Lonely Lion

worldKit is an easy to use web-mapping application. I would have just put this on my del.icio.us list, but it was cool enough to warrant a full post. Once we start geocaching, this will be a neat way to map our progress.

I’ve spent a good amount of time with Andy McKay’s excellent “Plone: The Definitive Guide.” It’s a great book. Not only for Plone, but for Zope as well. I’ll write a more formal review in the near future (which reminds me, I owe a Python Networking Essentials review as well). I’m waiting on a copy of another Plone book, to do a tag team review, much like the recent Slashdot-Plone-doubleheader.

Apart from the book though, I wanted to acknowledge a few misconceptions I’ve had about Zope, and encourage others that might have the same hang ups:

1) Zope isn’t quite “LAMP”. If you’re coming from PHP or Perl, and you try and force Zope into that model, you’re going to be frustrated. You need to let go a bit, and try and learn how Zope wants you to do things.

2) Use the ZODB if you’re not overly in need of a RDBMS. An object database seems weird at first, especially if you’re afflicted with the above, however, it’s easier to write a Zope app backed by the native ZODB than an external RDBMS. It also helps if you download the standalone ZODB package and play with it. It helped me understand the whole Zope-y concept of “everything is an object.” They say it constantly, but it didn’t really click until I installed the ZODB separately, and put some objects in it. Then it became clearer. It may be possible to think of Zope as a filesystem like hierarchy, but I don’t think it’s a good way to look at it, especially if you’re trying to get over any PHP-prejudices you may be bringing to the table.

3) Build a product. Even if it’s a quick dumb thing, build one product. It helped me a lot. There is a TON of product associated init boiler plate, the sooner you can separate out the boilerplate from the meat, the sooner you can start to see what other people are doing with their products.

4) Spend some time with Archetypes. If you need to build a content type, that won’t require an overly huge amount of customization, then an Archetype is perfect. With a relatively small amount of code, you can have an easy to use, fully formed Plone content type.

5) Take your time learning Zope Page Templates, and don’t try and force the model your favorite template language has established for you on ZPT’s. They’re really different, but worth your time. Every time I’ve tried to learn Zope, I’ve usually breezed over ZPT’s, which was a mistake. This time, I took my time with them, and I think it’s made a difference.

I’ve been critical of Zope in the past, one minute I’ll love it and think I’m going to move all my projects to Zope, the next I’ll hate it, and do everything I can to forget about it entirely. I’m working on a project for my wife and her friends that will be entirely Plone based, it’s content heavy, but Archetypes took care of it in a flash. We’re going to be building all the page templates this week. After the site is “live”, I’ll write up a “how I used Plone to build this site” entry, as this whole experience has been pretty enlightening.

I still prefer the Webware model for 75% of my Python web projects, but Plone / Zope fits nicely in the remaining 25%.

http://www.opensolaris.org/ is open. I’m glad. Hopefully it will push the OS into Linux-space here and there. Linux is 10 times easier to set up as a LAMP server; Solaris is 100 times easier to set up as a big SAN attached server. If you have to build a LAMP Solaris server, or a SAN attached Linux server, it’s going to be a hassle.

Most major HBA vendors are doing a great job of getting Linux geared up for SAN connectivity, hopefully the Open Solaris project will help make Solaris a more open source friendly OS. SunFreeware has always been a great resource for packages that can make your Solaris box more Linux-like, hopefully Open Solaris will push it out even further.

I like Solaris, but I hate the set of packages that come with it. Come on opensolaris.org, don’t let me down.

chiPy’s January meeting was last night. Brian Zimmer gave a presentation on Jython, which went over well. He’s going to be working on bringing Jython into the cPython 2.3 world through a PSF grant over the next few months. It’s good to see the project being supported by the PSF, as it seems like one that can bring Python to people that might otherwise miss out on it.

We met in the Monadnock Building, which was great, as it’s a fine example of Chicago’s architectural heritage. I’ve been walking in and out of the building for a month now, to buy coffee, and never realized what it was. Thanks to Michael Tobis for getting us such a cool room.

This morning, after watching Alton Brown complain about over-steeped tea last night on Good Eats, I decided that I needed a simple tea timer, like the one that comes with most of the Linux distros I’ve played with. I couldn’t find an easy one for Windows, so I wrote a quickie in Python that’s meant to be fired off from the Python interpreter. In a fit of “fun spiritedness”, I wrote the three line distutils, so it can now be installed as a package. Usage is like so:

>>> from tea import *
>>> steep(3)
Timer Started!
* Three minutes later*
Your Tea is Done!

Not terribly exciting, but it does work. Maybe I’ll add stuff in the future. For now, you can download it here.

Maybe someone else saw the same good eats? I found this entry from Giles Turnbull about different timers.