Muffin Research Labs

Tech

Google App Engine

Fancy running a Python app on Google's scalable architecture? Now you can. Google App Engine [http://code.google.com/appengine/] has launched offering developers the ability to run python applications (other languages to follow) using a wsgi [http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0333/] compliant framework via a

performance

Automatic asset versioning in Django

Following on from Ed [http://ejeliot.com]'s "Automatic versioning of CSS, JavaScript and Images [http://www.ejeliot.com/blog/125]" here is a method to version filenames based on modification times to be used in Django as a template tag. This is really handy technique for

performance

Avoiding the use of .htaccess for performance

.htaccess files are often used because they allow quick changes to the apache web server configuration and don't require apache to be restarted. However with this flexibility comes a number of performance implications and as a result they should be avoided unless you have absolutely no other way

Python

pwdn: show last n dirs of current directory

I've been playing around with some scripts of late to automate delivery of my various scripts and aliases to servers and in doing so I was looking back at the code I am calling to display the last two directories in my bash prompt [https://muffinresearch.co.uk/

OSX

Mac OSX tip: ls command color output

If you have OSX tiger simply grab the fileutils from fink with fink install fileutils Then add the following to your .profile: export LS_OPTIONS='--color=auto' eval "`/sw/bin/dircolors`" alias ls='ls $LS_OPTIONS' alias ll='ls $LS_OPTIONS -lah'

microformats

hListing unleashed

Over on the YDN Blog [http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/], Ben Ward [http://ben-ward.co.uk] has written a detailed post [http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2008/03/kelkoo_goes_mic.html] on the use of hListing microformats [http://microformats.org/wiki/hlisting-proposal] in the latest release of the

2008

Drive By South By

SXSWi is the geek excursion of the year for me. It's a chance to catch up with old friends meet new people and to generally geek-out in one of the coolest cities I've ever been to, Austin Texas. This year to do something slightly unusual Cyril,

Django

Django: Switching between development branches

Cyril [http://cyril.doussin.name/] and I have been using new forms admin for some stuff we are working on for fun whilst we are here at SXSWi. One of the issues is that if you're developing several different Django sites you won't necessary want to

shell

From the command line to your clipboard and vice versa

Found a neat trick the other day via github.com [http://github.com], in their instructions for copying public keys. pbcopy (pasteboard copy) on mac OSX is a command that puts it's input into the clipboard so you can paste the output anywhere. In this example the output

Browsers

IE8 will now render as IE8 by default

Good news! The IE team have decided to revert their decision on compatibility [http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/03/microsoft-s-interoperability-principles-and-ie8.aspx] which would have meant IE8 would render sites with the IE7 engine if a ua-x-compatible meta tag isn't defined. Sites will now render with

performance

Does setTimeout solve the DOMContentLoaded problem?

I've recently been building a simple framework for testing the performance of arbitrary JavaScript code. Whilst doing so I was looking at the some information on setTimeout in "JavaScript the Definitive Guide" by David Flanagan [http://tinyurl.com/2634ue]. One paragraph made me think of the

Django

EU Hackday 5: Django and Python FTW

Last Thursday, James Broad [http://www.kulor.com/], Cyril Doussin [http://cyril.doussin.name/], Andrew Phillipo and myself started out on the fifth internal hackday at Yahoo! headquarters in London. James had come up with an awesome idea which was to build a tool for sharing code and techniques internally.

Sqlite

Sqlite: ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN fail on OSX 10.4

I've been playing with some stuff in Django recently and having updated a model I wanted to add a column to the sqlite database. Unfortunately ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN statements don't work in sqlite3.1.3 which is the version installed in Tiger and all you&

Launchpad

CSS Sprite Generator code available at launchpad.net

Ed [http://www.ejeliot.com] and I have put the code for the Sprite Generator up on launchpad.net under a BSD license, and you can either download the source as a tar file [https://code.launchpad.net/css-sprite-generator/0.1/0.1a1/+download/spritegen-0.1a1.tar.gz] or if

Django

Using git with Django's SVN repository

Brian Rosner [http://oebfare.com] has produced a really nice screencast [http://oebfare.com/blog/2008/jan/23/using-git-django-screencast/] demonstrating ways to use git [http://git.or.cz/] version control with Django's SVN repository. Especially of interest is how merging changes you've made in your git

Apple

Macbook Air launched, but will it fly?

Apple have announced their new ultralightweight Macbook Air [http://www.apple.com/macbookair/] today at MacWorld. Whilst it's hard not to be dazzled by shiny things, I'm personally not that impressed. Given that the cost of the basic spec model is £1199 in the UK

Bazaar

Bazaar 1.0 released

Fantastic news that Bazaar has reached version 1.0. This is thanks to a lot of hard work by some very talented people and I'm pleased to note that it looks like case sensitivity issues have been addressed [http://mebentley.blogspot.com/2007/12/bazaar-10-not-just-number.html]. Amongst the

OSX

Nokia Multimedia Transfer for Mac

This is totally awesome and far nicer than using bluetooth file transfer to put python files for pys60 onto your Nokia phone. Nokia Multimedia Transfer [http://europe.nokia.com/A4423134] Works via bluetooth or the data cable and provides a drag and drop interface similar to finder.

Multimap

Microsoft buys Multimap

So the news is all over the web of Microsoft's acquisition of Multimap [http://news.google.co.uk/news?tab=wn&hl=en&ned=uk&q=Microsoft+buys+multimap&btnG=Search+News] . Having worked for Multimap briefly before joining Yahoo, I'm really

Nokia

Howto: Debrand and Flash a Nokia E61

I've had a Nokia E61 for about 6 months or so. When I first got it I updated the firmware to the latest version, and ever since I regretted not changing the product code so that I could get rid of the Vodafone branding on shutdown and start-up

presentations

Presentation: De-centralised Version Control with Bazaar

This probably won't make too much sense without the notes but here's the slides for the presentation I gave with Andrew Phillippo at Yahoo! Europe's front-end engineering conference. When I have a few spare moments I'll write a post covering the details

Python

xkcd on python

Totally and utterly awesome, Link: http://xkcd.com/353/

Windows

Windows Vista: Require users to press Ctrl+alt+del to login

Just a note for myself as I'm bound to forget this it's very hidden away. Go to start type "netplwiz" in the search. Click the advanced tab and tick "Require users to press Ctrl+alt+delete"

Python

Python or PHP?

Recently I've been having interesting discussions with Ed [http://ejeliot.com] and Cyril [http://cyril.doussin.name/thoughts/] regarding some of the differences between PHP and Python and what makes each one special. So I'm interested to know what are the things you love about PHP

safari

Running a Safari 2 Standalone Alongside Safari 3

Before updating OSX to 10.4.11 I decided to create a standalone Safari with the excellent instructions provided by Michel Fortin on his blog [http://michelf.com/weblog/2005/multi-safari/]. The main reason to keep Safari 2 is due to the need to continue to test sites with Safari