Geek Stuff

Even though I’m a geek all day long at work, I sometimes find the time and energy to be a geek in my spare time. Here are a few things I’ve cooked up that I thought might be of some interest or use to the rest of the world.

Presentations

Dateutil to the Rescue! [pdf, 1.1MB]

An overview of the capabilities of dateutil, a powerful set of extensions for Python’s datetime library. Presented to ClePy on February 5, 2007, and at PyCon 2007 on February 24, 2007.

The Joy of Logging [pdf, 882KB]

How to use Python’s logging module for doing all kinds of crazy ninja logging magic (or just simple things too). Presented to ClePy on September 11, 2006.

The Joy of Optparse [pdf, 877KB]

How to use Python’s optparse module for dealing, happily, with command line input. Presented to ClePy on July 10, 2006.

Python Can Survive in the Enterprise [pdf, 453KB]

Dispelling the myth that “Python doesn’t scale” with some discussion of how AG Interactive uses Python to deliver the performance necessary to survive in a high-volume, high-traffic web application environment. Presented at PyCon 2006 with David Stanek on February 24, 2006.

Fun With RSS [pdf, 151KB]

A quick look at parsing and generating RSS with Python; introduces feedparser and PyRSS2Gen, and illustrates how to combine the two to generate subfeeds filtered on some given criteria. The same technique drives the subfeeds here at pirnat.com. Presented to ClePy on December 5, 2005.

Introduction to TurboGears [pdf, 185KB]

An introduction to TurboGears and its components, presented to ClePy on November 7, 2005.

HOWTO-like Things

Installing IDS on Gentoo

All about installing the Image Display System (a nice photo gallery CGI) on Gentoo Linux.

Installing AppleTalk on Gentoo

A quickie guide to setting up AppleTalk file sharing services on Gentoo Linux, in case there are any Mac users in the house.

Linux on a Toshiba Satellite 1695 CDT Laptop (RedHat 7.2 Version)

In which I set up RedHat 7.2 on my clunky, bricklike Toshiba laptop. It’s horribly out of date, and hasn’t been maintained in forever, but maybe you’ll find something helpful.

Code

I have a couple of things that are maybe worth sharing, but they need a little more polishing before I publish them here. If you really want to play with some code, there’s always Freshmeat…

killflickrattyahoobanner.user.js

A Greasemonkey script to hide the highly annoying AT&T Yahoo banner that gets tacked onto the top of Flickr for AT&T Yahoo users. Ah, that feels better. (My first ever Greasemonkey script, whee!)

adesklets Hacks

Various things (mostly desklets) contributed to the adesklets project.

autohibernate.py [.py, 3.0KB]

My IBM ThinkPad T23 doesn’t support ACPI, so I whipped up this APM-based script to watch my battery level and automatically hibernate upon crossing a given charge threshold.

IDS Hacks

My hacks to the Image Display System to make my photo site a little prettier.

LiveJournal RSS Parser

Coming soon: the RSS parser that I use for downloading my LiveJournal feed and building the journal entries on the main homepage of this site.

YoSucker Hacks

My “SneakySleep” patch was accepted into version 50a of YoSucker. This is the first code I’ve contributed to an open-source project, and while it’s stupid and insignificant, it solves a problem, and I’m kind of proud of it.