation in order to break through. It’s a sign that the software has come into it’s own. Django is no exception.
The Django Book was published by Apress in December 2007. It covers the most current version of Django (as of this writing). It is available in hard copy from your favorite book seller on you can read it free online at the Django Book website. I’ve used this book in BETA form for the last four months. The final version exceeds the beta in quality and depth.
[tags]python,framework,django,documentation[/tags]
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I just purchased a Mitsubishi DLP TV. I love the picture, but even more than the picture I love the warm blue glow of the power indicator that washes my room in high tech lighty goodness. Given that our power is not free, I got to wondering how much power my DLP screen consumes even when it isn’t on.
The good folks over at Good Magazine have created an excellent chart showing power consumption of vampire appliances. Appliances are considered vampires if they consume power even while off. According to a researcher at Cornell, vampire appliances costs US consumers $3 billion dollars a year or on average $200 per household.
[tags]environment,vampire,electronics[/tags]
Interested in cutting down on your driving time? It’s easy. Avoid left turns. At least that’s what UPS is doing.
according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons. So what can Brown do for you? We can’t speak to how good or bad they are in the parcel-delivery world, but they won’t be clogging up the left-hand lane while they do their business.
[tags]economics, environment,software development[/tags]
Django, the hot Python web application framework, provides an excellent administration user interface out of the box. Django originated in the newsroom and it’s reflected throughout the code. The idea behind including an admin interface is that reporters can work on easily submitting their content while the code jockeys work on the fun stuff - namely presenting that content to their readers.
The admin interface provides a great experience out of the box but is also extensible so you can add features not present in the original interface.
I was working on a Model that was meant to be manipulated inside the admin interface. I wanted to provide constraints on some Integers Fields in that that model in order to limit the range of possible entered values.
The first way I tried to solve this was to add a choices parameter for my IntegerFields. While this technique worked, it caused my admin interface to add a drop down box displaying my choices. This was not what I was looking for.
The final way I solved it came from a suggestion on the Django IRC channel. Use validators. It took some digging through the documentation but I figured out how to do what I want. I will explain by way of an example.
from django.core import validators
from django.db import models
range_validator = validators.NumberIsInRange(0,4)
class Test (models.Model):
valid_int = models.IntegerField(null=True, blank=True, validator_list=[range_validator])
The validation framework is defined in the validators module. Import that if you need to perform any validation on your data.
Django includes a number of built-in validators. I lucked out and they had a validator that suited my purposes. The first step creates a validator instance of NumberIsInRange with the appropriate range. This returns a callable that I use later.
Model fields take a parameter of type validator_list which is a “list of extra validators to apply to the field. Each should be a callable that takes the parameters field_data, all_data and raises django.core.validators.ValidationError for errors. (See the validator docs.)”
A quick test in the admin interface and the code works.
The Django documentation contains everything you need to get the job done. Some careful searching and a great support community has helped make Django one of the best web frameworks available.
[tags]django,framework,tutorial[/tags]
All of us have struggled to maintain self-control. Whether it is to have that last drink at a party, or a a cookie before dinner. An interesting article today in the New York times seems to suggest that self-control is a form of mental muscle that can improve with training.
Studies now show that self-control is a limited resource that may be strengthened by the foods we eat. Laughter and conjuring up powerful memories may also help boost a person’s self-control. And, some research suggests, we can improve self-control through practice, testing ourselves on small tasks in order to strengthen our willpower for bigger challenges.
In order to improve our self-control, the authors suggest working on smaller easily attainable goals. Obtaining small success will help improve your will-power making more difficult goals easier.
[tags]Lifehack, psychology, self-help, productivity[/tags]
I’ve used a few different project management programs, my current favorite is Basecamp. However, Basecamp wants to treat everything as a project and gets in your way if you want to track time spent on tasks that are not bound to a specific project. 
Today, for example, I need to track some time spent on a one-off task for a client. It’s pretty close-ended, I’ll do the work, send the hours spent to accounting and I’m done. Creating a Basecamp project for this would be overkill.
As a software nerd, the thought of just using a stop watch seems sacrilegious so I opted to search for an appropriate piece of software that would allow me to time unbounded tasks.
Enter SlimTimer. SlimTimer is a web application which allows you to quickly create time bounded tasks. Sign-up is quick and (as near as I can tell) free.
Once you create an account, you can begin creating tasks in a tiny (think Slim) pop-up window. When tasks are activated, a timer starts. Close the window, the timer stops. So far this seems to do exactly what I need.
If that was all the application could do then all I did was find a web 2.0 stop watch. The really cool thing is the reporting. SlimTimer allows you to generate invoices, timesheets or more generic reports showing the time spent on a series of tasks.
You can then take these reports, and print them or export them to CSV, handy if you need to send this to someone else.
If you need a quick way to time tasks, give SlimTimer a test drive.
[tags]productivity,project management,web2.0[/tags]
A video from the Google Webmaster Tools Blog showing what you see in a search result and how to improve your sites appearence on results pages.
This talk covers everything you'll see in a search result, including page title, page description, and sitelinks, and explains those other elements that can appear, such as stock quotes, cached pages links, and more.
If you like the video format (and even if you don't), or have ideas for subjects you'd like covered in the future, let us know what you think in our Webmaster Help Group. And rest assured, we'll be working to improve the sound quality for our next batch of vids.
[tags]Google,SEO[/tags]
Written by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst
We’re fortunate to meet many of you at conferences, where we can chat about web search and Webmaster Tools. We receive a lot of good feedback at these events: insight into the questions you’re asking and issues you’re facing. However, as several of our Webmaster Help Group friends have pointed out, not everyone can afford the time or expense of a conference; and many of you live in regions where webmaster-related conferences are rare.
So, we’re bringing the conference to you.
We’ve posted notes in our Help Group from conferences we recently attended:
Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, has publicly framed the music industry’s failure to accommodate file-sharing as an ‘inadvertent’ war on consumers. I’m left wondering how you can file a series of lawsuits inadvertently. ‘We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding … By … moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.
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I have a hard time with colors. I don’t know if I’m actually color blind but I will admit that from time to time I’ve left the house with two different color socks. I know my inability to ascertain color can hamper my ability to create visually pleasing web sites but I don’t want to stick to black and white. However, finding color designs to steal (ahem, borrow) is extremely tedious.
However, for those who are also color scheme challenged, choosing a great eye pleasing color palette is made easier with the COLORlovers website. COLOURlovers is a community driven website which provides color palettes which you can use for your website. The content is nicely laid out, and if you have a palette theme in mind (tans, blues, etc) you can drill down into dozens of different pallettes.
The next time you are looking for a great color palette take a look at COLOURlovers.
RIAA Hits a Sour Note With Its File-Sharing Witch Hunt
If I were a big-shot L.A. music mogul, Jammie Thomas would not be my ideal poster child as the face of illegal file sharing.[tags]RIAA, Music, file sharing[/tags]Thomas, you’ll recall, was convicted last week in a Duluth, Minnesota, court for violating copyright law by making a couple of dozen songs available to the multitudes. For this she was ordered to pay the recording industry $222,000 in damages, and she could lose even more to court costs and appeals.
All because she was among the 26,000 people sued by those Brioni suits known collectively as the Recording Industry Association of America, and hers was the first case to actually reach trial. The RIAA, faced with plummeting CD sales and increasingly restive artists, wanted to “send a message” to all the lowlifes out there who download music for free and undercut their profit margins.
The message, apparently, is this: “We’re idiots."
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Django, the Python based web framework has a template system which allows you to separate business logic from presentation. It provides a method of substituting variables inside the template using the {% var %} syntax.
One of the things you will often need to do is provide links to various views inside your application. However, the worst possible way to do this is to hard code pages inside your template. Developers of the Django framework are proponents of the DRY philosophy. This is evident in the URL mapping mechanism.
When you need to link to other views in your application, open your urls.py file. Copy the full package.app.view.view_name to your view. Then, inside your template in an anchor tag insert the following.
Link location
Django will then substitute the view name with the proper link relative to where your application lives.
The obvious advantage to doing this is if you ever publish your Django application to a different location you don’t have to update your links.
Common feedback we hear from webmasters is that you want us to improve the freshness of the data in Webmaster Tools. Understood. :) We’ve increased the update frequency for your verified sites' data, such as crawl, index, and search query stats. Much of this data depends on the content of your site. If your content doesn’t change very often, or if you’re not getting new links to your site, you may not see updates to your data every time you sign in to Webmaster Tools.
Please continue to post your Suggestions & feature requests in the Webmaster Help Group. It’s one of our most important sources of feedback from the webmaster community. We seriously take it seriously.
The engineers and interaction designers at Microsoft must be seriously pissed at marketing today. Behold, the latest user interface design from Microsoft.
[tags]Microsoft,marketing,design,humor[/tags]
Wired is running an article discussing how the effects of the BlackBerrys, cellphones, thumb drives and Gmail are affecting our memory.
This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.
[tags]Productivity,memory[/tags]
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