Recently in Misc Category

For me, one of the biggest problems with figuring out MT is figuring out what what in the @_ array. This little function may be useful for others who are in bad shape like me, to use as a skeleton for figuring out what is being passed to their functions by the MT framework. All of it goes into the system activity log.

sub debug{
    require MT;
    my $index = 0;
    foreach my $item (@_) {
        MT->log({message => $index++ . " " . ref($item)});
    }
}

I spent about thirty minutes trying to grok the code for MySQL Connector/J earlier today, and I ended up giving up on it. I was trying to read it in order to get an understanding of what you have to do to write a something that can communicate directly with MySQL as part of a preliminary investigation into writing a new Python driver for MySQL. To do it right would require me to learn far more about all of the options that MySQL has, and the ins and outs of how MySQL works to ever be worth it, so I just gave up. Doesn't seem to be any harm in that, in my opinion. I just don't have the energy to bring myself to care enough to try something like that, especially since I don't even have any side projects that would require a pure Python driver. The current driver unfortunately relies on a foundation written in C, which makes it a non-starter for mixing into web applications written in Python. A shame, really.

On a different note, one thing that might be useful as web applications go is a supplemental XML-RPC API for Movable Type that allows you to hook into proprietary features like rebuilding pages and such. That and a Python API that wraps it on the server side might be worth looking at.

Why did you start this separate blog?

My main blog is not really appropriate for posting work on software development projects. I just needed a place where I could post things that I have written that might be of some marginal utility to others beside me. I guess that is sort of a given, since I don't do anything that is so far removed from what most people do that my coding efforts would be only useful to me. Needless to say, the reason this blog exists is to collect all of my work as a hobbyist software developer.

What license do you use?

I think that all depends. I had to grudgingly put the Limited Use Password Plugin under the GNU GPL because it borrowed a few lines of code from one of the WordPress files that handles that sort of thing. The rest of my work is not really licensed per se. I am going to keep the copyright on it firmly, but beyond that, I don't think it's really much of a concern for me right now. The licensing terms are pretty simple:

• You may use it without paying for it.
• You may give it to others without paying for it.
• You may not modify the code, claim credit for the project and/or sell it without my written permission.

Similar to the GNU GPL, but not as restrictive, I guess.

The following are some free and/or open source programs that you may not have heard about, but that are worth having:

• TrueCrypt - disk encryption made easy. It will allow you to create encrypted drives and disk images, making it so that everything you write to them is transparently encrypted on the fly for you. As long as TrueCrypt is running, everything happens behind the scenes so you don't have to do anything like run your files through an encryption app to decrypt them before using them.
• Eraser - securely move and delete files, as well as purge the free space on your hard drive of anything that you don't want others to get access to later on. This sort of app is also called a "file shredder" because of the way that it systematically chews up the data associated with the files and free space you tell it to work on.
• Sage - the easiest way to keep track of the blogs you read. It is a Firefox plugin that integrates as a side panel. If you have to use Firefox (I can't stand using Opera with proxy servers) then it's the way to go.