There are some minor tweaks, but more importantly, I added the ability to evaluate python code blocks in the static page. Find it in my plugin index.

I whipped up a plugin that changes the renderer to the debug renderer if there's a "debug=yes" in the querystring. It's not wildly exciting, but it works nicely and I can debug things without necessarily taking my entire blog down.

Get it at my plugin index.

I'm on this coding kick right now. For some reason I decided to go dig up Stringbean and see how it was doing. It's doing fine! Well, except for the fact it wouldn't start up. So I did some fixing and now it's fine and starts up and everything seems hunky dory. I have no clue what I was working on last.

Anyhow, for anyone interested, here's a tarball of a minimally working version of Stringbean. I release it under the GPL. I might at some point work on it some more, but if not, there it is.

I just added locking to Pyblosxom to allow separate Pyblosxom requests to synchronize on centralized data. In my case, the data is a file of how many views each of my blog entries has gotten. It seems to be pretty functional. It's something I had coded in my viewcounts plugin, but I've moved the code (and added to it) into the tools module so we can all use the same base.

An example of usage is this:

from Pyblosxom import tools

LOCKNAME = "viewcounts.dat"

lockret = tools.get_lock(request, LOCKNAME)
if lockret:
    # yay -- we have the lcok
    pass
else:
    # foo -- we don't have the lock
    pass


if tools.has_lock(request, LOCKNAME)
    # yay -- we have the lock
    pass
else:
    # foo -- we don't have the lock
    pass

tools.return_lock(request, LOCKNAME)

The code is in CVS. It'll go into the next version. Also, I added a unittest module to the code base.

My brother has a Mac. It's a something-or-other-with-high-end-thingies-and-stuff Mac, to be specific. Anyhow, I have a friend who after years and years and years of being a PC Windows/Linux guy got a Mac and never looked back. In fact, he then proceeded to get a few more Macs.

Their experiences and my needs for my next machine have caused me to think seriously about getting a Mac. Then I read this article and thought that was interesting because I want to create and produce things. If Apple really is focusing on that segment of the market, then I should get a Mac.

I bought a 2001 S4 brand new way back when I lived in Newport Beach, CA. It's a fantastic car and when I moved back to Boston, I drove it cross country--fun times!

So now I'm living in apartments in and around Boston and I've been parking on the street. I kept tossing around downgrading to a car that "blends in", but never got around to it. Last Sunday, some dork stole my headlights. After talking with the insurance people and the Audi people and discovering that it's not an uncommon thing to have one's Xenon headlights stolen and that there's nothing I can do about it except replace them, I decided that this was prime time to downgrade.

After talking with a sales guy for 15 minutes, I bought a nice little used 2001 Jetta. It has the same exact body as my S4, but it "blends in" a lot better and has halogen lights.

So the saga goes on. I can't even get my headlights fixed until the end of January. Then I need to sell my S4. In the meantime, the stereo in my Jetta kind of sucks so I may have to go hunting for a receiver that gets radio stations and plays CDs and also has an 1/8" jack input so I can plug in an MP3 player or other device.

It occurs to me as I write this that it's time to build an image plugin for pyblosxom.

Anyhow, it's a bummer, but I'll live. Could have been worse. I'm lucky that I was able to drive an S4 for a few years and that I can just go get a "new" car when I have problems.

I'll miss that all red display and the punch on the highway but I won't miss the hassle of replacing headlights. Foo on that.

I've been in some kind of neat motivational kick the last few days to update my plugins. This time, I've overhauled the registry plugin that Wari uses for the Pyblosxom web-site.

Changes:

• added ability to submit new entries

• added ability to edit existing entries

• fixed sorting so that you can sort by any input name

• added the ability to do option inputs

• moved declaration of what items were involved to the config.py file (along with other things)

• dded documentation to the top

• refactoring of item specification stuff

Anyhow, if you were one of the one or two people that were using it, this is definitely worth updating to. If you need help reconfiguring it or if you have problems, let me know.

It can be downloaded at my pyblosxom page.

(snuck it in just before the end of the year--yay!)

I was poking through other peoples' blogs and bumped into one that mentioned a bunch of things I should do to my booklist plugin to fix it. One of which involved switching it from hard-coded html to use pyblosxom flavours. So I did that work and some other neatening up and released it. Get it on my pyblosxom page.

I went through and added the MIT/X License text to all my plugins and updated them with some minor bug fixes and additional features.

My pyblosxom stuff is here.

If you're going to play the songs from The Wall, don't put your thingy on shuffle. I'd say it's a good idea never to shuffle a Pink Floyd album.