will

Where there is a Will

Will McGugan's Blog

I am a freelance software engineer living in Edinburgh.

I post mostly about tech (particularly Python) and photography.

Background: A code monkey

Dec 7, 2016
in Tech

PyFilesystem 2.0 Released

I'd like to announce version 2.0.0 of PyFilesystem, which is now available on PyPi.

PyFilesystem is a Python module I started some time in 2008, and since then it has been very much a part of my personal standard library. I've used it in personal and professional projects, as have many other developers and organisations.

If you aren't familiar with PyFilesystem; it's an abstraction layer for filesystems. Essentially anything with files and directories (hard-drive, zip file, ftp server, network filesystems etc.) may be wrapped with a common interface. With it, you can write code that is agnostic as to where the files are physically located.

Here's a quick example that recursively counts the lines of code in a directory: continue reading…

Dec 2, 2016
in Tech

Strings hiding in plain sight

It's not often I come across something in Python that surprises me. Especially in something as mundane as string operations, but I guess Python still has a trick or two up its sleeve.

Have a look at this string:

How many possible sub-strings are in s? To put it another away, how many values of x are there where the expression x in s is true?

Turns out it is 2.

2?

Yes, 2.

The empty string is in the string "A". In fact, it's in all the strings.

Turns out the empty string has been hiding every where in my code.

Not a complaint, I'm sure the rationale is completely sound. And it turned out to be quite useful. I had a couple of lines of code that looked something like this: continue reading…

Aug 29, 2016
in Photography

North Coast 500

This year, Ellen and I took a trip, roughly following the North Coast 500 route.

The West coast of Scotland is stunning. As a Glasgow cabbie observed, if it wasn't for the weather and the midges of the Scottish West Coast, Brits wouldn't bother leaving the UK for their holiday. I can't comment on the weather (which was beautiful), but he may have a point about the midges.

Here are some photos from that trip.

Thistles at sunrise. Taken at around 5.30am. Worth getting up for?

This image is part of a much larger panorama that I would like to print for my wall in three parts.

The iconic Highland Cow, or Highland Coo as we call them in Scotland.

If you aren't familiar with midges, they are tiny biting flies. Their vileness is brilliantly illustrated with the following video...

Aug 29, 2016
in Photography

Sunset in Flores

I've always been intrigued by HDR, but some of my earlier attempts have been pretty horrific (like someone ate a pack of crayons and vomited on the screen).

Sunsets are one of the few subjects where HDR really works. Without merging a range of exposures you can never expose for both the sun and the foreground. So I was quite pleased to get the following shot (in Flores, Indonesia).

The trick in processing an HDR photo is to make it look like it is not HDR. At least not obviously HDR...

Aug 29, 2016
in Photography

Here be Komodo Dragons

In addition to Orangutans, my Indonesia trip was to photograph Komodo dragons. These are absolutely remarkable animals, and as close to a living dinosaur you can see today.

As excited as I was to see these animals, the experience was a little disappointing. The rangers lead us around a short trek through the forrest before returning to the beach where there a dragon was basking. It was all clearly staged.

Komodo Dragons are actually venomous, contrary to the popular belief that their bites kill with toxic bacteria in their mouths.

This was a juvenile dragon. We saw it meandering through the forrest, occasionally chewing on dry bones, trying to find sustenance. The urge to hug him, and squeeze him, and call him George was strong! continue reading…

Aug 29, 2016
in Photography

Isle of May

The Isle of May is an island just off the East coast of Scotland. Although tiny (less than 1km2), it is home to a remarkable amount of wildlife, birds in particular. I was lucky enough to visit with the Glasgow Photography Meetup group.

Here's a few shots from that day.

I think this is a juvenile gull. Post a comment if I'm wrong!

Photographing a bird in flight is a challenge, so I'm please I got this at all, but the plain background this doesn't make for a memorable photo.

There were some fantastic vantage points on the island where I could get eye-level shots like this one.

These photos were all taken with a Canon 500mm, which is an absolutely fantastic lens for bird photography and a good upper body workout.

Aug 3, 2016
in Tech

Serving a Customized Website with Moya

This SO post prompted me to think about how you would go about customizing a entire Django site (not just an app). Particularly if it is a third party project, still in development.

Forking the site repository is a solution, but the more customizations you make, the more awkward it becomes to merge upstream fixes and features. The problem is compounded if you have multiple deploys, with custom templates, assets, and settings.

I wanted to do a quick write-up of how this would be done in Moya, where customization is more of a first-class concept.

I'll briefly go over how you would serve a Moya site with a custom template, without modifying any of the original files. The project I'll be customizing is Moya Techblog which power this blog. continue reading…

Jul 27, 2016
in Photography

Photographing Orangutans in Sumatra

My first wildlife trip this year was to Indonesia to shoot orangutans and Komodo dragons. This post is about the former, I'll save the dragons for another post.

These photos were taken in Bukit Lawang, North Sumatra, which has a sanctuary for Sumatran Orangutans (there is another species in Borneo). They offer guided treks to see the animals, which are mostly rescue animals that have been re-introduced to the wild.

I think this is my favourite shot of the trip. It seems almost posed. continue reading…

May 2, 2016
in Tech

Posting Screenshots with Inthing

Inthing can take a screenshot of your desktop then post it online.

Here's a quick example:

Alternatively you can do the same thing from the command line with the inthing app. The following is equivalent to the Python code (assuming you have set up the stream and password environment variables):

See the docs for more details.

Screenshot capabilities courtesy of the excellent pyscreenshot library.

Screenshot taken with Stream.screenshot

Apr 30, 2016
in Tech

Capturing standard output in Python (and posting it online)

Just landed in inthing is a new and quite interesting feature.

Version 0.1.4 adds a capture method which will record all standard output, i.e. anything you print to the terminal. It works as a context manager. Here's an example:

Any print statement inside the with block will be captured and posted online with the block exits.

You can also do something similar from the command line, with the inthing capture subcommand, which posts anything you pipe in to it as an event.

lets say you wanted to post the version of all you installed Python packages online. You could do something like the following:

For more information see the Inthing docs.

Inthing is still technically in beta, but these features are quite solid. Please give them a try, and let me know how it goes!