Matt Croydon::Postneo

Busy making things: @mc, notes, tinycast, github, links, photos.

  • Quick tblib Tweak

    Posted in

    I tweaked tblib to use a user agent:

    User-Agent: tblib/0.1.0 Python

    I’ll probably tweak that a bit before the next minor tblib update.

  • WSDL and Python

    Posted in

    Uche Ogbuji released a tutorial at IBM DeveloperWorks in 2001 that guides you through using WSDL in Python.  He also released a library for Python called WSDL4py.

    It is interesting that neither of the two “major” Python SOAP implementations seem to support WSDL at all.  I have been spoiled by the tight WSDL integration with C#/.NET and WSDL2Java.  Even the lightweight SOAP::Lite for Perl has WSDL support for the client side.

    I might have to take a closer look at WSDL4py (which was hard to locate, the links from IBM’s website didn’t want to work).  It looks like I can use it to generate a WSDL document as well as consume them.

    It feels weird getting back into SOAP after spending a lot of time in more lightweight web services.

  • SOAP Behind the Firewall

    Posted in ,

    Phil Wainewright:

    Integration vendor Cysive has issued a report that recommends dispensing with SOAP for high-volume applications deployed inside an enterprise, writes line56. “If we’re inside the firewall, why do we need to get to http, which is a relatively slow protocol, and why do we have to do all this parsing to get there?” wonders the company’s director of public relations.

    I’d like to paraphrase something that Sam Ruby said during his talk at the Web Services DevCon East:

    If you control both ends of the wire, SOAP is probably not for you.

    I think I got that about right, I’ll have to check my notes.  That’s what came to my head while reading Phil’s entry.  If you control both ends of the wire, RMI, .NET remoting, COM, or other forms of communication are probably faster and more appropriate.

  • Blosxom 1.2 Released!

    Posted in

    Rael:

    Blosxom 1.2 is available for download. This release adds static rendering of individual entries (along with path- and date-based views), customizable daily date-stamp (via date.flavour template), configurable file extension and default flavour, and bits and bobs of cleanup (most notable being the end of the dreaded double-slash bug — if you don’t know what this means, don’t worry about it 😐 ).

  • weblogs.py: Aggregated Python News

    Posted in

    Python Programmer Weblogs aggregates approximately 30 (as of this writing) python-related weblogs, my Python category included.  Think of it as the python equivalent to java.blogs.

    It is simple, yet elegant.

    It uses pyblagg [cvsweb], which relies on Mark’s awesome RSS parser.  Pyblagg was written by V. Satheesh Babu, and was obviously influenced by Rael’s blagg.

  • Enterprise FreeBSD

    Posted in

    OSNews:

    After three years in the making the FreeBSD Release 5.0 operating system has been made available to the general public. Released towards the end of January, the OS provides first-time support for Sun’s Sparc64 and Intel’s IA64 platforms. And while some effort has been put into AMD’s Hammer architecture, there is presently no usable support for the 64-bit mode of Hammer, said FreeBSD engineer, Scott Long.” Read the article at LinuxWorld.

  • Using NUnit

    Posted in

    Sam Gentile:

    Ron Jefferies, one of the inventors of Extreme Programming, and a man I admire very much, is working on an online book, Adventures in C#, of which the latest installment is Adventures in C#: Using NUnit, Be sure to check this out.

    I’m reading the tutorial while at work, it looks like an excellent resource.  The tutorial made sense to me, having some experience with JUnit on the Java side of things.

    Adventures in C# also has some great info for applying eXtreme Programming to .NET.

  • J2EE 1.4 Waits for Web Services

    Posted in

    CNet:

    Sun Microsystems, which controls the widely used Java standard, said Tuesday that it will push out the delivery of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4 specification until this summer. The J2EE 1.4 specification, which gives Java licensees the blueprint for building Java programming tools and server software, was set to debut in the current quarter.

    The forthcoming J2EE specification incorporates Web services protocols, a set of standards and a programming method for connecting disparate computing systems. Adoption of Web services is accelerating as companies look for ways to lower the cost of sharing information.

    Sun representatives said the company chose to push back the finalized J2EE 1.4 specification in order to comply with interoperability guidelines set forth by the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I).

  • Linux on an iPod

    Posted in

    Slashdot:

    Here is the announcement for a port of uClinux to the Apple iPod, checkout the project page for extra details. Currently the frame buffer, audio and IDE devices are working. Still plenty of work to do.”

    From the FAQ:

    1.2 Why would you do that?

    A number of reasons but mainly because its there.

  • tblib Backward Compatability

    Posted in

    I was reading over the trackback page this afternoon and discovered that the current implementation of trackback is slighly different than it has been in the past.  It looks like just a few changes need to be made to tblib in order to gain backward compatability.

  • Linux.Conf.Au Wrapup

    Posted in

    Hemos attended Linux.Conf.Au while myself and others were converging on New York City:

    I’ve just recently returned from Linux Conference Australia 2003, held in Perth, Western Australia. I’ve had an incredible time, and this has easily been the best technical/Linux show I’ve been to since ALS was still operating. I’ve got a write-up below, and some notes on what happened, what’s the plan for next year (It’ll be in Adelaide, and I’m greatly looking forward to it!), and a photo round up. A number of other articles have appeared, and Kate MacKenzie’s write up in The Australian was good as well, in addition to Telsa Gwynne’s excellent write-up and Linux Magazine Au has some articles as well.

    This was the geekier of two simultaneous Linux conferences.  LinuxWorld was the east coast biz Linux show, while the one in Austrailia had Linus.  ‘Nuff said.

  • The Ease of C#

    Posted in

    Rob Fahrni:

    Charles Cook: “After writing a lot of C#, returning to C++ make me realize how unproductive C++ is.” – This has been my experience as well. I’m looking forward to the day when I can spend most of my time implementing code in C#.

    This is so true.  It’s painful to go back to C++ after coding for awhile in C#.  It’s just so easy to do so many things.  I’ll be spending a good bit of time in C# this semester, and for that, I am quite happy.

  • Matthew Dillon Looses Commit Access to FreeBSD

    Posted in

    OSNews:

    One of the most prolific and active developers of FreeBSD, responsible for a lot of the latest advances in the FreeBSD kernel, lost his right to commit code to the source tree. The FreeBSD Project didn’t give a solid reason on what lead them to this decision. Last year, OSNews interviewed Matt about his (truly immense) work on FreeBSD.

    Ouch.

  • Linuxworld.com.au on Firebird

    Posted in

    NewsForge points to a Linux World Australia article about Firebird:

    When you think of open source databases, MySQL or PostgreSQL may first spring to mind. However, hot on their heels is Firebird, a relational database which has been a hotbed of development activity for the past two and a half years.

    Although a worldwide development effort, Firebird does have an Australian flavour: the FirebirdSQL Foundation (Inc.), an international non-profit organisation, was formed in New South Wales late last year. To discuss the Foundation and the development project, LinuxWorld talked to Helen Borrie, a Firebird project admin and documenter who is based in the Central Coast.

  • Tyler Eaves’ Python Tutorial

    Posted in

    Matthew Langham:

    Steven points to this tutorial [pdf] on Python. Even though it is still a work in progress, it looks promising.

    I’ve just begun to skim it, but it looks informative.

  • GPGrelay

    Posted in

    Speaking of public keys, here’s a SourceForge announcement for GPGrelay:

    GPGrelay is a small email-relaying server that uses GnuPG (the GNU Privacy Guard) to sign/encrypt (SMTP-Relay) or verifies/decrypts (POP3-Relay) emails. This enables many email-clients to send and receive emails that are PGP-MIME conforming. This release includes bugfixes and minor feature enhancements.

  • Public Key Cryptography and Weblogs

    Posted in

    Garth Kidd:

    As I see it, the most practical uses of public key encryption in blogging are going to be securing all those other things that we’re currently relying on a lack of idots to keep safe: Trackback, this FOAF thing, communication to community servers, and so on.

    I’m hearing this more and more.  Sam Ruby thinks that signing might be involved in his email comments experiment:

    Signing is the next step, particularly given that e-mail clients already tend to have built in support for this. Ultimately, when the spam starts arriving, only signed e-mails will be accepted.

  • Really SMaL Megapixels

    Posted in

    DPReview:

    SMaL Camera Technologies have today announced their new Ultra-Pocket 1.3-Megapixel digital camera, this builds upon the award-winning 6mm thin Ultra-Pocket® VGA digital still camera. It has the same credit card size of its predecessor, with only a slight increase in thickness due to higher resolution optics, plus a strobe flash and an SD card for expanded memory storage.

  • Blojsom: Download, CVS, Javadoc

    Posted in ,

    David Czarnecki has been hard at work on Blojsom.  It is available on SourceForge, committed to CVS, and the javadocs and site docs are available.

  • Weblog Comments Via Email

    Posted in

    Sam Ruby is experimenting with weblog comments via email.  He’s got the proof of concept up and working.  The rest will follow.