will

It's All Geek to Me

Posts about technology, with a focus on web development with Python.

I am the author of Beginning Games Development with Python and PyGame.

Jun 29, 2008
in Tech

Pretty as Pie

I've just spend a couple of hours dusting off an old project of mine, that involved generating pretty 3D pie charts by combining Mako templates with the Povray scene description language. I improved the image quality by enabling radiosity, and the end result is quite appealing (see below).

Now I'm thinking that there may be some people out there who would be prepared to pay to generate such images for websites or for print, and it wouldn't be too hard to extend the idea to other forms of chart, such as bar graphs. So, dear lazyweb, is there a big enough market in such a thing to warrant sinking my valuable spare time into?

Jun 24, 2008
in Tech

New Postmarkup on the block

I've released version 1.1.0 of Postmarkup. The main improvements are that it generates cleaner html, that doesn't include invisible div sections, and that it should also generate XHTML that validates (previous versions  could put block tags inside inline tags for some bbcode).

The basic interface is the same, so it should be a drop in replacement for most people. The  base class for tags has changed (but not significantly), so if you have any custom tags, it will require a little work to get them functional again. See postmarkup.py for example tags. continue reading…

Jun 23, 2008
in Tech

BBCode Ajax test server

Since I have some time on my hands, I've been doing a little work on Postmarkup - my BBCode module. I've made some significant improvements to the design which fixes a few issues and makes it easier to create new tags. To test it, I hacked together a simple web-app using CherryPy, which allows you to edit bbcode in the browser and see the resulting html update live -- with a little Ajax magic.

Please give it a try, and let me know if you can break it.

In building this, I've created a very rudimentary web service. I'm wondering if there is any practical use for such a thing...

Jun 19, 2008
in Tech

My CV / Resume

It seems it is a good time to be a Python developer, after my last post I received a number of good leads. All before I had finished my CV.

Jun 16, 2008
in Tech

Looking for a Python Role In London

Its seems I'm on the job-market again.

I'm a software developer with over 10 years experience. I'm looking for a role working with Python, which has been the focus of my career for the last 18 months. Prior to that I worked with a mixture of C/C++ and Python. Ideally I'm looking for something in web development as I enjoy working with HTML / CSS and Javascript, but I'm open to other fields that may interest me. I have experience working with Turbogears and Django, as well as many other Python modules and technology.

I enjoy developing software outside of a work environment, and have created several games, applications, web sites, and open source Python modules. My blog is probably the best place to find out more about my spare time projects, see my Python articles for more information. continue reading…

Feb 28, 2008
in Tech

Practicality versus Purity for Python Templates

There are a number of very powerful template languages available in Python. Some template languages, such as Genshi, allow complex Python statements and even full Python code within the template file. Others, such as Django templates, prefer to restrict templates to presentation only and do not allow general Python expressions within the body of the template.

In the context of a web framework, is it better to have the full expressiveness of Python, or restrict templates to presentation only?

Feb 19, 2008
in Tech

Degreelessness

Occasionally when I am feeling nostalgic I dust of some off my old creations. Back in the day I used to create graphical demos for PC, which are difficult to run these days because they were designed to run under DOS and not Windows, and computer hardware has change so much since then. Fortunately I can use DOSBox to run them with Vista. DOSBox even has an option to record videos, so I recorded a demo I wrote way back in 1995 (it actualy got me my first job). 'Degreelessness' was built on a Pentium 75 PC and runs with glorious 256 colour graphics. Its a little embarrassing, especially the goatee, but bare in mind is is over 10 years old!

Here it is, courtesy of Google Video.

Feb 18, 2008
in Tech

Sorry for the spam

Sorry for the spam in my feeds. It was due to an old version of wordpress that somehow combined deleted spam with my posts. I meant to fix it a while ago but it escaped my mind. My humble apologies.

Feb 16, 2008
in Tech

Writing a Facebook Application with Python Pt. III

This is the third part in a series of three posts about writing a Facebook application with Facebook. If you have not already ready done so, you should read the first and second parts first.

The technology behind Facebook applications is actually quite straight-forward. It is completely platform agnostic so you can build an app with any technology you might use to serve HTML content. My choice would be Python, but then I am a shameless Python fan-boy. Unfortunately there are still problems that any Facebook application developer will face, and most aren't technology related. continue reading…

Feb 16, 2008
in Tech

Easy as Pie

To further my bid for the worlds dullest hobby award, I have been creating pie charts. I wanted to investigate generating Povray scene description files with Python. It turns out to be a winning combination; it didn't take long to build a system where I can generate a scene containing pie segments of various colors and angles. I can also vary the height and explode individual pie segments. Povray can render very high quality scenes so this system could be used to make pie charts for television or print.

I will experiment with other charts, bar charts etc. Maybe I'll even generate an animation with it.

This isn't entirely just for the heck of it. I plan to write an article about it for the Python magazine.