tommy's scratchpad - open source, technology, web

Python templating

2009-01-04T13:57:00+00:00

Awhile back, I started using Genshi as a templating solution for some Python application development. Easy to use, we were able to come up with a SensorML generator for description and discovery of monitoring stations.

Lately, I've been helping out a bit on the new MapServer website, driven by Sphinx. Digging deeper, I noticed Sphinx using Jinja2 for templating, so I tried this out a bit. Not bad either!

Templating is key to many applications, and I wonder how these differ. Perhaps the geo/python gurus out there have some further insight.

Revolution OS

2008-12-07T18:00:00+00:00

Check out this video if you're interested in learning more about the evolution of open source. Pretty neat!

Firefox 3 drops this Tuesday

2008-06-12T07:44:00+00:00

Good news. With all the new features and performance improvements, I'm guessing I'm not the only one looking forward to this release.

My Foxmarks

2008-02-13T23:51:00+00:00

Between a dual boot and a MacBook, I have started to have bookmark synchronization issues.

I came across Foxmarks, a neat bookmark synchronizer for Firefox. Essentially, your bookmarks are placed on a central server so you can fetch them from wherever. The only change that I made was removing some internal / sensitive bookmarks which I wouldn't necessarily want to be "out there", so I stored those locally.

Pretty easy!

Getting into Python

2007-06-18T16:43:00+00:00

Well, I've finally decided to give Python an honest try. A born and bred Perl hack, then dipping into PHP, I've seen much Python applause in the geospatial software community through many of Sean's posts. Though I know Sean thinks mapscript is a disaster, it was via mapscript that I started to look more into Python.

So here's what I typically start off with when doing development:

HTTP / URLs / Forms: for Perl, I use CGI; for PHP, I use the native, built in functions
XML Processing: for Perl, I use XML::Simple; for PHP, I use SimpleXMLElement
Database: for Perl, I use DBI; for PHP, I use the compiled in mysql support, for example

So far I've found urllib2 and ElementTree to be useful. Other than that, I'm finding the command line pretty awesome for one offs and testing.

If anyone's got any other suggestions, that would be great!!

UPDATE (20 June 2007): Manual trackback and great post / response from Sean

Tuning LAMP systems

2007-05-30T20:19:00+00:00

Check out these articles from IBM on tuning LAMP applications. Being a longtime LAMP guy (the "P" being long time Perl hack, but slowly moving towards PHP), I found this useful for tweaks and optimizing my applications.

Part 1

Part 2

Looking forward to Part 3, which covers MySQL.

Update (10 June 2007): here's Part 3.

Get Firefox 2.0!

2006-10-24T23:53:00+00:00

So Firefox 2.0 is here, and silently put out a day before launch, which caused some kerfuffle as a result.

For me, I like the microsummary stuff, the close tab button embedded on each tab, the RSS reader support, and JavaScript 1.7 support.

All in all, the browser is alot more "alive" -- so will you be going to your local Firefox Party?