So I decided to find out what it would be like to do some web programming in it. I learned a bit about asp.Net in the process and mono also.

So first thing I did was:

$ cd /usr/share/doc/boo/examples/asp.net
$ xsp2

and then from your browser you can run any of the “inline” samples

http://localhost:8080/InlineBooButtonClick.aspx
http://localhost:8080/InlineBooExpression.aspx
http://localhost:8080/InlineBooHelloAspNet.aspx

but if you try and run one of the code behind samples, you get something like this:

Description: Error parsing a resource required to service this request. Review your source file and modify it to fix this error.

Parser Error Message: Cannot find type Boo.Examples.Web.YourName

Source Error:

Line 1: <%@Page Inherits=”Boo.Examples.Web.YourName” %>
Line 2:
Line 3:

The problem is the the boo source code needs to be compiled and the dll’s must be placed in a bin directory in the folder you are running xsp2 from. There is a nant build script there but after trying to hack it to get it to build, we worked out it was easier to just compile manually.ie:

$ sudo mkdir bin
$ sudo booc -t:library -o:ScriptRunner.dll ScriptRunner.aspx.boo
$ sudo cp ScriptRunner.dll bin

from your browser:

http://localhost:8080/ScriptRunner.aspx

You can then use this to play around with some boo as if it were the booshell (booish)

Thanks to Cedric for helping me out in IRC on this.Technorati Tags: mono, python, boo, language, xsp, ubuntu, linux

• TheLastRipper – This is a fully featured streamripper for last.fm that has a great feature set (ID3v2 tags, international characters, automatic directory hierachies) BUT you can not listen to the streams while it’s ripping. It’s got the ‘love’ / ‘ban’ buttons but how can you tell if you can’t hear the bloody music right?
• LastLonger – Is a command line client written in Perl and you can output the stream to a music player also. When I saw this, I thought that I might use it as a programming exercise and port it to Python, though I couldn’t get it to work quickly and having modern-age ADD, I went looking for something else.
• Rhythmbox streamrecorder – This is actually what I was looking for in the first place. Rhythmbox makes it very simple to setup ‘stations’ from Last.fm and streamrecorder does what it says, recording the streams.

The good and the bad of Rhythmbox so far (after 5 minutes of testing, so take it as a grain of salt)

Good

• Integrated with Rhythmbox, a very usable music player already (I switch between Banshee, Listen, Amarok and Rhythmbox, each have a nice feature I like)
• Can still use ban and love buttons
• Can still use “next track” button
• It’s a python plugin

Bad

• Saves files on your desktop – doesn’t seem anyway to change this in the gui (python exercise could be to make this configurable
• Uses gnome sounds settings to choose recording format. This isn’t necessarily a bad things except the fact that changing these settings isn’t exactly trivial

Still, the good outweighs the bad by a longshot. I haven’t checked if it handles international characters or writes Id3v2 tags or anything yet.

Whilst they have served me well in the past and I may feel tempted to use Virtuemart for a customer who:

a) Will never ever need any customisations done to it
b) Already has a Joomla installation and is very comfortable using Joomla

What’s the issue with Zencart, OSC or Virtuemart you may ask?

The issue is this. First OSCommerce is a mess. Every single module you ever add to it is a hack, making upgrades a pain in the ass. Zencart, being closely related to OSC is not much better. It’s modularity is a bit better laid out and so you can actually create / install modules with very little hacking, if any BUT it’s template system still suffers from it’s OSC origins. It’s an effort to try and template for them..yes, it’s possible but does it really have to be that hard? Joomla’s concept is 1000 times better in regards to templating and Virtuemart excels in this area due to it’s Joomla foundations.

The big problem with them is when you need to make modifications to the core cart to implement a particular feature a customer wants. We have had situations where a small feature for the client required 144 changes in the files of Virtuemart. As soon as a XSS or other security issue comes to light, we have two options

1. Let it be, cross fingers and hope nothing happens (this really is not an option)
2. Inform customer, explain risks and give them compelling reasons to update (at their cost)
3. Our current solution is when we sign contracts with customers, we include a compulsory security updates fee, which means we update their site when new security releases come out. This has worked out best so far but still requires us to explain why we are giving a solution that isn’t inherently secure to begin with. Microsoft has made this easier to explain (daily updates anyone?) and for the most part, we can kill most XSS / SQL Injection attacks using Apache modsec rules but we really want to get beyond NEEDING to upgrade and therefore NEEDING to patch our mods into new releases of Virtuemart etc.

So, without further ado, there looks to be two better alternatives that have come to the rescue recently that look very, very promising though we haven’t done any work with them yet, so I will report on that later.

In PHP land, we have Magento. A very sexy, professional looking Open Source Ecommerce application that’s built upon the Zend MVC framework and claims to be able to develop extensions without touching core code. This, hopefully will fix our templating, modification and upgrade woes in a PHP solution. It has SEF URL’s built-in, google analytics built-in and a mini-CMS of sorts.

In Python land, we have Satchmo an open source ecommerce application built on top of the Django framework, with a reasonable feature set.

As part of my toolbox, my thinking at this point is if we have a customer that needs a standard shop with little to no development work, Magento will be our tool. If the customer has very unique needs, integration with other systems and customisations, we will work with Django.

This is because PHP deployment is so easy, that our only need should be to produce templates in Magento. If development work is needed, deployment and templating become a trivial matter in Satchmo in comparison to the ability to develop in Django & Python.

Would love to hear other’s experiences with any of the above… and of course any horror stories (or otherwise with OSC based development)

Aah, also five part ipython series on showmedo.com

Technorati Tags: django, extjs, json, ajax

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As per some previous posts, I like to be able to jump seamlessly between platforms. I don’t want to be tied down to anything if I can help it. This is why I wouldn’t buy an Ipod and like Mark Pilgrim, I don’t get the iphone phenomena. I want to use my application online, offline seamlessly. I want to have the same experience, no matter where I am, what I am doing etc. Software like NoMachine’s NX server give me this ability. I have a ultra-portable laptop I bought for $280 on ebay, I have Three wireless, which means I can be a passenger in a car / train / ferry / bus nearly anywhere in metro-Sydney and still have access to my Ubuntu desktop.. that’s frikkin’ cool.

But what about when I don’t have internet access? Well, I previously used Ifolder to keep all my files in sync (which uses mono btw) but ifolder has to be the worst managed open source project I have ever used. Trying to keep a client / server combination that worked together proved to be a feat for me too many times and finally I went in search of something else. I then switched over to Mindquarry (I could have just used svn with some python scripts that watched folders and syncs when it sees a change, I guess) but Mindquarry actually offers a few more features than svn or Ifolder alone ie: Tasks, timeline, wiki and teams.

So, now we have our files synchronised and I use imap, so we have mail synchronised and I have used sitebar for bookmarks for a very long time but there’s something more. What about my feeds in opera? all my vim settings? my bash_profile alias? This is where I think Conduit will be able to help me out eventually (one of the reasons I looked forward to moving to Gnome)

Now, I am really raising two separate issues here. On one hand, I am talking about syncronising two separate computers and on the other, I am talking about a seamless experience between online and offline applications. I think the first is mostly being taken care of. The second issue has some solutions becoming available also. This is where I see stuff like Google Gears, Adobe Air and db4o especially their db4o replication systemproving to show their usefulness.

Sidenote: In the Enterprise Data Centre, Lefthandnetworks has some very similar concepts happening for data virtualisation for online / offline drs solutions as db4o has for persistance – and more importanly for me, their new VMware product looks very promising for high availability + drs soutions using vmware.

So, now I bring up my original point in my posting. Let’s say we develop a desktop applications using db4o (mono bindings available) and I think we could even do that using the .Net python-like language called Boo – the developer of said language happens to also be a developer of db4o. Now, we take said winForms application and deploy it to the web using Visual WebGui. Now, I know the web purists might find this all very freakish as I haven’t done a W3C Validation on it, but I am half-certain something will be wrong and it’s not the sort of thing you are going to be delivering to blind people. I am talking about applications with a specific user base, something like a Mobile Lender, Mobile Salesperson, Microfinancing in remote areas etc.

In my post A Case for Learning Python I put forth my reasoning for deciding to spend all energy learning a language in Python – I don’t think any other language can offer the same access to so much for so little (time investment) as Python.

I will add something to the original list: Windmill is a web testing framework intended for complete automation of user interface testing, with strong test debugging capabilities and of course, it’s written in Python and uses CherryPy.

Also, in the same vein are WebUnit and Twill (both written in Python)

Technorati Tags: python, ajax, winforms, mono, django, visual webgui, mindquarry, gnome, conduit

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Forgive me if I am blatantly missinged something (which is very likelyobviously), but since the unicode integration into django, I can’t seem to generate non-text images from a view, into a template ie: then django books says:

from django.http import HttpResponse

def my_image(request):
image_data = open(“/home/moneyman/public_html/media/img/main_bg.jpg”, “rb”).read()
return HttpResponse(image_data, mimetype=”image/png”)

Which works fine, but when you try and render it to a template ie:

def new(request):
image_data = open(“/home/moneyman/public_html/media/img/main_bg.jpg”, “rb”).read()
return render_to_response(‘loans/loan_reports.html’, {image_data:’image_data’}, mimetype=”image/jpeg”)

You end up with something like this:

UnicodeDecodeError at /somewhere/
‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)Request Method: GET
Request URL: http://www.somewhere.com/somewhere/
Exception Type: UnicodeDecodeError
Exception Value: ‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)
Exception Location: /home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/context.py in __getitem__, line 38
Python Executable: /home/moneyman/bin/python
Python Version: 2.4.3

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in render_node
810. result = node.render(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in render
846. return self.filter_expression.resolve(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in resolve
577. obj = self.var.resolve(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in resolve
704. return self._resolve_lookup(context)
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/__init__.py” in _resolve_lookup
727. current = current[bit]
File “/home/moneyman/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/template/context.py” in __getitem__
38. if key in d:

UnicodeDecodeError at /somewhere/
‘ascii’ codec can’t decode byte 0xff in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

I don’t know if it’s me or a bug. I haven’t been able to get any decent feedback from #django IRC channel as yet

Technorati Tags: django, charts, python

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I came for the models, I stayed for the templates

While it’s not all been smooth sailing for me mostly due to my lack of python experience, the guys on IRC especially “Magus” have been tremendous. Is he paid to help people??? Someone should give him a fulltime position on the IRC channel.

The other part that tripped me up was newforms library as it’s still under development and isn’t fully documented as yet. This article at Big Nerd Ranch was a big help as was Colin Grady, once more. I often found myself overcomplicating issues that were much simpler than I was imagining.

Anyway – the more I use Django, the more I learn the true depths of it’s greatness even though I still feel as though I am skimming the surface. I have met Malcolm Treddinick face to face, a fellow Australian and mad hacker. His commits on the Django project have been somewhat impressive. I can’t wait to be able to add some value back into the community once I get over a few more stumbling blocks.

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Siddhi has some nice Django screencasts over at Showmedo.com

I was also reading the Trac / Babel website which ended up hooking me up to a great article from a guy who was thinking about succesful open source projects and came to the conclusion to how powerful api’s are in both open source and proprietary applications. The article pointed out how much having a good, documented api lowers the entry barrier for contributors, allowing a project to gain a community and momentum faster. I see this as part of the success of the Joomla project. People were able to go away and create modules, components and bots without having to submit or beg for features on the main project’s repo. I wish I could find the article now though!

Anyway, that led me to another worthy mention: Django Restful Interfaces project.

Beyond the django / python world, if you are into learning languages, I stumbled across Mango Languages today, which I am going to add to my use of Granule Flashcards for Spanish.

Technorati Tags: django, trac, open source, rest, showmedo

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Where do I start? Let’s start with the fact Peru had a large earthquake on the 16th August near the cities of Chincha (The Afroperuvian epicentre), Ica and Pisco. These places are approximately 140kms south of Lima, where my wife is from (and her family are living).

I subscribe to Treehugger RSS feeds and the same day as the Earthquake comes a post with Vinay Gupta, the brainchild of the Hexayurt project, an open source disaster relief shelter, to put it simply. I suggest Treehugger subscribers pitch in some funds to send Vinay to Peru to kick something off and Vinay responded with this post, to which I also responded. When Vinay was discussing the Hexayurt, he mentioned “wood gas fire” as seen in this clip

I happen to work with a guy who is right into his steam engines.. now, I don’t really discuss my “treehugger” leanings with him, as they burn coal in those things but the above wood burner did lead me to think about how a closed system steam engine might possibly be able to fit with the goals of yet another open source project called worldbike, which is a group of bicycle designers who make open source bicycle designs to build or modify an existing bike to be more suited to our brothers and sisters in Africa.

I would like to think that the goals of Open Source Green Vehicle are somewhat similar, in brief – a group of people who come together in like mindedness to share some of their skills for the betterment of humanity. People may not realise just how much Google has it’s hand in all this. Google is almost like the glue of all knowledge. Google has shown us to realise how powerful open business models can be and helps reward people for sharing their knowledge. Staying with the our OSGV project, for the moment. I came across this group of videos on youtube (now owned by google) that discusses in depth two big interests of mine. How to convert an engine to hydrogen and use it for both automotive use and / or when used in housing (whether emergency or not) it can provide a source of electricity, heating and clean water. Now, with the amount of instructional video content on youtube, it’s really a knowledge sharing platform just as powerful (if not more so) than Sourceforge or Wikipedia.

Vinay also linked to this Microcredit system being used in India, another area which I am interested in and I am not bullshitting about this, you can view my Amazon wishlist on this. I am currently on three weeks holiday. The first week (right now) I am in Canberra, the Capital of Australia doing my Vmware Virtual Infrastructure course. The following two weeks, I will be starting to code the beginnings of a Microfinance System that I will be writing in Django. I have been really working hard teaching myself Python (and Spanish) using my own modified version of the “Seinfieldian” system.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that through Vinay’s posts, I ended up finding “The Open Business Guide” and Open Source Ecology that Vinay offered up to me, which I haven’t yet had time to have a good read of as yet.

I could write a lot longer of the “bizaare” sequence of events but I have some reading to do.

Richard Stallman may yet become the modern day Marx, the way things are going..

The simplest example of open source that I use as an analogy is

“imagine eating in a restaurant where you loved the food and the chef was willing to share the whole recipe with you – you may go home and make it yourself but if he is a good chef, you will no doubt return for ‘his way’ of preparing the dish” – this is the nature of open source, to give something to humanity and yet you lose nothing.

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I have a pretty good system setup: cross-platform, remote learning.

I have played with both Jmemorize and now Granule – Granule is written in C++ & GTK and Jmemorize is Java both run on different platforms and are based on the ‘famous’ Leitner system. Jmemorize has some fancy graphs and Granule doesn’t. Both use XML as their file format.

My setup is Ubuntu at home: apt-get install granule

a no-brainer

Windows is harder to install – it’s not hard, I just love saying that.

1. Download the zip file to your “Program Files” folder
2. unzip it.
3. Go into c:\Program Files\Granule-1.2.4-1-win32\bin\
4. Right-click -> Send to Desktop
5. Drag it into your Programs bar (so that it is indexed by Launchy)

Now the good part is that I use Mindquarry Collaboration server but this could easily work if you’re already using CVS or Subversion source control server. Basically, save your files that you created into your mindquarry team folder and synchronise.

Now, I synchronise the Mindquarry server every day when I arrive and leave the office and the same when I am finished at home. That way, I am free to continually add data that I want to practice memorising.

In my case, I am trying to increase my spanish vocabulary and subscribe to a few “Word a Day” RSS Feeds. I add each example to Granule each day and go through the whole set. Now, what I would really like is to be able to set them to use a transparent OSD (on screen display) every minute or so with a new word and 30 seconds later, it’s answer. I think that could help greatly.

Granule have some english dictionary words available for download here, if you also want to increase your english vocabulary, which is something I think we could all do with.

**UPDATE**

Considering my interest in Python and WXPython as well as the fact that Granule has corrupted the odd xml file where it saves it’s data, I thought I might also add that Pyflashcard is another alternative that runs on both Windows & Linux and maybe even a Mac. Read more about it on the author’s site.

Technorati Tags: mindquarry, version control, flashcard, leitner, learning

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