Simon Willison’s Weblog

mod_proxy_balancer gets a thumbs up. Chris Miles explains mod_proxy_balance’s hot spare feature. nginx doesn’t appear to support this, unless I’ve missed something in the documentation.

# 5:44 pm / nginx, apache, chris-miles, modproxybalance

Undelete in Django. Inspired by the conversation about undo the other day, Nathan Ostgard created a simple solution based around custom managers and a trashed_at model field.

# 6:54 pm / orm, custommanagers, django, nathan-ostgard, undelete, undo, python

Building Brickslayer. New tutorial from Michal Wallace on building games in JavaScript using Prototype.

# 9:28 pm / tutorial, michal-wallace, prototype, javascript, brickslayer

One App, One User Account and Multiple OpenIDs. Dr Nic on allowing many OpenIDs to be associated with a single account.

# 9:42 pm / openid, nicwilliams, rails

Disambiguated URLs with Ruby on Rails. Using before_filter to remove trailing slashes and a few lines of lighttpd configuration to kill the www.

# 3:18 pm / nowww, disambiguated, urls, rubyonrails, rails, lighttpd

Django Master Class. Notes and slides from the OSCON tutorial I gave yesterday with Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Jeremy Dunck.

# 3:20 pm / oscon, jeremy-dunck, django, jacob-kaplan-moss, oscon07, speaking, tutorial, python

ActionMonkey (via) SpiderMonkey + Tamarin = ActionMonkey. New JavaScript engine for Mozilla 2, incorporating code from Adobe’s Open Source ActionScript VM.

# 3:29 pm / spidermonkey, tamarin, actionmonkey, javascript, actionscript, adobe, mozilla

Instant Django. Portable Django environment for Windows, no installation required. Can also be run from a USB thumb drive.

# 6:49 pm / instantdjango, django, usb, windows, python

OpenID Bootcamp Tutorial. Slides from the OpenID Bootcamp tutorial I gave this morning with David Recordon.

# 12:39 am / openid, david-recordon, bootcamp, speaking, oscon, oscon07

YSlow. New extension for Firebug (yes, an extension on top of another extension) from the Yahoo! performance team which provides improved performance measurement tools and optimisation advice.

# 4:48 am / firefox, extension, http, firebug, optimisation, performance, yahoo, yslow

Twitter / Natalie: Its announced and official... We’re both moving to Brighton in September.

# 5:22 pm / natalie-downe, moving, brighton, personal, twitter

Brendan Eich: New Projects. Exciting new projects from Mozilla. ActionMonkey is joined by IronMonkey (IronPython/IronRuby on Tamarin) and ScreamingMonkey (Tamarin for IE). Upgrading IE’s JavaScript using the Flash Player as a vector is a game-changing idea.

# 8:05 pm / ironmonkey, actionmonkey, flash, internet-explorer, ie, brendan-eich, ironpython, ironruby, mozilla, screamingmonkey, tamarin, javascript

Mozilla and IronPython: IronMonkey. Interesting to note that all three new Mozilla projects are being lead by experienced Python developers.

# 8:07 pm / python, javascript, mozilla, ironpython, ironmonkey, voidspace

High Scalability (via) New blog about building scalable, reliable sites.

# 8:15 pm / calhenderson, scaling, highscalability

mod_wsgi 1.0 Release Candiate Available. mod_wsgi is shaping up to be an excellent alternative to mod_python.

# 8:21 pm / modwsgi, modpython, python, django

tesseract-ocr. Open source OCR, sponsored by Google. I just sat in on a talk on this at OSCON and the complexity of the problem is pretty incredible.

# 8:23 pm / ocr, tesseract, google, oscon, oscon07

Grub. Jimmy Wales just announced at OSCON that Wikia have acquired Grub from LookSmart, and will be releasing it as open source.

# 5:24 pm / search, oscon07, looksmart, open-source, oscon, jimmywales, grub, wikia

System Administrator Appreciation Day. The last Friday in July is Annual System Administrator Appreciation day. Thank (or hug) your sysadmin today!

# 7:21 pm / sysadmin

Facebook Bankruptcy. I have exactly the same problem.

# 9:11 pm / facebook, bankruptcy, jason-calacanis

Thread Synchronization Mechanisms in Python. Locks, RLocks, Semaphores, Events and Conditions as explained by Fredrik Lundh.

# 9:32 pm / fredrik-lundh, effbot, locks, rlocks, threading, semaphores, events, conditions, tutorial, python

YUI-based Image Cropper Widget. Nice implementation of a useful widget.

# 12:56 pm / widget, yui, javascript

Scale rails from one box to three, four and five. Excellent, concise run-down of what it takes to scale a web application. Most of the advice is easily portable to other frameworks.

# 1:40 pm / rails, scaling, courtenay

Top 10 dotcoms to watch. From the Guardian—Dopplr and Moo both get a mention.

# 2:19 pm / dopplr, moo, guardian, startups

Django weekly roundup: July 30. Every active open source project needs something like this.

# 5:03 pm / django, open-source, clint-ecker

XRAY web developer’s suite (via) Smart new bookmarklet from westciv—kind of like Steve Chipman’s MODI but with the addition of the canvas element for box model visualisation.

# 5:11 pm / jeffrey-zeldman, westciv, xray, bookmarklet, canvas, javascript, steve-chipman

Mouseover DOM Inspector v2.0. Steve Chipman’s excellent debugging bookmarklet created back in 2005—includes useful keyboard shortcuts for quickly manipulating the DOM of the current page.

# 5:13 pm / dom, javascript, steve-chipman, modi, bookmarklet

Legal advice for businesses that are scared of open source (via) Useful for pointing people to.

# 9:59 pm / open-source, legal

Microformats in Google Maps (via) No doubt thanks to the influence of Kevin Marks.

# 11:36 pm / microformats, google-maps, jeremy-keith, kevinmarks, google