Mike's Blabberings

Niall Kennedy posted a now-famous article about using some browser trickery to determine what websites a user on your site has visited. I’ve taken that concept and created a module that can be used with the Dojo Toolkit javascript framework.
It provides two methods that you can use in your code, isVisited and isAnyVisited.
One important [...]

The Python Imaging Library (PIL) offers easy photo manipulation from python scripts. There’s some handy sample code on effbot.org that demonstrates how to alter an image’s palette to generate a sepia tone effect. It first desaturates the image, then applies a new palette based on a linear ramp.
I’ve cleanup up that sample code [...]

Here’s a little script-fu that can help determine how many lines of code were added vs. deleted for a single Subversion commit.

#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "usage: $0 revision"
exit
fi
 
REV=$1
 
# Execute a svn diff on the revision, and search the output for deleted lines
# (begin with a [...]

One of the greatest things about Flex and Air is the low barrier to entry for us software geeks. There’s nothing stopping any non-flash software dev from writing some kickass desktop apps. There’s no reason you have to buy anything to start writing, testing, and distributing Adobe Air apps. You don’t need [...]

If you’re ever been annoyed by VIM throwing your cursor to the left margin when you type “#” in a python file, there’s a simple remedy. It’s the fault of “smartindent” in VIM, which in reality isn’t all that smart. If you want to leave smartindent on but fix the weird hash behavior, [...]

Just wrapping up a fantastic few days at PyCon Chicago 2009. I went with a group of about 10 guys from AGI, and we managed to have a little bit of fun in between some great mind-enriching talks.
Here are some notes I jotted down while at the conference. It’s a bit overwhelming, but [...]

I Just got an email from Google, describing a new feature of AdSense dubbed “interest-based advertising.”
I don’t think it’s any shock that Google has the data to segment users based on their browsing habits. The shocker to me is that they’re making the result of that segmentation available to webmasters everywhere.
The full [...]

After fighting with Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 for months to get WIFI working, I finally found a Dell driver [0] that worked on my HP laptop through ndiswrapper [1].
A few hours later with success claimed, I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10, assuming I had conquered all possible obstacles and that anything in the future [...]

Although I’ve been enamored with Python for the last 13 or so months, I’ve often dreamt longingly for days of Java glory. Things from the past seem so desirable at times — IDEs with good code completion and integrated debugging, staticly-typed compiler hand-holding, mature application servers and deployment tools. There was never much [...]

I’m going to PyCon 2009! I’ll be there with a few other guys from work. We’re flying in Wednesday night, taking a tutorial on Thursday, and trying to have a little fun throughout the weekend.