So I played around with Python for a few hours, found out you can do really nice Windows client side GUIs with it (Mac as well?) fairly easily, and that you can easily convert python scripts into standalone windows programs. Like it a lot so far.
5 minutes with Python
I know PHP, and I'm learning Python. After 5 minutes:
- it's pretty much the same as PHP, except that you don't put ; characters at the end of a command.
- and except that Python comes with a tool that lets you run programs without having to upload to a server.
- and variables don't use the $ sign in front of them.
- don't use curly brackets, instead just indent stuff
- and more little differences like that: elseif() in PHP is elif in Python. function becomes def. Variables within functions are local, not global, just like PHP.
- you have to define variables before using them. This annoys me much. And it complains when you mix different types of variables. This annoys me mucher. I don't see why this is necessary, except for making my life harder.
Going well so far - I got Hello World running in minutes.
Yesterday I spent all day writing the registration pages and error checking code (including defending against those snarkyt sql injection attacks) for my upcoming service, making it as user friendly as possible (which is much more than most registrations). I decided to use the "almost there" pattern, where, when an input error happens, the user is sent to an intermediate "almost there" page instead of being sent to the same registration page with errors highlighted, which most registration systems seem to use. I like the "almost there" approach better: the user doesn't have to actively ignore a lot of stuff they've looked at before. It goes against accepted wisdom that all input should be checked clientside before submission.
So today I'm taking a day off from this project and I'll learn Python. Python's desktop capabilities seem to make it a good fit for some of my future projects, so I'm going to spend some time getting familiar with it.
I love having my own business and deciding for myself what I'm doing with my day. I was originally going to work more on the registration script, but I didn't feel like it so I'll do one of the more fun things on my long to-do list.
A question: how easy is learning Python (with wxPython) compared to learning Visual Basic? I want to learn some programming language that lets me do desktop applications that are heavily internet connected (xml-rcp, ftp, ...). Which language should I spend my time learning?
I've been trying to include text in a SMIL movie that I save as a .mov and play in Quicktime. Including a .txt file works, but I couldn't markup (bold, italics, ...) the file. Finally I figured it out. QuickTime Text Descriptors like {plain} can be used to markup text (fonts, bold, how long to show pieces of text, ...) you want to include in a SMIL presentation for Quicktime (Quicktime doesn't do HTML markup).
Mica's latest video is a great lesson in communication technology. Check it out!
I met up in downtown Manhattan (Soho) with Jay and Drazen Pantic, a serb who helped create B-92, the radio station that was in sarejavo during the war and was the only independent voice out there, and former Yugoslavia's first internet provider.
In the video (inside) he's explaining how they had to log in remotely in their internet service and erase all user data to protect people. We talked about videoblogging and his new project dv.open4all.info which is like a bittorrent host where people can upload video (torrent files). Share the media - be the media.
One of his quotes I really liked: "Politics happens on the couch.". Which is why we need Freevo - so people can watch real-people TV from the internet on the couch, not huddled behind a monitor. He also told me about FFMPEG, an open source product that can be used to optimize video serverside.
The video is inside.