Blue Sky On Mars

• just got a ScanSnap S510M. Wow. That plus that included FineReader make for some fine paperlessness. #
• just discovered that my annoying %00 in URLs problem with Twhirl is an interaction between AIR and WebKit nightlies bug. Back to Safari! #
• @voidspace my ScanSnap came with FineReader 3 for the Mac. It works just dandy. I just press the Scan button on the scanner and then FR- … #
• @voidspace FineReader Mac seems to be deprecated (go to their site and try to buy), but at least it’s universal and works fine on Leopard! #
• @dmarsh I haven’t even been to the new Borders that’s 2 minutes from my house. Amzn Prime is too cheap and convenient #

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• Cubit: Approximate Matching for Peer-to-Peer Overlays
  (tags: bittorrent p2p search distributed azereus)
• DISCIPLINING BOTHERSOME BEHAVIOR: GENERAL TIPS
  Useful tips from Dr. Sears.
  (tags: parenting drsears discipline)

• @dalmaer Watch Star Wars ep 1 again and see if you have that same impression. I thought Crystal Skull was better than Temple of Doom #
• @ianlandsman re: music as teen: true for many, not for me. I’ve picked up tons of music since the 80s lotsa new favorites. (recently: Robyn) #

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• globalEval javascript function
  A function that works in every browser for evaluating JavaScript code in the global namespace. Oddly enough, it’s in a comment attached to Dean Edwards’ blog post about sandboxing code so that it’s *not* in the global space.
  (tags: javascript programming)

Justin Davis has just announced that Christophe de Vienne is the new maintainer of the TurboGears Web Services (TGWS) project. Thank you Christophe for carrying this project forward! I consider it a good sign for a project’s health when it can make the transition between maintainers, which is something both TurboGears and TGWS have done.

TGWS, if you’re not familiar with it, is a multiprotocol web services extension for TurboGears 1.

• Gradle
  Groovy-based build tool that seems to occupy a similar space as Paver.
  (tags: java make buildtools programming)

• clinton/obama ad from SNL: http://tinyurl.com/6he8de #
• @dalmaer has just confirmed the new iPhone lands June 9th #
• @GothAlice hopefully Paver 0.8 fixes your TG2 install problem. #
• @dylans you might want the Automatic Upgrade plugin for wordpress: http://tinyurl.com/2ghuau #

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For various reasons, I released Paver 0.7.3 on Friday and Paver 0.8 yesterday. I have an idea of what the coming 1.0’s zc.buildout integration will be like, and I think it will be quite cool and useful.

In the meantime, though, I’ve got some new features that set the stage for things I need to do in 1.0. Specifically, you can now pass in a dictionary in your options search ordering. So, you can pull options from any source you’ve got at the time the task is running and stick them at the front of the line. I expect to use this in buildout options handling.

A nice new feature is the ability to set options on the command line. You can do something like:

paver some.option=hello task1 some.option=goodbye task2

Doing that, paver will set some.option to hello, run task1 and then change the option to goodbye before running task2.

The new cog.include_markers and cog.delete_code options allow you to remove Cog’s markers from the output and instead put a nicer bit of text to say where the snippet of code came from. Letting the user know where a sample code snippet came from is quite valuable, so I want to make it possible to do so in as pleasing a way as possible.

For Paver’s Getting Started Guide, I ended up not using the new include_markers feature and instead just changed the Cog delimiters. I did this because Paver runs shell commands in addition to including file sections when generating the docs. I wanted those shell commands to be included. I think the new markers are more pleasant to look at, and I’ll be curious to get feedback since I heard from more than one person that the Cog delimiters looked like they were left in by mistake.

Paver is starting to get some traction as it has picked up its first patches from outsiders, and I’ve started to get some feedback on breakage from Windows users (fixed in 0.8). Mark let me put Paver into TurboGears 2, and I think it will help out there, so that will introduce quite a number more people to the project. As always, come and join us on the mailing list if you have any questions or problems!

“The states I’ve won total 300 electoral votes. If we had the same rules as the Republicans, I would be nominee right now”

Hillary Clinton

That may be true, though I’m sure she’s counting Michigan and Florida despite the fact that Michigan didn’t even have Obama on the ballot. So it’s actually “if we had the same rules as the Republicans and if I hadn’t agreed to punish the states that went early.”

Hillary has had to continually come up with new kinds of math to reason as to why she is still going. I’d like to offer up an approach she hasn’t taken yet:

That’s her current, pre-Kentucky, delegate tally from CNN.com. When written like that, if you kind of squint at it a bit, it looks like 2753 which very comfortably gives her the nomination. Congrats, Hillary!

p.s. to Hillary fans: I would undoubtedly vote for Hillary over McCain, if that were the choice. I just believe that dealing in “if-only” scenarios and continuing to waste money (money that could otherwise go toward the general election) on a campaign that is doomed to fail just weakens the democratic party. After today, Obama will only be about 50 delegates away from the nomination.

• Amazon byteflow: Hgshelve
  Python module to easily store versioned JSON data.
  (tags: hg mercurial programming python)
• Video: McCain’s YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare
  Never say anything on camera if you don’t want it to be quoted back at you. McCain looks like a major flip flopper.
  (tags: politics video)
• codepad
  A pastebin that *runs the code*. Very cool, with a well-thought out security setup that makes the remotely pasted code secure.
  (tags: development pastebin)