[Updated 2006-08-20 to add links. All (most?) presentations are being posted on the proceedings page] Last weekend I attended the Vancouver Python Workshop here in town. I love this conference because it’s small and local, but attracts a great crowd. There were a few folks I know mainly from the edu-sig mailing list. Guido was there to give the keynote, I got to talk with Ian Bicking a fair bit, and I had never realized that Toby Donaldson is a fellow Vancouverite.  Read →

[Update: Thanks to Blake Winton for pointing out that the project page link to the Pastels download was broken, fixed now. Also added a link to the project page.] Pastels is an example project for creating an OS X screensaver in Python using PyObjC. By extension it could be used as an example for building nearly any plugin or bundle for OS X. It started when I had an idea for drawing a simple squiggle, over and over, while cycling the colours and moving the squiggle around. I was very pleased with how it turned out.  Read →

My latest article for David Mertz’s column XML Matters is up at IBM developerWorks: Lighter than microformats: Picoformats Ajax without X, Microformats without angle brackets went live a couple of days ago. It isn’t so much about XML as how to avoid XML. My feelings towards XML are that it is useful and good, but overused and not a panacea. By providing some alternatives, maybe some of the backlash against the “XML everywhere for everything” meme can be averted.  Read →