brainwagon

The Python Cookbook has a new entry which I thought was especially clever, and perhaps the only really good use of eval that I’ve ever seen. It is a class which simulates a spreadsheet. It is clever because it uses a class which simulates a dictionary as an environment in which to evaluate expressions. Quite […]

Two things are occupying my mind this morning: the first: an internal reminder to pay my mortgage today, and the second is that Python 2.4 has been officially released. Notable changes in Python 2.4 include improvements to the importing of modules, function decorators, generator expressions, a number of new modules (including subprocess, decimal and cookielib) […]

The Python Daily URL! feed has had quite a few articles lately on the so-called “decorator” syntax. I must admit, I’m not really up on the controversy, but I was amazed that even after reading three or four posts, I still couldn’t figure out what the intended utility of the new feature was supposed to […]

Aether is a simple weblog/website authoring system written by Paul Harrison. He’s also got some other cool stuff that he’s written, including GIMP plugins for texture synthesis. He’s also got an electronic singing tortoise.

Mark Pilgrim has released a new version of his Universal Feed Parser. I have mixed feelings about the long term viability of this code, since it parses feeds which do not meet the specifications, which ultimately means that people never fix their broken feeds, but the specification itself is wooly enough that this is perhaps […]

I’m a bit of a classic cryptography nut, and I also have had a lot of fun writing bits of Python code. Python is awfully good at sucking up text files and performing statistics and the like, so I thought I would go ahead and describe some of the fun things I’ve been doing. I’ve […]

Python 2.3.4 is out. Just a bugfix release. FreeBSD 4.10 was also released earlier this week. This is the first “Errata Branch”, which will include security fixes and other significant and well tested fixes.

Ever wish you had a simple webserver on a machine? You can do it in a single line with Python. python -c “import SimpleHTTPServer ; SimpleHTTPServer.test()” This will start a webserver on port 8000 in the current directory, and allow you to serve content for any files in that directory.