Trey Piepmeier

I do not understand why this is was so difficult to figure out.

You’ll need Underscore.js to play along at home.

Start with an array like

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var sizes = [4, 1, 10, 8];

If you just use JavaScript’s built in .sort() method, you’ll end up with

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sizes.sort();
// results in [1, 10, 4, 8]

This is because it sorts lexicographically by default. Why? Because it (doesn’t) love you.

Here’s how to do it using Underscore’s sortBy method:

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sizes = _.sortBy( sizes, function( val ){ return val; } );
// results in [1, 4, 8, 10]

Why does this work? I’m not sure. Ask your dad.

Source

• Stack Overflow

Previously…

If you want to keep your templates in external files, you can load the template in like so:

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$.get('/js/templates/filename.html', function(template) {
  $.tmpl(template, data).appendTo('#whatever');
});

A couple of benefits of this method:

• Organizing your templates into their own files is tidy.
• Your syntax highlighter will be happier, since you’re not writing HTML between two <script> tags.

Source

• Dave Ward

To keep from putting too many files and folders on your Desktop, make your icons huge.

• Click on your desktop
• From the menu, choose View > Show View Options

• Crank up the size as far as it will go

• Gaze at your huge, pretty icons and then get back to work

• Create a folder in ~/Documents called TextMate Projects
• Save your TextMate Project files there (not the projects themselves)
• Change the icon of the folder to what the ~/Sites folder has (makes sense to me since I use TextMate almost entirely for websites)
• Drag to the right side of your Dock
• Right click the folder in the Dock
  • Display as Folder
  • View content as list

Voilà:

Note: you’ll see .tmproj at the end of the project name until the next time you restart your machine or you restart the Dock (killall Dock). Not sure what the deal is with that.

Sometimes you want to temporarily ignore a file in a Git repository without throwing it out entirely by putting it in .gitignore. Here’s how to do it:

git update-index –assume-unchanged [filename]

To start tracking changes again:

git update-index –no-assume-unchanged [filename]

Source

• Git Ready

Django

mkdir -p ~/src
svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ ~/src/django
ln -s ~/src/django/django `python -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print get_python_lib()"`/django
ln -s ~/src/django/django/bin/django-admin.py ~/bin/django-admin.py

PIP, mysql-python, virtualenv, virtualenvwrapper, Mercurial

Download and install the MySQL package installer, then:

easy_install pip
pip install http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mysql-python/mysql-python-test/1.2.3c1/MySQL-python-1.2.3c1.tar.gz?use_mirror=cdnetworks-us-2
pip install virtualenv
pip install virtualenvwrapper
pip install mercurial

(Note: we’re installing Mercurial because a lot of PIP packages require it)

In ~/bin/dotfiles/bash/env

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
. ~/src/django/extras/django_bash_completion

Then

mkdir -p ~/.virtualenvs
source ~/.bashrc

Install libjpeg from scratch (for PIL):

cd ~/src
curl -O http://www.ijg.org/files/jpegsrc.v8a.tar.gz
tar zxvf jpegsrc.v8a.tar.gz
cd jpeg-8a
./configure
make
make install

Setup a project

cd [path/to/your/project/]
mkvirtualenv [projectname]
add2virtualenv .
echo ‘cd [path/to/your/project/]’ >> $WORKON_HOME/postactivate

Put requirements for your project into a requirements.txt like so:

A package on its own line:

docutils==0.6

Repo noted like so:

-e git://github.com/mintchaos/typogrify.git#egg=Typogrify

To install things in your requirements file

pip install -r requirements.txt

Starting and Stopping VirtualEnvs

Start:

workon [project]

Stop:

deactivate

Sources

• PyPi
• VirtualEnvWrapper
• VirtualEnvWrapper docs
• epicserv’s Gist
• mathematism
• b-list

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$('.button').click(function(e) {
    if (e.originalEvent) {
        // user click
    } else {
        // .click()
    };
});

Source

• chiel’s comment on the jQuery API

• Download jquery-tmpl

Create a Template (most basic way):

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<script id="book-template" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl">
    <li>${name} (${year})</li>
</script>

Note that the type attribute is set to text/x-jquery-tmpl (text/html would do the trick as well). Anything other than text/javascript is ignored by the browser. Also, leaving it out entirely will default to text/javascript (thank you, HTML5 for making it OK to do that).

Data:

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var books = [
    { name: 'The Gunslinger',               year: '1982' },
    { name: 'The Drawing of the Three',     year: '1987' },
    { name: 'The Waste Lands',              year: '1991' },
    { name: 'Wizard and Glass',             year: '1997' },
    { name: 'The Wolves of the Calla',      year: '2003' },
    { name: 'Song of Susannah',             year: '2004' },
    { name: 'The Dark Tower',               year: '2004' },
    { name: 'The Wind Through the Keyhole', year: '2012' }
];

Load the template with data:

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$('#book-template').tmpl(books).appendTo('#book-list');

To be totally explicit: the first selector is the ID of the template (script tag), the argument being passed to .tmpl is the array, and then we’re appending the whole thing to the #tower-list object in the DOM.

Now don’t forget some HTML:

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<ul id="book-list"></ul>

Source

• jQuery API
• Wikipedia

Install django-css.

Install Sass.

sudo gem install haml

Add to settings.py:

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INSTALLED_APPS = (
  …
  'compressor',
  …
)

…

COMPILER_FORMATS = {
    '.sass': {
        'binary_path':'sass',
        'arguments': '*.sass *.css'
    },
    '.scss': {
        'binary_path':'sass',
        'arguments': '*.scss *.css'
    }
}

Add to a template that you want to load a Sass file:

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{ % load compress % }

…

{ % compress css % }
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/base.scss" media="screen">
{ % endcompress % }

Dealssss with caching when you deploy.

Perhaps pip install python-memcached then put something like this in settings.py

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CACHE_BACKEND = 'memcached://127.0.0.1:11211/'

Write some nice Sass.

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$orange: #EE8529;

ul {
  font-size: 26px;
  li {
      color: $orange;
  }
}

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var Fancy = {
  settings: {
      something: 'one',
      somethingElse: 'two'
  },
  init: function(options){
      var s = $.extend({}, this.settings, options);
  }
}

Call it like so:

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Fancy.init({something: 'Luke', somethingElse: 'Wroblewski'});

That’s one way to do it anyway.

function makeItRain (effect) {
    $(‘#something’)[effect]();
}

makeItRain(‘slideToggle’);

Note the lack of a ’.’ and the ’[]’s.

Source

• Hernán

If you already have a /usr/local folder and it’s not owned by your user:

sudo chown -R `whoami` /usr/local

Install Homebrew:

cd /usr/local
git init
git remote add origin git://github.com/mxcl/homebrew.git
git pull origin master

This is kind of odd–you install Homebrew right into the base of your /usr/local folder. It nicely ignores other folders that already exists there. Just do it.

Install MySQL:

brew install mysql

Yeah, it’s really that easy. This will take a while.

Now warm it up:

mysql_install_db

And make sure it automatically starts again on login:

launchctl load -w /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.1.43/com.mysql.mysqld.plist

I keep having to look this up.

To add the mate shell command, select the Help menu from within TextMate and select "Terminal Usage…"

Source

• TextMate blog

First, create a Git subfolder inside your Dropbox folder. Then you can share the individual projects inside that folder with whomever you want (or just use it for instant offsite backups).

From inside a Git project:

git clone –bare . ~/Dropbox/Git/gitproject.git
git remote add dropbox ~/Dropbox/Git/gitproject.git

When you’re ready to push:

git push dropbox master

Your Collaborator’s View

Your collaborator would work on the project like so (inside the folder where they want their project to live):

git clone ~/Dropbox/Git/gitproject.git

If they want to have a dropbox remote instead of the default origin:

git remote add dropbox ~/Dropbox/Git/gitproject.git

They would then push the same way:

git push dropbox master

To get the other person’s changes, it’s the standard deal:

git pull dropbox master

Source

• Cocoa Is My Girlfriend

sudo easy_install Sphinx

Inside your local SVN checkout of Django:

cd docs
make html

Now you’ll have a beautiful local copy of the documentation to browse for those rare moments when you’re away from the internet (perhaps you’re in a fort?). Just point your browser to:

file:///path/to/your/django/docs/_build/html/index.html

Source

• eddymulyono

Previously…

• Install the latest Xcode Tools from your Snow Leopard installation DVD
• Re symlink things to /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages (Leopard used 2.5)
  • Django
  • Any other thing you had symlink’d in 2.5

MySQL + Python

• Install MySQL from source like Dan says but use the latest version of MySQL (5.1.42 in my case) instead of the version he says to use.
• Install MySQL-Python like the top answer on this Stack Overflow question.

After all that Sequel Pro is still showing the version of MySQL as 5.1.33, but it seems to be working…

PIL

This was by far the biggest headache. I finally found a solution:

Install like this, but before running sudo python setup.py install, do this:

LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch i386 -arch x86_64" CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch i386 -arch x86_64" python setup.py build

If you already had PIL installed and had the source files you compiled from before, be sure to delete them and start fresh from a new Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz.

Here’s another look into the development of ComicBinder.

There’s already a good tutorial on how to use an autocomplete plugin with Django, but I wanted to use this much snazzier plugin.

The Process

Load both jquery.autocomplete.min.js and jquery.autocomplete.css in your page.

In your form object, create a CharField to hold your autocomplete. Something like:

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title = forms.CharField(label='', widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'placeholder': 'The name of a comic'}))

Create a hidden field to hold the primary key of the item you’re selecting (so you don’t have to depend on searching against a ‘name’ field or something else equally brittle):

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title_pk = forms.IntegerField(widget=forms.HiddenInput())

Create a view to populate the autocomplete list:

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def title_lookup(request):
    results = []
    if request.method == "GET":
        if request.GET.has_key(u'q'):
            value = request.GET[u'q']
            # Ignore queries shorter than length 3
            if len(value) > 2:
                model_results = Title.objects.filter(name__icontains=value)
                results = [ (x.__unicode__(), x.id) for x in model_results ]
    json = simplejson.dumps(results)
    return HttpResponse(json, mimetype='application/json')

This will, of course, need a URLconf:

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url(r'^title_lookup/$', view=title_lookup, name='title_lookup'),

And to finish it off, a bit of JavaScript in your template to call the plugin:

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<script>
    $(function() {
        $('#id_title').autocomplete('{ % url title_lookup % }', {
            dataType: 'json',
            width: 500,
            parse: function(data) {
                return $.map(data, function(row) {
                    return { data:row, value:row[1], result:row[0] };
                });
            }
            }).result(
                function(e, data, value) {
                    $("#id_title_pk").val(value);
                }
            );
        }
    );
</script>

Sources

• The Plugin
• Using JQuery with Django for Autocomplete
• JTJ

While building ComicBinder’s URLs, I wanted a way to differentiate a volume of a title other than one, and a printing of an issue other than one. So, for example, a URL to the second printing of the second volume of Amazing Spider-Man #1 would look like:

/marvel/amazing-spider-man_2/1_2/

That’s easy enough with some URLconf wrangling. What I’m talking about today is automatically redirecting a request for _1 in any of those places to the same URL without the _1. While technically correct, I want the lack of underscore + number to mean one, and for there to be only one URL for a resource (someone send me a link to a clever article that talks about this).

django.views.generic.simple.redirect_to to the rescue. Try something like this:

(r’^(?P<publisher>[-\w]+)/(?P<title>[-\w]+)_1/(?P<number>\d+)_1/$’, ‘django.views.generic.simple.redirect_to’, {‘url’: ‘/%(publisher)s/%(title)s/%(number)s/’}),

I made a few of these to account for situations where it was the first volume, but nothing specified for printing, and vise versa.

Not too bulky, and since I have that sitting near the normal rule, it shouldn’t put me out too much to update it if I make any changes.

Source

• Django Documentation

APOD: 2010 January 20 - The Known Universe

APOD: 2010 May 6 - Northern and Southern Owls

A look at the fate of our sun. 2 light years is a big area. 2,000 times the size of the diameter of the orbit of Neptune.

APOD: 2009 November 6 - Ring Nebula Deep Field

It’s odd that something so utterly gruesome could be this pretty. It’s like driving by the rotting corpse of your neighbor’s father on the side of the road. This is the fate of our sun in another 5 billion years or so.

APOD: 2009 June 8 - Possible Jet Blown Shells Near Microquasar Cygnus X1

This is an annotated picture of a black hole with all sorts of interesting stuff happening around it.

APOD: 2009 April 29 - GRB 090423: The Farthest Explosion Yet Measured

Near light speed spacecraft.

APOD: 2009 April 11 - The Big Picture

As I’ve said before, it’s hard to place in context the amazing pictures you see of deep space with the sky you see every night. This helps.

APOD: 2009 February 9 - Anemic Galaxy NGC 4921 at the Edge

It’s cool to see three very distinct regions of space in a single picture. The focus of the picture is the large galaxy, but you can also see “nearby” stars in our own Milky Way as well as even more distant galaxies behind the big one in the picture.

APOD: 2002 January 21 - Volcano and Aurora in Iceland

I can’t imagine what it must be like to live somewhere where you can see things like this.

APOD: 2008 November 14 - Fomalhaut b

Since I got interested in astronomy as an impressionable young man, I’ve understood that most stars probably have planets around them. It’s been really rewarding to watch the progress over the last few years as more and more planets have actually been observed (for the most part indirectly—until now). I even understood that to directly observe a planet around another star, the exact technique used in his photograph would have to be used.

This planet is 3 times the size of Jupiter and 14 times farther away than Jupiter is from our sun. It’s also a mere 25 light years away (basically in our cosmic backyard). That means it is an enormous (probably uninhabitable) planet really far away from its star, which is very close to us. So it’s probably about as easy to visually observe as any planet in our immediate neighborhood. It’s an incredibly important step in the exploration of our galaxy, but there’s still a ways to go.

It’s amazing that so much has happened in this field in such a short time. I would not be surprised if within the next decade or so we observe a planet that is a potential target for an interplanetary mission.

It’s an exciting time to be alive.

APOD: 2008 October 24 - Amazing Comet Holmes

At one point this thing was larger than the sun.

APOD: 2008 October 17 - An Extraordinary Voyage

Apparently dumping trash into the atmosphere and taking video of it is APOD worthy. Who knew?

APOD: 2008 September 29 - A True Image from False Kiva

This one’s been making the rounds on Tumblr, so I thought I should make a place for it on the APOD Log. This is an amazing picture.

bauldoff:

No PhotoShop here. Astrophotographer Wally Pacholka took this single exposure photograph at False Kiva in the Canyonlands National Park, Utah. He admits to being concerned about mountain lions as he waited in the dark cave to capture this beautiful view reaching from inside the Earth to infinity. (via Neatorama)

APOD: 2008 September 20 - A Darkened Sky

Beautiful detail.

APOD: 2008 September 19 - Companion of a Young Sun like Star

This is big news. An actual photograph of a planet in another solar system. Within the last few years, they’ve found scads of planets around other solar systems, but I’ve never heard of there being a direct photograph.

From APOD:

this picture likely represents the first direct image of a planet belonging to a star similar to the Sun.

Does that mean there have been other direct images of planets around non sun-like stars?

In any case, this is incredibly cool.

Previously

APOD: 2008 August 9 - Aurora Persei

This looks like a Web 2.0 design.

APOD: 2008 July 28 - SDSSJ1430: A Galaxy Einstein Ring

This is some crazy, relativistic stuff right here—gravity bending light into a circle. The computer generated images of the individual parts are especially cool.

APOD: 2008 July 23 - High Cliffs Surrounding Echus Chasma on Mars

This is the kind of APOD I like: nobody really knows what’s going on here. This one is also great because I was sure it was an illustration. Nope—it’s a photo from the Mars Express orbiter. It really looks like an illustration in a science book from the 50s or 60s.

APOD: 2008 July 15 - Gas and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula

Pictures like this where they remove the stars are really striking. If most of what was removed was foreground stars, I suppose this gives a more realistic view of what it would be like to be closer.

See also.