programming

A really nice post about using the Mac clipboard in Python. Specifically, the script adds a nice bit to filter the clipboard content type. The entire site is great.

Clark's script prints the entire list of Python packages installed with easy_install. I don't know what's normal, but I feel like maybe I have too many.

I hate posting links about broadly discussed topics. I thought hard about the latest discussion1 around Jeff Atwood's post and I still had something to say, so here it is. To those who argue programming is an essential skill we should be teaching our children, right up there with reading, writing, and arithmetic: can you explain to me how Michael Bloomberg would be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?

Macstories.net linked to QuickShot 2.0. It's an iOS app that can send photos directly to Dropbox. But I was thinking, I would prefer an app that could quickly send images to my FTP server at Macdrifter.com. So I came up with a little Hazel rule to connect Dropbox and my FTP server. Design Considerations I want to put these files on my FTP server so that I can use them for posts to this site.

A good introduction to JavaScript closures and variable scope. This stuff always gets me. Also, I rather like anchovies on pizza.

I don't remember how I stumbled across this, but Outputty is a Python module for transforming structured tabular data from one format to another. For example, converting CSV to an HTML table. Just look at this tutorial. Nice.

So, yeah, this never gets old. I guess I do still have some uses for Perl. By way of many wasted moments on the Internet.

A very nice workflow at Macgrunt.com for reliably renaming a set of known files with new names. By way of Clark's Tech Blog

I learned five things from this 554 word post by Dr. Drang about determining the default browser on OS X. There's a Python library for reading plists There's a Python library for creating temp files that auto-delete The InternetConfig tool is still around in OS X 10.7 Dr. Drang uses AppleScript like I do, as a wrapper for Shell and Python I invested in learning the right scripting language for the distopian future of AppleScript

The Rainbow JS library looks very interesting. I use the CodeColorer WordPress plugin it works well and has broad language support. But I really like the idea of using JavaScript instead. It would be independent of WordPress and Rainbow is easily customizable. I really like that it can use its own CSS. If you notice intermittent oddness with code on Macdrifter, it’s because I’m playing around with Rainbow. By way of Jonathan Christopher