Things to remember:

import socket

#Simply change the host and port values
host = '127.0.0.1'
port = 80

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
try:
    s.connect((host, port))
    s.shutdown(2)
    print("Success connecting to ")
    print(host," on port: ",str(port))
except socket.error as e:
    print("Cannot connect to ")
    print(host," on port: ",str(port))
    print(e)

As always, I appreciate any feedback or modifications that would make this example more useful or easy to understand.

 

The example provided below outlines how to use the urllib library included within Python3 to download a sequence of image files along with comments to describe what is going on.

#import urllib request
import urllib.request
#import urllib error handling
from urllib.error import HTTPError,URLError

#function that downloads a file
def downloadFile(file_name,file_mode,base_url):
    #create the url
    url = base_url + file_name

    # Open the url
    try:
            f = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
            print("downloading ", url)

            # Open our local file for writing
            local_file = open(file_name, "w" + file_mode)
            #Write to our local file
            local_file.write(f.read())
            local_file.close()

    #handle errors
    except HTTPError as e:
            print("HTTP Error:",e.code , url)
    except URLError as e:
            print("URL Error:",e.reason , url)

# Set the range of images to 1-50.It says 51 because the
# range function never gets to the endpoint.
image_range = list(range(1,51))

# Iterate over image range
for index in image_range:
    base_url = 'http ://www.techniqal.com/'
    #create file name based on known pattern
    file_name =  str(index) + ".jpg"
    # Now download the image. If these were text files,
    # or other ascii types, just pass an empty string
    # for the second param ala stealStuff(file_name,'',base_url)
    downloadFile(file_name,"b",base_url)

The key things to learn about converting my old example to the new are outlined below. This was a learning exercise for me, and will hopefully provide enough context for you to understand how to port your own code to Python3.

• There are obvious changes on how to use Urllib vs the old Urllib2 methods. Take a peek at “Dive into Python3″ for more details. He does a much better job describing it than I ever could.
• Print statements are now called as a function.

  Python2:

  print "My Variable is equal to " + myVariable
  

  Python3:

  print("My Variable is equal to ", myVariable)
  

• Except blocks are handled differently when using a try/except.

  Python2:

  except HTTPError, e:
  		print "HTTP Error:",e.code , url
  

  Python3:

  except HTTPError as e:
  		print("HTTP Error:",e.code , url)
  

• The range() function used to return a list , but now returns an iterator object. If you still want to get a list from the range function, see below.

  Python2:

  myRangeList = range(1,100)
  

  Python3:

  myRangeList = list(range(1,100))
  

I’m not a software engineer by trade, so please excuse any syntax oddities. I appreciate any feedback, or more graceful ways to write this code. Leave them in the comments and I’ll happily update my example.

 

The next big question that came to me was “What now?”. I’m not a big fan of the other “cloud” based services like Xmarks, so that wasn’t really an option for me. Although I love the fact that Firefox and Chrome can natively synch bookmarks between browser instances, the organizational structure isn’t great. Anyone with development chops immediately considers rolling their own, and then realizes that they used del.icio.us because they didn’t have the time to start from scratch. For me, this meant looking for web based packages that allowed you to self host the service.

I came across 2 different open source packages that were both easy to implement and also supported searching bookmarks, and tagging. The first is a perl/mysql package called Insipid by Luke Reeves. The second is a php/mysql package called Scuttle by Marcus Campbell. I installed and configured each and I’m going to use them in tandem for a while to see which I prefer. Here is what I have found so far.

Insipid
Info:
Insipid is packaged as a Perl CGI and utilizes Mysql for storage. It isn’t actively developed, but works great and once installed, is really easy to use.
Pros:

• Firefox 3 compatible plugin + bookmarklet support
• Import from del.icio.us
• Snapshot function caches and stores bookmarked content
• JSON interface

Cons:

• Only supports single user(could be a pro depending on use case)
• Required enabling ExecCGI in apache
• Installing perl library requirements wouldn’t be easy for most.

Scuttle: Demo URL
Info: Scuttle is a good looking package written in PHP and uses Mysql for storage. It has been updated as recently as March of 2010, and is generally more aesthetically pleasing than Insipid.
Pros:

• PHP makes it easier to implement
• Multi-user support and bookmark sharing with other users
• In-page media support for audio, documents,images, and video

Cons:

• Firefox plugin doesn’t work in FF3
• No supporting documentation describing features and functionality

I’m going to continue to play around with these and see which best integrates into my daily browsing routine. I’ll also continue to wait and watch until Yahoo either decides to sell, close, or open source delicious. I’m open to hearing any other suggestions for good alternatives. Do you use any other web based bookmarking tools that you love and just can’t live without?

 

What do you do to break the proverbial writers block? I appreciate any feedback.

Or, I guess I can continue to write “emo” posts whining about the fact that I don’t have anything to write about.
Hmmmmm… maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

 

I previously posted about another similar site HERE .

 

.

One of the great things about Firebug is the pluggable format that allows other developers to add features and functionality to firebug. I use two firebug addons that provide their own unique value, and have nice integration points within firebug.
The first, is YSLOW, by Yahoo. It analyzes your pages, and provides performance statistics as well as recommendations on how you can make your page/site load faster. I have been using YSLOW for about a year, and it is a great way to benchmark pages and page elements.

The newest addon that I am just now trying out is Firescope codeburner by Sitepoint. It provides context menus, and a search interface that provide you reference information on html elements, attributes and css properties. So you can tell within one panel whether the changes you are planning to make on a css element will work in IE7, or Firefox, or Opera. I am still getting used to integrating into my workflow, but thus far it seems like a great tool.

I suggest you try not only Firebug, but try extending the functionality and hence the value of an already great plugin, by installing these other addons.

 

If you have any questions or problems , we are always willing to help , just email us at support at lijit dot com.

 

Outside of the obvious perks of having a cloud based development environment/editor , the web based command line elements are what get me excited. They are incorporating components from Ubiquity that enable some similar functionality. All of this adds up to a compelling product that I could see myself using.

My largest complaint with any development environment tends to be portability. I have to export packages, and re-import them if I want to work on something from home, or if I want to code on my laptop. If they can get the version control , integration/export features, and UI solid, then I think this could replace my use of Aptana. If they do it well enough, I may even stop using vim to write code.

Regardless, I think this counts as one of the first cloud based apps that would increase my productivity. All I ask is that they support php and python and give me a simple way to test my code as I write it.

 

A new site is also in the works that will give you even more information about your favorite ski destinations.

So follow the twitter feed, and look forward to a great season. Copper Mountain is opening tomorrow morning, bringing the number of open resorts to three, so it’s time for a snow day.

 

• Search:Google,Lijit(see below),Yahoo,Ask,MSN,Amazon,Wikipedia,flickr
• Twitter
• Email a page, google map, selected web content to any Gmail contact
• Add a Google Calendar item

The list goes on and on(type command-list in the the command window to get a list of all of the command options).
Once you have it installed, visit this page to subscribe to a cool Ubiquity command that allows you to launch a Lijit search from any site that has a Lijit wijit installed.
Once you subscribe, if you are on a blog that uses Lijit, launch Ubiquity , and type liijit + “search query” to search that blogger , and all of their content.
It was a lot of fun to hack this up, and it will definitely inspire me to write some more commands.

More information
Firefox Plugin: https://people.mozilla.com/~avarma/ubiquity-0.1.xpi
Tutorial: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial
Developer Docs: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_Author_Tutorial
Video:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

 

FYI–Blogged this directly from Youtube–took 4 days to show up. Last time I do that.

 

Long ago, when I was slightly younger, in better shape, and maybe even better looking, I threw together a little wordpress plugin that made it a bit easier to add a Lijit Widget to a wordpress blog. Not long after that, I scored a job at Lijit and became so busy I never updated it or even really looked at it again. Until now…

Please ignore the melodramatic paragraph above. The truth is, we decided to get someone with some more wordpress plugin experience to help us out. We enlisted the help of Alex King and the great team at CrowdFavorite to help us create a new wordpress plugin that has more features, and is better integrated with the WordPress platform. The result is a great looking plugin that makes it easy to add Lijit to your wordpress blog,

Whats new:

• Use your existing account, or create a new account from within the plugin admin menu
• Choose between the classic sidebar widget, or hijack the wordpress search widget.
• See your Lijit statistics from your wordpress dashboard.
• Tighter plugin and admin menu integration

Where to get it:

Goto http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-lijit-wijit  to download the plugin and read the install instructions.

Need help or have questions?  Send an email to support@lijit.com .

 

After experimenting with Disqus a few months back, I decided that the best bet for my 25 blog comments was to keep them in WordPress and out of the “cloud”. I think Disqus changed my mind today. They just released a new wordpress plugin that gives you the best of both worlds.

It allows you to keep your comments on your site, which adds extra “hit points” to your SEO , but it also means that comments may actually come up in search results. This is huge since I work for a company that does stuff on the internet that has something to do with search. The new changes, and ease of install make using Disqus as your primary comment manager a no-brainer.

Add a Lijit Widget into the mix, and you have everything a blogger could need. Plus, with easy Disqus/Lijit integration , your search experience gets even better.

Congrats to Daniel Ha, and the rest of the Disqus team.

 

File this one in the ridiculous category. I’ve waited for quite a while to do the Tiger – > Leopard upgrade on my Macbook. But the promise of easy backup with TimeMachine made me make the decision that this was the week to make “the switch” . So I get the install dvd and try to go through all of the steps of getting the install to work. That is when the fun begins. I tried multiple DVD’s, so I know it wasn’t the install media. Regular DVD’s and CD’s work fine, so it probably isn’t the drive.

Problems:

1. DVD only boots 20% of the time..
2. All install methods fail before they get going.
3. DVD gets spit out 80% of the time.

Solution:

1. Turn the macbook on it’s side. Seriously. It has also been suggested that turning it upside down may do the trick.

Photo Courtesy of Tara’s sweet camera

Notice the gap near the back. Although precarious, it gave me enough room to leave the power attached. How stupid is that?

 

While checking out my great stats on Lijit recently, I started to see a pattern. I was able to determine that a large part of my Re-Search(search engine) traffic was coming from a post I did about reading and writing to files in Python back in  2005. In an effort to shamelessly attract more traffic on this topic, I have decided to flesh this post out a bit.

A common task that I run into both in my work life as well as my personal life, revolves around programmatically downloading content from the interwebs. This little code example will illustrate how to use urllib to download a file, and write/save the file contents locally. You may be saying to yourself “Self, can’t I do this in my favorite web browser??” . The answer is “YES”, but it’s a pain in the ass if you have more than 5 files you want to download.

Assume there are a set of images on your favorite website, and they are all named  image1.jpg,image2.jpg,image3.jpg, etc. Now imagine there are 50 images using this naming convention.How do you download them all using python , without struggling to do it one image at a time in your browser? Look below!

# Let's create a function that downloads a file, and saves it locally.
# This function accepts a file name, a read/write mode(binary or text),
# and the base url.

def stealStuff(file_name,file_mode,base_url):
	from urllib2 import Request, urlopen, URLError, HTTPError

	#create the url and the request
	url = base_url + file_name
	req = Request(url)

	# Open the url
	try:
		f = urlopen(req)
		print "downloading " + url

		# Open our local file for writing
		local_file = open(file_name, "w" + file_mode)
		#Write to our local file
		local_file.write(f.read())
		local_file.close()

	#handle errors
	except HTTPError, e:
		print "HTTP Error:",e.code , url
	except URLError, e:
		print "URL Error:",e.reason , url

# Set the range of images to 1-50.It says 51 because the
# range function never gets to the endpoint.
image_range = range(1,51)

# Iterate over image range
for index in image_range:

	base_url = 'http://www.techniqal.com/'
	#create file name based on known pattern
	file_name =  str(index) + ".jpg"
	# Now download the image. If these were text files,
	# or other ascii types, just pass an empty string
	# for the second param ala stealStuff(file_name,'',base_url)
	stealStuff(file_name,"b",base_url)

That’s it. It not only reports on any errors it encountered while downloading, but think of all of the time you just saved… Really though, how important is your time to you if you’re reading this blog???

 

Great pic from the Lijit 2nd birthday party.
If you look real close, you can even see that he is writing a blog post for the Lijit blog.
It’s about time that little monster started earning his keep.

 

I decided to try Windows Live Writer today. The main reason I even considered it, was due to the cool image editing and transformation tools it sports. You can easily insert pictures, and video, and then give the images custom borders(rounded corners, drop shadow etc).

The ability to do this editing inline makes it a valuable tool.

If I can keep it from crashing when switching from preview mode to edit mode, I may stick with it for a while. It is after all a tech preview, and stuck with a bastardized  IE8 install on my win32 box.  If you want to give it a try, you know what to do.

 UPDATE:

In the event someone was having the same crashing issues I had, it could be the MS Script Debugger for Internet Explorer. You can disable script debugging at Tools->Internet Options->Advanced . Once the javascript errors stopped popping up, the Live Writer client would stay alive.

UPDATE 2:

The kind folks on the Windows Live Writer team let me know that this particular issue should be fixed in the next public release. Kudos to them for paying attention to their users, and reaching out when they didn’t have to. They have at least one convert, and I am recommending it to my blogging co-workers as well.

Posted from 1050 Walnut, Boulder, CO