Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Cats or Dogs (via) Finds statistically interesting facts based on people answering a sequence of “X or Y” questions. Written in Django by James Tauber in less than four hours.

# 11th February 2007, 1:49 am / catsordogs, django, james-tauber, statistics

boto. Python library for accessing Amazon’s S3, SQS and EC2 Web Services, with excellent documentation.

# 11th February 2007, 12:17 am / amazon, aws, boto, ec2, python, s3, sqs

About LiveBus.org. I love sites with a colophon. LiveBus.org is powered by Django.

# 10th February 2007, 10:57 pm / colophon, django, livebus

LiveBus.org (via) Brilliant Google Maps mashup in a similar vein to Chicago Crime—displays screen-scraped bus timetable information for Oxfordshire and Surrey in a far more useful format.

# 10th February 2007, 10:56 pm / chicagocrime, google-maps, james-wheare, livebus, maps, mashup, oxford

OpenID (and TypeKey) using native OpenSSL functions in PHP. Wez Furlong shows how a small patch to PHP’s OpenSSL support makes it a whole lot easier to perform the cryptography behind OpenID (at the moment you need to use the bc or gmp modules).

# 10th February 2007, 10:49 pm / openid, openssl, php, wez-furlong

Blanket Fort. xkcd on why you still want one.

# 10th February 2007, 4:30 pm / forts, funny, xkcd

No boys allowed. Ask MetaFilter on how to build the perfect fort.

# 10th February 2007, 4:29 pm / ask-metafilter, forts

Sumo! A Generic Microformats Parser For JavaScript. Dan Webb’s BarCamp talk on Metaprogramming JavaScript will be a must-see.

# 9th February 2007, 10:57 am / barcamp, dan-webb, javascript, microformats, sumo

Hanselminutes Podcast on OpenID. Good podcast discussion on OpenID, from a .NET developer’s perspective.

# 9th February 2007, 9:19 am / openid, podcasts

Parallel Python. A simple mechanism for running Python code in parallel across multiple processes and/or machines, based on submitting jobs and retrieving their results.

# 9th February 2007, 1:51 am / parallelpython, python

The Psychology of Security. I haven’t even started on this yet, but I bet it’s worth reading.

# 9th February 2007, 1:27 am / bruce-schneier, psychology, security

.php? .cgi? .who-cares? J-P Stacey argues that “URLs need to be hackable by the developer as well as by the user”. There’s certainly room for improvement in keeping complex URL structures maintainable from a server-side developer’s perspective.

# 9th February 2007, 1:01 am / cgi, urls

Mono 1.2.3 has been released (via) More importantly, it ships with IronPython in the form of Seo Sanghyeon’s Community Edition.

# 9th February 2007, 12:55 am / ironpython, mono, python

Add OpenSearch to your site in five minutes. OpenSearch is easy. DeWitt demonstrates how you don’t even need a site search engine to implement it if you take advantage of Google’s site: operator.

# 9th February 2007, 12:52 am / dewitt-clinton, google, opensearch

First Oxford Geek Night a success! It really was the best evening geek event I’ve been to in a very long time.

# 9th February 2007, 12:51 am / natalie-downe, oxford, oxford-geek-nights, oxfordgeeks

The OpenID Directory. A new directory of OpenID consumers and providers. If they can make sure that the listed sites actually let you log in this could become a really valuable resource.

# 9th February 2007, 12:19 am / openid

Pipes. New Yahoo! service for combining and remixing Atom/RSS feeds using a really sophisticated drag-and-drop UI.

# 8th February 2007, 7:52 am / atom, draganddrop, pipes, rss, syndication

Why people hate SEO... (and why SMO is bulls$%t). Jason Calacanis explains SMO, or “Social Media Optimisation”—digg spamming now has its own TLA.

# 8th February 2007, 7:47 am / jason-calacanis, seo, smo, spam, tla

method_missing: best saved for last. My least favourite thing about Ruby is the cultural tendency towards introducing weird new bugs in other people’s code.

# 7th February 2007, 2:16 pm / methodmissing, ruby

TurboGears and Pylons (a technical comparison). Ian Bicking explores the differences between the two, and finds that the most significant is probably CherryPy v.s. Paste.

# 7th February 2007, 1:51 pm / cherrypy, paste, pylons, python, turbogears

Useless Account. “Change your password 1000 times a day... For Free!”

# 7th February 2007, 1:29 pm / funny, uselessaccount

Thoughts on Music. Steve Jobs comes out against DRM, lays the blame squarely on the big four music companies.

# 7th February 2007, 2:25 am / apple, drm, steve-jobs

CardSpace & OpenID: Working together. A more detailed explanation of what the Microsoft OpenID collaboration actually means.

# 7th February 2007, 1:58 am / cardspace, microsoft, openid, scott-kveton

Microsoft & OpenID. HUGE news. Microsoft are officially supporting OpenID, through integration with CardSpace.

# 7th February 2007, 1:56 am / cardspace, microsoft, openid

Em Calculator. Tool for working out CSS relative em values, useful for creating completely resizable layouts.

# 6th February 2007, 2:03 pm / css, ems, layout

Live DOM Viewer (via) Neat tool from Hixie that provides an insight in to what browsers are actually thinking.

# 6th February 2007, 1:12 am / browsers, dom, ian-hickson, javascript

Running the DRM Gauntlet. DRM war stories from the Songbird team. Windows Media and QuickTime both block debuggers in different ways.

# 6th February 2007, 12:55 am / drm, quicktime, songbird, windowsmedia

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. Absolutely worth watching—don’t be put off by the title.

# 5th February 2007, 11:05 pm / web2, youtube

The window.onload problem (still). Peter Michaux offers the most comprehensive overview of this important topic to date.

# 5th February 2007, 8:13 pm / javascript, onload

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