Simon Willison’s Weblog

Introducing Operator. New microformat detecting Firefox extension, developed at IBM and released by Mozilla Labs. Examples are from Yahoo! Local, Upcoming and Flickr.

# 18th December 2006, 4:36 pm / extension, firefox, flickr, ibm, microformats, mozilla, mozillalabs, upcoming, yahoo

__builtins__ usage. Avoid using __builtins__ if you want your code to be compatible with IronPython.

# 18th December 2006, 3:22 pm / ironpython, python

SSH ControlPath/ControlMaster. How to get OpenSSH v4 and above to re-use an existing SSH connection for multiple sessions, dramatically speeding up connection start times.

# 18th December 2006, 11:53 am / nickburch, ssh, torchbox

Django on Dreamhost: incomplete headers. Fix this problem on Dreamhost by renaming django.fcgi to dispatch.fcgi (they special-case for Rails users; Django users can tag along).

# 17th December 2006, 9:36 am / django, dreamhost, fastcgi, rails

Ma.gnolia supports OpenID. Text book implementation: you can associate your OpenID with an existing account and log in using either OpenID or your regular username and passwerd.

# 17th December 2006, 9:29 am / magnolia, openid

phpMyID. A simple, stand-alone OpenID server in a single PHP script with no dependencies. Makes managing your own identity trivial.

# 17th December 2006, 9:06 am / openid, php

Meta-classes Made Easy. Fuzzyman introduces a metaclass factory for applying a decorator to every method of a class.

# 17th December 2006, 12:42 am / decorators, fuzzyman, metaclasses, python

RoundedCornr. Generates code for rounded corner boxes (with optional graded fills—very Web 2.0). Slightly different way of nesting divs to the way I’ve used in the past.

# 16th December 2006, 11:49 pm / css, gradients, roundedcorners

YUI CSS Grid builder (via) The YUI CSS grid system can be hard to get your head around. This interactive tool makes it much easier to figure out.

# 16th December 2006, 10:30 pm / css, javascript, yui

SubWiki (via) A wiki that uses Subversion for its data repository, implemented as a Python CGI.

# 16th December 2006, 7:19 pm / python, subversion, wiki

Google Code gets wikis and file downloads. Someone finally wrote a project wiki that stores its pages inside the Subversion repository.

# 16th December 2006, 12:35 pm / google, google-code, subversion, wiki

An open letter to Mike Arrington. Former co-editor Mike Butcher’s take on the demise of TechCrunch UK. “Citizen Kane 2.0”.

# 16th December 2006, 12:19 pm / blogging, mike-arrington, mike-butcher, techcrunch, techcrunchuk

Fast and Simple Usability Testing. Nat’s 24ways article on practical usability testing (and hedgehogs).

# 16th December 2006, 12:20 am / hedgehogs, natalie-downe, usability

Never store passwords in a database! The reddit.com developers just learnt this the hard way. It might be time to change some of your passwords.

# 16th December 2006, 12:01 am / reddit, security

Why do so many reddit users hate java? The answers provide a good overview as to why Java has fallen out of favour with the alpha-hacker crowd.

# 15th December 2006, 2:20 pm / java, reddit

[Python-3000] Refactoring tool available. Guido’s initial work on a tool for converting Python 2.x code to Python 3K.

# 15th December 2006, 2:19 pm / guido-van-rossum, python

’National interest’ halts arms corruption inquiry. “It has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest.”

# 15th December 2006, 2:09 pm / law, politics, scandal, uk

Abusing Amazon images (via) Amazon have an amazingly flexible API for generating and modifying product images.

# 14th December 2006, 7:38 pm / amazon, api

Google’s own cornershop. Google groups has an undocumented API for generating rounded corners.

# 14th December 2006, 7:34 pm / api, google

Real-World Passwords. Random passwords phished from MySpace are surprisingly decent.

# 14th December 2006, 2:14 pm / bruce-schneier, myspace, passwords, phishing, security

Curse launches with Django platform. Handles 500k visits/hour!

# 14th December 2006, 3:02 am / curse, django, scaling

Battery Expansion. In which James Duncan Davidson’s MacBook Pro battery goes critical.

# 13th December 2006, 11:56 am / battery, james-duncan-davidson, osx

Statement Functions. Smart workaround for the lack of multi-line lambdas in Python.

# 12th December 2006, 7:08 pm / lambda, python

Making GWT Better. Explains the philosophy behind GWT. It’s all about the tools!

# 12th December 2006, 5:53 pm / google, gwt, javascript, philosophy

GWT 1.3 Release Candidate is 100% Open Source. At least you can see how the code generator works now.

# 12th December 2006, 5:50 pm / google, gwt, javascript, open-source

Russian squirrel pack “kills dog” (via) “The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat”.

# 12th December 2006, 1:59 pm / squirrels

100% Python SCGI implementation. SCGI is like FastCGI but simpler.

# 12th December 2006, 1:37 pm / python, scgi

How many taps in a URL? Designing URLs for entry on a mobile phone.

# 12th December 2006, 12:28 pm / cameronmarlow, mobile, urls

Fletcher Capstan Table: Dinner Party Transformer. Best. Table. Evah.

# 12th December 2006, 8:59 am / table, woodwork

A General Theory of Programming Language Relativity. Functional languages have clearer levels of indirection.

# 12th December 2006, 8:56 am / functional, programming