• Human readable base conversion

    calendar Oct 4, 2010 · 4 min read · python  ·
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    Code review time… In a conversation about URL shorteners and “Coke Rewards” realized that there was a case where I needed to be able to generate safe character strings that had high reliability for input back by human beings. The typical Base62 systems where there is ambiguity between (O, o and 0) make things hard …


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  • Async life and twitter

    calendar Sep 23, 2010 · 4 min read · amqp python tornado twisted  ·
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    The project of the week, is something that I’ve been putting off for a very long time. Which is to get something running on Extra that’s more than just a nothing site. Part of the problem is that it’s a good domain name that I’ve had parked for a very long time, and it makes real $$ in parking revenue, which I would …


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  • Zendesk and Django integration

    calendar Aug 10, 2010 · 2 min read · python zendesk  ·
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    Part of this post is the gratuitous, gosh that was easy to integrate! Of course part is a small point that I would like developers to think about. First off here’s the code snippet, which owes it’s history to: Zendesk Remote Authentication with Django and Unicode Names and Zendesk remote authenticatin with Djnago (the …


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  • Twisted code review…

    calendar Nov 12, 2009 · 4 min read · python thrift twisted  ·
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    If you have a few minutes and speak python & twisted, it would be useful to have an extra set of eyes on this section of code. The basic idea of this is to be a reconnecting thrift client, such that I can just write simple client.function(a,b,c) calls without having to worry about if there is or isn’t a client and …


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  • Array Intersection Bake-off

    calendar May 15, 2009 · 5 min read · performance java python php ruby  ·
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    One of those moments where an interview question turns into a research project, or is it really a bake off? The simple problem is demonstrate an algorithm to intersect two lists of numbers, fundamentally it’s a question about using modern interpreted languages and their associative array bits to make a simple …


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  • Zend Framework vs. Django Performance

    calendar Apr 24, 2009 · 1 min read · django php zend  ·
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    This is not a scientific nor rigorious test… But, here’s some interesting data for people to chew on. I’ve got a production site built using the Zend Framework and a beta site built using django. What’s interesting is the “Time spent downloading a page” graphs from Google Webmaster Tools. The Zend Framwork Graph — …


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  • Django performance

    calendar Apr 23, 2009 · 4 min read · django  ·
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    I’ve been working on I’ve been working on and still having the love hate with python and django. Areas that I would like see improved: Template Variables : I’m currently doing strange things like: 1<body id="{% block tmpl_id %}{% endblock %}" class="{% block tmpl_class %}{% endblock %}"> and then …


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  • Frameworks and sessions

    calendar Feb 24, 2009 · 1 min read · django frameworks zend  ·
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    I hate sessions, they’re evil. PHP is the worst offender since it’s built into the language and you end up with effective scalability limitations and turds in your temp file system. django isn’t much better since all of the cool admin functionality is built using the contrib.auth module which depends on sessions as …


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  • Fighting spam – greylisting take 2

    calendar Oct 27, 2008 · 2 min read · spam sqlgrey  ·
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    You don’t really want to know, but I’ve spent my morning fighting spam. It’s a periodic activity, makes me almost want to go back to the MailFrontier days when I could focus on these topics as a full time thing. Though on the advantage side I can use a lot more off the shelf components in my battles. If you recall I’ve …


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  • Alternative to OpenID

    calendar Oct 15, 2008 · 3 min read · authentication DNS OpenID  ·
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    I’ve never been a big fan of OpenID, it feels like an interesting solution to a problem, but not the solution that makes sense. For starters it requires me to learn something new, which as an “average” user I don’t want to do. Quick education for those not familiar with OpenID. OpenID allows you to have a single …


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