CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-03-13 04:27:40 (13 comments, 3 reshares, 34 +1s)

I am at my wits' end. In Office 2011 on the Mac, specifically Powerpoint, how do I turn off the automatic substitution of a smiley graphic when I type ":-)" ? I have turned off every single option under AutoCorrect and it still does this. :-(

2013-03-09 00:51:27 (30 comments, 8 reshares, 126 +1s)

Bad user experience with Google wallet and Google apis console: getting monthly bills for $0.00. Worse user experience: being threatened with suspension of the account when the credit card expires.

2013-02-28 22:23:08 (10 comments, 3 reshares, 42 +1s)

OH on python-dev: "This has come up before.  Classes have metaclasses (and _prepare_). Modules have loaders.  Poor, poor functions.  Because of the same concerns you've already expressed regarding the criticality of function performance, they miss out on all sorts of fun--inside their highly optimized box looking out at the other types showing off their cool new features all the time. It just isn't fair. :)"

2013-02-16 02:44:04 (22 comments, 42 reshares, 164 +1s)

Please be civil in the Python TM dispute! http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2013/02/asking-for-civility-during-our.html

2013-02-15 15:09:18 (74 comments, 312 reshares, 659 +1s)

HALP! The Python trademark is in danger in Europe. Please help if you've used the name Python in Europe for your business.

2013-02-02 04:48:06 (10 comments, 11 reshares, 40 +1s)

Under 400 tickets left for PyCon. I predict tickets will be gone by the Superbowl. Get yours now!

2013-02-01 18:05:47 (7 comments, 19 reshares, 58 +1s)

This awesome loose-sheeted book with one paper airplane folding instruction per day (cleverly folded out of the previous day's sheet) is amazing fun, and the secret agenda of the authors is clearly to teach origami techniques. Also serves as a calendar. The packaging even folds into a sturdy stand!

2013-01-28 02:50:02 (28 comments, 12 reshares, 129 +1s)

Minecraft needs a fire department. We just accidentally burned down a big house that had taken a lot of time to build by playing with lava. :-(

2013-01-12 02:43:36 (46 comments, 26 reshares, 285 +1s)

There's a new UI annoyance that I see more and more on mobile platforms (both Android and iOS). It's two buttons side by side that represent a binary choice. That by itself is not so bad (often the choice is not between turning a specific feature on or off, but between two different view, modes or whatever).

The obnoxious thing is that the styling of the two buttons is such that you CANNOT TELL WHICH ONE IS SELECTED (unless by clicking on one and thus having 50% chance of changing the view). E.g. the buttons have two different shades of gray, or two different shades of blue, without any other features that clearly say "selected".

I think the first time I saw this it was in the Android Kindle app(*), where the choices are between books on device and books in your library. The latest occurrence is in the new (otherwise cool!) Dropbox 2.3 client for Android, where the... more »

2013-01-08 18:18:26 (19 comments, 38 reshares, 43 +1s)

On December 28th, an unknown attacker used a previously unknown remote code exploit on http://wiki.python.org/. The attacker was able to get shell access as the "moin" user, but no other services were affected.

Some time later, the attacker deleted all files owned by the "moin" user, including all instance data for both the Python and Jython wikis. The attack also had full access to all MoinMoin user data on all wikis. In light of this, the Python Software Foundation encourages all wiki users to change their password on other sites if the same one is in use elsewhere. We apologize for the inconvenience and will post further news as we bring the new and improved wiki.python.org online.

If you have any questions about this incident please contact jnoller@python.org. Thank you for your patience.
... more »

2013-01-07 00:59:12 (25 comments, 40 reshares, 162 +1s)

Django and Python 3. A done deal???
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5009484

2013-01-05 01:00:56 (31 comments, 1 reshares, 25 +1s)

Did anyone else who watched "Django unchained" think that the voice of the German doctor sounded exactly like Mythbusters presenter Adam Savage?

2013-01-04 02:02:26 (9 comments, 21 reshares, 110 +1s)

Make your own Python puppet. Makes me want to learn to sew! (Also check the videos linked from the top menu.)

2013-01-01 16:02:38 (8 comments, 29 reshares, 182 +1s)

Happy Pythonic New Year! (Animation by +Yuko Honda -- you have to click on the link to see it).

2012-12-30 02:57:42 (39 comments, 3 reshares, 121 +1s)

First day playing Minecraft on the computer.

2012-12-16 05:29:34 (43 comments, 62 reshares, 438 +1s)

Somebody needs to invent better algorithms for notification to multiple devices.

I have two tablets (one iPad, one Android), a cell phone, and a desktop computer. I use all of them at different times. They all have GMail, Twitter, Facebook and G+. The latter three also send email notifications in some cases. I do like seeing the notifications on any device that I may currently be using (or which may be nearby), but once I "read" a message on one device, I want the notification to go away on other devices.

GMail does this reasonably well -- if I archive or delete some messages on one device, the other devices remove it from my inbox view. But the mobile apps for Tw, Fb and G+ all seem to remain in their "excited" state until I ack the message on each device separate -- and even if the apps don't, it seems that the iPad notification service has no way back, or... more »

2012-12-14 23:05:48 (33 comments, 15 reshares, 89 +1s)

Got my review copy of Python for Kids by Jason Briggs (No Starch Press). It looks nice, it uses Python 3, but I'm still somewhat disappointed -- the structure is the same as that of almost every programming book (download+install, hello world, variables, strings, lists, and so on to turtle graphics). I liked Hello World! by father-and-son team Darren and Carter Sande (Manning) better, and then there's Python für Kids (in German) by Gregor Lingl, whose xturtle implementation made it into the Python stdlib... Still, if you want Python 3 for kids, this book is for you.

2012-12-13 21:16:14 (18 comments, 38 reshares, 211 +1s)

Alfred P. Sloan has given $1M to IPython: http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/ipython-dev/2012-December/010799.html Congrats +Fernando Perez and team!

2012-12-07 19:09:15 (103 comments, 232 reshares, 921 +1s)

Today's my last day at Google. In January I start a new job at Dropbox: https://tech.dropbox.com/2012/12/welcome-guido/ We're parting as the best of friends (check out my previous G+ post).

2012-12-07 18:26:13 (26 comments, 9 reshares, 150 +1s)

I came in this morning to a redecorated desk and office...

2012-11-06 22:15:54 (18 comments, 104 reshares, 173 +1s)

Has anyone tried CheckIO? http://www.checkio.org/

2012-10-23 22:57:04 (9 comments, 379 reshares, 665 +1s)

A cool online book on open source projects: http://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html (hi +Greg Wilson!)

2012-10-16 20:03:37 (37 comments, 4 reshares, 41 +1s)

When did "here's the thing" become everybody's favorite catchphrase?

2012-10-13 01:59:43 (82 comments, 141 reshares, 314 +1s)

Wanted: experts in Twisted, Tornado, asyncore or other Python async APIs (greenlets/gevent, Stackless, libevent all welcome!). In python-ideas@python.org we're trying to hash out the async API for the future (for the Python stdlib) and we need input from expert users of the current generation of async APIs.

2012-10-11 14:50:27 (5 comments, 13 reshares, 15 +1s)

#appengine #django-nonrel #survey

2012-10-10 14:42:52 (16 comments, 4 reshares, 67 +1s)

My son and I are enjoying Minecraft on our iPad. One time I loved the experience of coming "home" in the dark to our cave, which had lots of flaming torches around the entrance...

2012-10-04 22:36:43 (6 comments, 28 reshares, 76 +1s)

Video interview on O'Reilly radar is live: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/10/checking-in-on-python.html

2012-09-29 15:56:40 (66 comments, 135 reshares, 711 +1s)

The official Python 3.3.0 release is out! Congrats to Georg and the team. http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-September/632068.html This is the best Python release ever. Download here: http://python.org/download/releases/3.3.0/

2012-09-27 18:47:17 (17 comments, 7 reshares, 58 +1s)

The Nigerian spammers are branching out: I got a message offering "Quality Nigerian Website Design". Are they sure about their brand? :-)

2012-09-22 23:11:19 (9 comments, 3 reshares, 59 +1s)

Wildlife in HMB.

2012-09-18 23:47:58 (33 comments, 193 reshares, 363 +1s)

Online Python Tutor: Web-Based Program Visualization for CS Education

As part of his CS education work at Google, +Philip Guo has been developing an open-source educational tool called Online Python Tutor (http://www.pythontutor.com). This tool enables teachers and students to write Python programs directly in the web browser and then single-step forwards and backwards to visualize what the computer is doing as it executes those programs.

Program visualization for CS education is nothing new -- researchers have been developing these sorts of tools for decades. However, most of these tools never reach far beyond the confines of the researchers’ home universities due to the difficulty of installing and configuring the visualization software. What makes Online Python Tutor unique and effective is that it’s the first known tool to adapt time-tested ideas from the researchlite... more »

2012-09-17 16:38:35 (18 comments, 16 reshares, 159 +1s)

+1000 on today's XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1109/

2012-09-17 14:46:22 (46 comments, 20 reshares, 55 +1s)

I'm looking for books on Python. This is a frequent question from random strangers, and honestly I don't have good answers, since I don't read Python books myself, and there are way too many now to review. There are some wiki pages on python.org but they feel a bit chaotic. This is your chance to recommend your favorite (or review your least favorite) Python book. Specific request: GUI books.

2012-09-16 15:47:19 (31 comments, 3 reshares, 104 +1s)

Maybe it's just me, but I find it odd that the only times I get Firefox's "This website needs a plugin" banner, it's about Flash, and the automatic install offered doesn't work. Come on, what's the point of a feature (automatic install) that doesn't work for the number one most common use case?

2012-09-10 22:55:34 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 57 +1s)

Guido van Rossum was tagged in Guido van Rossum's album.

2012-09-10 19:41:50 (98 comments, 486 reshares, 1344 +1s)

Some patterns for fast Python. Know any others?

- Avoid overengineering datastructures. Tuples are better than objects (try namedtuple too though). Prefer simple fields over getter/setter functions.

- Built-in datatypes are your friends. Use more numbers, strings, tuples, lists, sets, dicts. Also check out the collections library, esp. deque.

- Be suspicious of function/method calls; creating a stack frame is expensive.

- Don't write Java (or C++, or Javascript, ...) in Python.

- Are you sure it's too slow? Profile before optimizing!

- The universal speed-up is rewriting small bits of code in C. Do this only when all else fails.

2012-09-10 19:18:29 (11 comments, 9 reshares, 58 +1s)

Phrase of the day: "pit of success". If you Google for this it's an old concept (in web years :-) but I heard it for the first time today. The concept is simple: make it easy for your users to do the right thing, as opposed to a peak, which requires effort.

2012-08-27 01:23:58 (29 comments, 37 reshares, 205 +1s)

Python 3.3 is almost baked: 3.3rc1 is out. Congrats to the team!  http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.3.0/

2012-08-22 18:59:42 (5 comments, 14 reshares, 86 +1s)

One of my favorite movie characters is Winston Wolf, the problem solver played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. I feel like that when I'm asked to help debug a really interesting problem in a Python program. (Without the blood. :-) Winston Wolf - I Solve Problems

2012-08-21 17:10:15 (48 comments, 10 reshares, 74 +1s)

I AM A FEMINIST. There. I stood on a chair and I said it. If you wonder why, read Caitlin Moran's excellent new feminist manifesto (http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Woman-Caitlin-Moran/dp/0062124293).

2012-08-15 19:24:28 (19 comments, 120 reshares, 371 +1s)

Good use for a Windows book...

2012-08-15 15:01:20 (34 comments, 5 reshares, 27 +1s)

What Python implementations exist besides CPython, Jython, IronPython, and PyPy? (I count Cython as a tool that goes with CPython.)

2012-08-08 00:35:41 (8 comments, 1 reshares, 25 +1s)

Today Orlijn caught his own dinner. I've never done that...

2012-07-17 08:45:29 (12 comments, 3 reshares, 29 +1s)

Probably a bad idea: creating a social website based on the idea of spamming random strangers asking for donations so you can "build the next big social network". http://www.gofundme.com/vg7f8?utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Emails

2012-07-08 20:21:28 (18 comments, 4 reshares, 105 +1s)

My apartment room in Zürich is like last Wednesday's XKCD comic (http://xkcd.com/1077/) except without the box of junk...

2012-07-08 19:57:09 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 21 +1s)

The Swiss are such orderly people...

2012-07-08 19:54:10 (49 comments, 2 reshares, 55 +1s)

Travel by train is so much better than air travel... Can we have our high speed train in California soon, please?

2012-07-08 19:52:16 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 55 +1s)

Impressions from the EuroPython sprints. I had a wonderful time!

2012-07-07 14:44:04 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 34 +1s)

Yay Plone community! http://plone.org/news/plone-at-europython-with-guido-van-rossum-celebrating-our-10th-year-here-with-us

2012-07-06 15:43:33 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 20 +1s)

Ok, one more from the Palazzo Vecchio. View from a round window overlooking one of the internal open spaces.