Niall's Weblog

A pretty common thing to do in any program is read a file line-by-line. In other interpreted or managed languages this is trivial, the standard libraries will make it super easy for you. Just look at how simple it is to do this in Python or Perl or even Shell.
In C its a [...]

Last month I started Py Web SF, the San Francisco Python & Web Technology meet-up. The idea is 1-2 conversation-style presentations of about 30 minutes with a group of 10-20 people. My hope is to have a more intimate group than the very good Bay Piggies (which I highly recommend). With a [...]

I started using tmux today. Its a terminal multiplexer / task switcher for UNIX-likes, very much in the same vein as GNU Screen. However, its a from-scratch implementation, designed to be clean, sane and easy to configure. The more liberal 3-clause BSD license is a plus also, since it means that [...]

I read today that Turbo Gears 2.0 has been released – at long last! I used Turbo Gears 1 briefly in 2007 for a small project then switched to Pylons.
Pylons is pretty neat because its really a framework for building a framework. You can pick and choose WSGI middleware and slot it [...]

I’ve been playing with the recently-released HTTP API for accessing the Best Buy product catalog. While its a little strange to use at first, its actually pretty useful. One of the things I am interested in is online retail, specifically how to make Internet shopping easier. Lets imagine I am looking for [...]