Blue Sky On Mars

Just in time for today’s documentation sprint, and packed with more
goodies than originally planned, TurboGears 0.9a5 (“incredible”) is
out!
This release unifies logging under the Python standard library logging module and makes it conveniently configurable. We’ve also added a new cron-like scheduler (based on Irmen de Jong’s Kronos). And, what I’m sure is going to be a big relief to our Python 2.3 users, Simon Belak has incorporated Phillip Eby’s convenient, 2.3-compatible decorator syntax:

[expose()]
def index(self):
pass

Of course, Python 2.4 users can continue to use the standard @expose decorator syntax. But the example above is a whole lot more convenient than index = expose()(index). Especially given that TurboGears now has several valuable decorators to determine how your code behaves when accessed via the web.

There’s a lot more in this release: continued improvements to the widgets API, quickstart improvements, your usual round of bug fixes, etc.

As of now, there are no docs for the new features, but we’ll start
correcting that at 10AM Eastern today (join us at #turbogears on
freenode if you dare!).

Several people put in quite a bit of effort this week to make this
release possible (many of the folks in the Contributors section for this release
were quite active on the trunk list this week). The plan is for this
to be the last “0.9 alpha” release, so we pulled out the stops to get
the last upheavals done.

Check out the changes in the TurboGears Changelog

Mark Ramm is going to be introducing TurboGears to the Ann Arbor Java Users Group on Tuesday, May 2nd. Mark has some experience with Struts, so I’m sure he’ll have no trouble demonstrating the fun that is using a dynamic language like Python and a framework like TurboGears.

I want a Freeware Utility to … 450+ common problems solved

I am very happy to report that development of Zesty News is now restarting. After quite a bit of discussion with different people, followed by a bit of contract hammering, I’ve just signed a contract with Appropriate Solutions, Inc. (ASI) to continue the development of Zesty News. I will continue wearing the product manager, marketing and sales hats. I’ve really enjoyed talking with Ray Cote of ASI these past couple of months, and think they’ll be a great partner on this.

I’m also really excited to have the development pick back up. Even after a few months of stagnation, Zesty News still has unique features and aspects to it, and we’re going to push even further on those in the coming months as we see the product through to completion.

There are some software version numbering conventions that people rely on a little bit. 1.1 is newer than 1.0. alpha is less solid than beta. The exact definitions of a move to 1.1 or from alpha to beta are variable from project to project. People do whatever works for their project, and that’s cool. As long as users can figure out what they’re downloading and have reasonable expectations, it really doesn’t matter.

I do have a bit of a pet peeve with the way a number of projects use the term “release candidate” (often appearing as “rc” in version numbers). Release candidate is very descriptive: it is a candidate for the final release. The idea is that you put the release candidate out there, make sure nothing silly crops up, and then tag that exact same code as the final release. That’s the whole point of a release candidate. That bit of code was thought to have been ready for final release and you’re just doing a sanity check.

Instead, I’ve seen projects that introduce fairly significant changes between release candidates. I just saw a project which has had rc6 out for 2.5 months! Release candidates should be followed fairly quickly by the final release (the bigger the project, the more leeway you’d likely need in the timing). It’s just hard to envision a need to wait so long and have so many release candidates. Unless, of course, it wasn’t actually a “release candidate” but rather just another beta.

Monkey with “alpha”, “beta” and “gamma” releases all you want, but at least recognize “rc” for what it is because it’s just plain English.

The good folks of Frozen Bear bring us tunelog which gives you all kinds of social web 2.0 music metadata madness. It’s got a complete, documented API and can keep track of what you listen to in iTunes on Windows or Pandora, if you wish. They’re making good use of TurboGears, as the API supports both XML and JSON output.

A conservative magazine (Human Events) enlisted some folks to name the

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Not surprisingly, The Communist Manifesto topped the list by a wide margin. The amusing part, and I wouldn’t be posting this if there wasn’t one, is #10 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by Keynes. Here’s part of the Human Events summary:

The book is a recipe for ever-expanding government. When the business cycle threatens a contraction of industry, and thus of jobs, he argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity. FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.

Regardless of what one may think of FDR, the fact is that he had some pretty difficult challenges as President (the Great Depression and World War II). And yep, he did run up the debt. What’s funny though is that this paragraph wants to saddle the Democrat FDR with our current $8 trillion debt, which is more largely attributable to Republicans Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.

Sign one that I’m a geek: I saw this on Fark. Sign two: some of these are just way too funny.

“Star Wars” vs. “Star Trek”

Mark beat me to posting about this: TurboGears Documentation Sprint!

That’s right, a documentation sprint! Saturday, April 29th at the Humantech office and on the #turbogears channel at freenode. Documentation for all of the cool new stuff is the biggest bug TurboGears has right now, so we want to get that fixed in a big way. There’s a lot that can be done, even for folks who don’t know enough about all of the new features to write about them.

Want to join in? Speak up on the sprint mailing list.

I’m remiss in not mentioning that Mark Ramm will be talking TurboGears at Penguicon 4.0 this weekend! There are quite a few interesting topics on the agenda. If you’re in the Detroit area, check it out and say howdy to Mark.