Minh’s Notes

• Python: Myths about Indentation. Python tends to care how you indent your code, but as most any Python programmer could tell you, that fact doesn’t change squat. (Towards the bottom there’s even a handy tidbit or two for those of us taking CS 143.) [1]
• Explaining the Excel Bug. What looks like a comically random error in Excel is caused by a classic problem with storing floating point (non-integer) numbers in binary. To the Office team’s defense, you could write a book on rounding in JavaScript.
• Google Docs puts Google Users at Risk. Interesting – and, if left unpatched, remarkably powerful – security vulnerability in Google Documents.
• In Memory Of The Original MySpace.com. Back in the heyday of GeoCities, Netscape Communicator, and dialup, MySpace was a free file-sharing service. Their business model didn’t quite pan out, and we have Tom to thank for transforming the site into the ubiquitous wasteland (map) it is today.

Entry №1153, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 11:55 PM | Edit | Permalink
Categories: Programming, Python, Summary, Web Archaeology | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Xanga finally fixed their RSS feeds to include the dates of each post properly. I would say that with no trivial amount of jubilation, except that their fix broke my fix. All those old posts by Rick Coffey and Drew Shick have taken over the world. Again. Back in June, I hacked together a little patch for Planet Xavier, allowing Planet to understand these messed up feeds that Xanga was pumping out. I also made provisions to prevent pX from spewing out all these old entries if and when (really, just if) Xanga was to ever fix their feeds.

It didn’t work.

So, for today only, what’s old is new again, and I’m scrambling to fire up PythonWin so I can undo what I struggled for months to do, way back when. Oh, the joys of not worrying about memory allocation or pointer types in C++ for once… but then I remember: I’ve got a CS problem set due Friday. Argh.

Yeah… things just keep getting worse. Now Josh Lukas’ MySpace blog posts have reappeared en masse, and I have no idea why. What’s worse is that his MySpace posts always screw up pX, because MySpace is lazy when it comes to stripping out HTML.

Entry №916, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 6:00 PM | Edit | Permalink
Categories: Frustration, Planet Xavier, Python | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the summer, I’ve spent a large part of my time making plans for my personal projects (pX in particular), yet I’ve done very little in actually following those plans. That seems to be my style. (Remember all my promises of posting about my mission trips?)

Over the past week, though, I’ve managed to get moving on some of my projects, now that the my Summer of Code project is winding down (the deadline is the 1^st, lest I forget). I’ve just finished extending Planet so that you can specify which category of blogs to display for each individual page on Planet Xavier. Previously, Planet had no understanding of categories, so I’m thrilled to have completed this task, since it means that I can now easily separate the alumni blogs from the others at pX.

Assuming, of course, that it all works. I’ve already made a clone of the main entry listing, and I’ll be testing my modifications tonight, so that most people will (presumably) be in bed in case something goes horribly awry – such as those pesky Xanga or MySpace entries creeping up to the top again. In the morning, then, all you freshman and sophomores will no longer see all those alumni posts that you never cared about. Hopefully, that is. If it turns out okay, I’ll generalize the code and contribute it to the Planet codebase.

In the meantime, Six Apart has just released Movable Type 3.2, so I’m going to start working on transitioning to the new version. That way, I can actually make some progress on St. Columban’s redesign.

Entry №866, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 4:35 PM | Edit | Permalink
Categories: Google Summer of Code, Planet Xavier, Python | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)