Ruby on Rails programmer needed

Ev's pal needs a Ruby on Rails programmer. Help a brother out.

"We're very interested in using Ruby on Rails, but since that framework is only a couple months old, we'll settle for PHP if that's what you know and prefer.

Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit

Real world lessons in building asynchronous systems. [via sean mcgrath]

Import Python modules from a zipfile

A good first step to replicating Java's JAR files. File: test_mod.py

class Test:
  def __init__(self):
    print 'hi'

Now zip it:

zip test_mod.zip test_mod.py

Now fire up Python (at least 2.3), add the zipfile to your sys.path, and import the module.

$ python2.3
Python 2.3 (#1, Sep 13 2003, 00:49:11) 
[GCC 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1495)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.insert(0, '/Users/stevej/test_mod.zip')
>>> import test_mod
>>> test_mod.__file__
'/Users/stevej/test_mod.zip/test_mod.py'
>>> test_mod.Test()
hi

Not at easy as it could be but it's a solid first step. The ability to address arbitrary content in a zipfile (i.e. not just Python modules) would be a solid second step.

Lucene Desktop

Kevin's trying to put together an opensource Lucene-based competitor to all of the proprietary Desktop search engines showing up.

Aside: Lucene is super neat but if I wanted to run Java on my desktop, I'd just write a fork bomb and be done with it. Ahem. PyLucene might make a better choice since it's compiled natively.

All of this sort of misses the main selling point of desktop search, which I think even Google has missed; it's not the index, it's the integration. Dashboard hit this nail right on the head, but it had a lot of influence in convincing other Gnome apps to conform to it's interface.

You know what would be neat? If Dashboard could tell me about relevant stuff no matter where I was logged in from. If I could tunnel data through IM to my Dashboard installation then it would know what I was working on, writing, reading, listening to, etc, and give me recommendations and relevant recent data no matter where I'm at.

Wait... the data doesn't have to hosted on my personal computer. This would make a great service if you could make people feel at ease with this vast amount of personal knowledge being churned by somebody else's computer.

awkiawki

Did you know there was a wiki clone written in awk? Poor awk doesn't get nearly enough respect.

Why awk, you ask?

I needed a WikiWiki for a Sun Sparcstation 10 (36MHz) and all Perl and Python solutions were far to slow.

Bryan, you rule.

In the middle of all of the blaming and second-guessing, it's important to stop for a minute and thank awesome guys like Bryan Mason who put their lives on hold and gave their considerable abilities to the Kerry campaign.

The Smart Gabor

Arianna Huffington dishes it out as to why the Democrats lost this election:

But it wasn't gay marriage that did the Democrats in; it was the fatal decision to make the pursuit of undecided voters the overarching strategy of the Kerry campaign.

This meant that at every turn the campaign chose caution over boldness so as not to offend the undecideds who, as a group, long to be soothed and reassured rather than challenged and inspired.

[...]

With Iraq burning, WMD missing, jobs at Herbert Hoover-levels, flu shots nowhere to be found, gas prices through the roof, and Osama bin Laden back on the scene looking tanned, rested, and ready to rumble, this should have been a can't-lose election for the Democrats. Especially since they were more unified than ever before, had raised as much money as the Republicans, and were appealing to a country where 55 percent of voters believed we were headed in the wrong direction.

Direland dishes it out as to why they will lose the next election.

Undoubtedly, the Corporate Democrats and their liberal power-junkie helpmates will decide that they lost the election because they didn’t squirm far enough to the right. Where is the institutional leadership--or the leader--who could fight for a reorientation of the party toward a populist, progressive, passionate commitment to social and economic justice as a REAL alternative to reactionary Republicanism? Oh, Hillary Clinton, you say? Don’t make me laugh. But she’ll undoubtedly be the Democrats’ nominee in 2008--which is why we can expect, not four more years of Republican rule, but 12.

Insomnia

You know you aren't getting enough sleep when you look in the mirror, realize that one sideburn is trimmed, the other obviously isn't, and you have no idea when this could've happened. Maybe Stacy pulled a prank on me? I probably need more fish in my diet. Thank god the election is over, though.

Hot BMW on BMW action.

I found this in my Drafts folder. It's a couple of years old.

---

I can't be the only person who's noticed that the new bmw z4 car looks a lot like the Ambiguously Gay Duo's car:

vs.

---

As Biz Stone would say: "See how I'm right about that? huh?"