Finally, GhostDriver 1.0.0

After ~10 months of work, I finally managed to push the ball forward enough to reach GhostDriver 1.0.0. I won’t lie: it does feel great. It always is to see so much effort mutate into an achievement, even it is such only for me. Before I go any further though, I owe a massive THANK-YOU to the people that through contribution and / or issue reporting have helped me to build a releasable 1.0.0. In particular to Jim Evans, an awesome guy and a bit of a mentor for me: you ROCK Jim, and I think that is true, literally! ...

December 3, 2012 Â· 8 min Â· 1530 words

Bloggart: what's coming

Dear Bloggart belovers (like there were any out there…), this is a quick update on what’s happening with my Bloggart fork. Yes, fork - this is now the correct way to calling it. Initially I was just touching and modelling the software to my personal needs. Now I’m really going in my own direction. Anyway, let’s stay focused. I was here to tell you about a couple of new things that are coming to Bloggart. ...

January 10, 2011 Â· 2 min Â· 426 words

From Wordpress to Bloggart

This post has been in my “TODO list” long enough. It’s time to put it in words. Let’s go! As you probably know, I decided to give up Wordpress.org in favour of Bloggart on App Engine. A great choice so far I must say. Migration, a proper one What I wanted to achieve My aim was to migrate more than 6 years of content (posts and comments) from my previous blog at detronizator.org into a bloggart installation. Why bloggart? Nick Johnson, the original author of Bloggart on Appengine, wrote a series of article on how to build a nice, little, smart blogging app on App Engine. At the same time, work on txty.mobi started to get more and more engaging, making me a lover (and advocate) of Google App Engine. Plus, I was interested in “starting from scratch”: Wordpress.org is a great project, but I just didn’t feel it “mine enough”. My blog must feel really mine: it’s about me after all. ...

October 11, 2010 Â· 8 min Â· 1498 words

gredirector - 'HTTP 301' through App Engine

When I decided to migrate to this new blog I was confronted by a very important issue: how do I make sure that the (already modest) traffic going to http://www.detronizator.org/* would be redirected to this new URL? 301 Redirection I started searching and I found this article by Danny Tuppeny on how to use a Google App Engine application to do the trick. So, what I did was to take his code and started putting it in place for me at http://redirector.ivandemarino.me. But because I’m a Software Developer that likes to make elegant stuff, I noticed that quite few things were missing: ...

September 29, 2010 Â· 5 min Â· 966 words

Google AppEngine resources

In the last period I’m spending some time working with Google AppEngine: if you don’t know what is it, be ashamed! :P I would like to highlight a couple of interesting resources that can make the life of who works with this framework/hosting platform/cloud computing system easier: * [Google AppEngine Cookbook](http://appengine-cookbook.appspot.com/) with a lot of good recipe (there are few now, written by the Googlers, but I'm sure it's gona blow up soon) The App Gallery, with a lot of interesting applications already in production phase ...

August 30, 2008 Â· 1 min Â· 172 words

PySync Google Group

Hi Guys. I’m part of a very little Gooooogle Group (only 5 members) discussing about an interesting project, PySync. I’ll not go in details (everything is in the “3” discussions inside the group), but some interesting ideas are “popping-out”. Share if you have something to.

July 31, 2007 Â· 1 min Â· 45 words

Google London Open Source Jam

Edit: Added a linkto the Google Group of the project of Mal about the sync-stuff. It’s name is PySync. Yesterday I went with a collegue (thank you Serage, particularly for the pictures ;) ) to this event that the Google’s London Office sort twice (or more?) a year. Google London Open Source Jam. I went for one main reason and other two minors (and… I didn’t know that the most important was another one ;)): The Topic To take a look to the Google Office in London (very very close to Victoria Station) Free Food (very nice pizza ;) ) (What’s the “main one” is up to you… :-D ). The Topic This time, our topic of interest is Mobile. Linux on phones JavaME vs JavaSE vs .NET CF vs Native Browser technologies: AJAX and Flash Building native apps that port to multiple architectures Open platforms (e.g. OpenMoko) Cross platform testing Making the most of mobile hardware (camera, voice, bluetooth, GPS, etc) Phone bling ...

July 20, 2007 Â· 5 min Â· 1049 words

GTK+ howto from IBM DeveloperWorks

A collection of howto on Gtk+ on the rich DeveloperWorks website from IBM. 2 articles are available right now: Why use Gtk+? How to use Gtk+ Source, OSSBlog.

January 12, 2006 Â· 1 min Â· 28 words

Embedding Python in your C programs

The language of choice for large, high-performance applications in Linux is almost always C, or somewhat less often C++. Both are powerful languages that allow you to create high-performance natively compiled programs. However, they are not languages that lend themselves to runtime flexibility. Once a C/C++ application is compiled, its code is pretty much static. At times, that can be a real hindrance. For example, if you want to allow users of a program to create plugins easily that extend the application’s functionality, you have to deal with complex dynamic linking issues that can cause no end of headaches. Additionally, your users will have to know C/C++ in order to extend the application, which severely limits the number of people capable of writing extensions. ...

January 3, 2006 Â· 2 min Â· 252 words

Guido Van Rossum go to Google

Google assumes the creator of Python. As you (probably) know, Python is one of the most used language in G. (together with C++ and Java). A good thing (evolution and power for Python development) or the transformation of Python in a “Google only oriented language”? Stay tuned.

December 23, 2005 Â· 1 min Â· 47 words