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I’m starting to learn to create .deb packages for Debian or Ubuntu. A quick breadcrumb trail for myself, to remind me of where I’ve found useful information:
Packaging session from Ubuntu Open Week (and part 2)
PackagingBasics from Ubuntu wiki
PbuilderHowto from Ubuntu wiki
If you’re using Subversion to connect to an HTTPS repository that’s signed by a non-standard root certificate — such as a CACert.org certificate, for example — here’s how to do it on Linux or OS X. (Windows users: sorry, you’re out of luck. I haven’t developed on Windows since 1999, and I don’t ever want […]
There’s a research project at University of Toronto that’s exploring different ideas for how people interact with computers. Here’s an interesting new way of looking at the “desktop” metaphor. There’s some rather clever ideas there.
SQLAlchemy is a very useful database-access library for Python. It’s got excellent documentation; but what it was missing until recently was a tutorial. I wrote a step-by-step SQLAlchemy tutorial to fill in the gap. Of course, the day after I wrote it, SQLAlchemy’s author posted the tutorial that he’d been working on, so I just […]
I often end up working on Windows machines that don’t have the right drivers installed for this or that piece of hardware. And since Windows makes it difficult to get at the actual PCI ID’s for its devices, all you have to go on is the “Unknown Device” entry in the Device Manager control panel. […]
A few useful programming links gleaned from various sources:
Python plugins
Continuous integration with buildbot
How to be a Programmer
The original Star Wars trilogy holds a special place in the heart of many geeks. It has grandiose space battles, a rip-roaring plot full of daring escapes and noble sacrifices, and memorable lines (C-3PO: “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!” Han: “Never tell me the odds.”) The […]
I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. Oracle — the 800-lb gorilla of database servers, the mighty Oracle — cannot distinguish between an empty string (””) and a NULL! From the current Oracle documentation, available on-line at their Web site (although you have to register and give them your E-mail […]
Logix is Python, with macros. Logix is Lisp, with Python syntax. Logix is a programming language that lets you create programming languages. Logix is whatever language you need it to be.
One of the most exciting things to come out of PyCon 2005 was the WSGI spec. WSGI is a standard that specifies a common interface for Python Web frameworks.
For a full understanding of the interface there’s no substitute for reading the spec. But in my experience, many people are too busy to read specs. So […]
Long file names in Windows are a hacked-in kludge, and sometimes it shows. Here’s an example of how, if you’re not careful, you can lose data:
C:TEMP>mkdir robintemp
C:TEMP>cd robintemp
C:TEMProbintemp>dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is C899-6ADC
Directory of C:TEMProbintemp
01/28/2004 02:26p <DIR> […]
From Apple’s Web site: “SQLite is an open source embedded database that is included in Tiger […]”