February 27, 2010 at 03:36 · Filed under Sessions
Some quick notes about the lightening talks I attended.
Archiving Tweets with Twapper Keeper
Why archive tweets?
- Twitters search limits results by number (1500) or time, approx 7 days
- You may want to capture an events output and ensure this data is not lost
Linked data in the web
We should integrate more, it’s not all or nothing. Where do I start:
- model your stuff
- identity with cool URIs
- link your html together
- link to machine friendly formats
- use RDF to make your database structure available on the web
Comment from audience: Use
RDFa to annotate link relationships easily.
- an endnote alternative
- last.fm for researchers papers
- startup working with several partner universities
Future plans for an OpenAPI with various export formats
- REST
- oAuth
- JSON
- Export groups:
- open ‘anonymised’ data due March 2010
- user data due April 2010
Finding Nero
- about collections/repositories
- Culture24 API available, they want feedback about output format
- CultureGrid – aggregator
Collaborative tools project
A talk about a new project being under taken at the University of York
- LifeRay – portal builder
- Network Thinking
- JISC – People Project – people recommendations
Mistakes I have made building web applications
By Juliette Culver, Open University
- Not dealing with character encoding from the start
- Not establishing which web browsers you support
- Bad choices about 3rd party code (not using them when I should have)
- Under estimating time required for legal and acquiring domain names
- Not dotting i’s and cross t’s
- Admin and stats most often get the extra change requests
- Asking permission from non techies for time for refactoring, accessibility, web security – add non as these elements are essential, a no techie will always say no
- Not colour contrast testing on design work
- Putting off usability testing
- Underestimating the problem of spam, see Mollum
- Not protecting programming time – turn off other messenging for example/block off programming time from meetings, see makers schedule article
- Stop expecting anyone to appreciate what you do
Comments from audience
- Under estimating the time it takes to go from prototype to production
Visualising Data with Processing
by Ross McFarlane
- Processing is a Java related language for graphics
- 3D – OPENGL less buggy than the built in
February 26, 2010 at 03:58 · Filed under Sessions
I attended the Ruby on Rails code lab and the following lightening talks:
Top tips
- Stay out of core code at all costs, extend using plugins
- Check out OWASP top 10 tips web security tips
- Don’t save back up config files in the web root, for instance config.php.bak will be readable
- Symbian apps are easy to make
- RepRap rocks!
- Django handles configuring paths better than Ruby on Rails
Manufacturing for the masses, RepRap notes
A fantastic 3D printer that can create plastic mouldings.
- can print 50% of own parts (in 2.5 days)
- most non plastic parts are widely available
- GPL
- costs approx €350
- future aims to be able to shred and recycle your own plastic bottles or use starch based sources
More info:
Some commercial outlets, such as Bits from bites, make t machines that don’t replicate themselves, but can replicate parts for a RepRap machine.
February 25, 2010 at 04:18 · Filed under Sessions
I attended the first half of the Pipes lab and following up by catching some of the lightening talks.
About
- will mash up various data formats; e.g. RSS1, RSS2, atom
- will normalise out from multiple input formats
- can output as XML, JSON, stub of PHP, image/media version of feed, etc.
- each pipe has a unique URI
- uses a GUI interface, with flow chart style objects, to create new feeds
- requires a Yahoo account
- pipes can be claimed or cloned, NB: only an owner can only delete a pipe
- could a useful tool for useful for examining feeds
Sources of data
- RSS
- CSV
- HTML
- Yahoo searches/queries
- existing pipes
Downsides
- Don’t seem to be able to export the structure of the feed mash up
- A third party hosted service
Alternatives
The open source version, Deri pipes, can be locally hosted.
Notes on uses of modules Can mash up search RSS feeds (e.g. Plone/WordPress search results) and pass in arguments
- see url builder and user input modules
Bear in mind if using search RSS results these feeds may be paginated or limited to n number of output
- example uses uses search term – url builder – fetch feed – output
Can compound your feeds, i.e. call a search feed for each search result of another feed – see loop function
Private input – protects for instance API keys from cloned pipes
- remember there can be many levels of caching – at source, in yahoo pipes, in your own application
Lightening Talks
I attending lightening talks about WordPress, Teaching programming to non programmers and building Android applications.
Android phone application notes
- Use Eclipse IDE (plugin may be necessary)
- Install Android SDK, includes
- emulator
- command line tool
- demo code
- Uses a locked version of Linux
- API demos is good demo code to look at
Description of 3D modelling in Android
February 25, 2010 at 04:15 · Filed under Conferences
I’m lucky enough to be attending the Dev8D conference aimed at developers in Higher Education (HE).
Running from Wed 24 – Sat 27 February 2010 in London, this conference will give me the opportunity to meet with fellow HE developers and discover new programming languages and tools.
October 3, 2008 at 12:29 · Filed under Conferences, Sessions
Some sessions are on YouTube:
September 17, 2008 at 12:03 · Filed under Conferences
Yesterday, I attended this free, yes free, Google developer day held in Wembley Stadium, London.
Talks attended:
- A deeper look as Google App Engine, Mano Marks
- Gears, Aaron Boodman
- Mashing up Google data APIs, Ryan Body
- V8 – the chrome engine, Kevin Millikin
Talks I wish I’d attended:
- State of AJAX, Dion Almaer
- Lightening talks
Codelabs I wish I had attended:
- Gears, Aaron Boodman
- Maps, Russell Middleton
Overall vibe was good. Plus nice freebies.
I did wish there was a session on Google applications and their features, and highlighting where these can be harnessed via data APIs.
I’ll post my notes from each session attended soon.
September 21, 2007 at 16:27 · Filed under Sessions
Brief notes made during Mr. Jeroen VLOOTHUIS’s talk at EuroPython 2007
KSS – Generic JavaScript AJAX framework
- Removes the need to write lots of JavaScript
- Separates HTML & JavaScript
- Additional support for Python
- Easy to create new plugins for custom functionality
- Deflated adds 20-30k after compression [verify]
More info: http://KSSProject.org
August 16, 2007 at 16:13 · Filed under Sessions
Rambling techie notes made during Max ISCHENKO’s talk at EuroPython 2007
- Templating MAKO – globals are accessible
- SQLAlchemy rated over SQLObject [his opinion]
- Pylons next version handles multiple DBs out of the box
- Includes unicode encoding/decoding
- Validation
- htmlfill
- formencode (**?)
- TurboGears:- ToscaWidgets, now standalone alpha
- Pylons: only basic validation
Testing
paste.fixture [few docs]
Deployment
Restart supervisor2 [Look up] monitor app;
Pros
- Structure
- i18n
- WSGI (behind the scenes)
- ROUTES -suits for URL despatching
References
- Use the source, Luke
- Pylons discussion groups
NB from 2008 Pylons will be closely integrated with Turbo Gears 2
August 16, 2007 at 15:44 · Filed under Sessions
Rambling notes made during this talk in EuroPython 2007, please take with a pinch of salt.
- ZODB can be used standalone
- Persistence class is used as base class
- transaction.about() = rollback
- root[] = dictionary like object
- root['app'] = root object
Storage options
- Filesystem
- Access to DB
- Pickle
- Serialise
- MappingStorage
- DemoStorage [reads live DB; writes to demo]
- ZEO database
- Can wrap with BlobStorage
Eggs:- EasyInstall ZODB
NB: Mutable objects need extra care; e.g. Preserving changes in a list after creation. Where possible use PersistentList, PersistentDict, …
If you have a handler on an object you can mark it’s parent as changed; e.g.root._p_changed.
Files
ZODB (verify: 3.8 beta blogs)
Transactions
- commit
- abort
- doom (delay abort; use value after marked not to commit)
- save points [Can stack, e.g. If processing a file or a a loop of actions]
- undo
Standalone querying tool for ZODB
Backup
- Hotcopy
- Incremental backup possible
Look up
August 16, 2007 at 12:11 · Filed under Sessions
Vilnius, Lithuania, 9-11 July 2007
This post expands upon my previous post outlining EuroPython 2007 conference. Sessions attended, sorely missed and topics to investigate further are detailed below.
An overview of each session and links to any available resources can be found by clicking the title of the session. This post will also contain personal techie notes that I made during each session.
Sessions I would like to have attended but, mostly due to timetable clashes, could not attend.
by Mr. Kit BLAKE (Infrae)
Point overs Plone CMS:
- Likes hierarchy
- Nested sub sites
- Authentication TTW
- Has a zip import feature
- Plans to support import via Open Office
By Mr. Christian THEUNE
Notes on this session
by Gustavo NIEMEYER (Canonical)
http://storm.calonical.com
Client-side clustering & managing of multiple databases. Each store has its own connection cache
Similar to:
Look up: DBAPI
by Max ISCHENKO
Notes on this session
Things to investigate further
- ACID (transactions)
- Sliverlight
- Eggs (packaged up python modules/packages?)
- KeyJNote
- S5 (Presentation software??)
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