Those who have been here before know that I am a big fan of the Django python webframework, and also a big fan of OS X. So I thought that I would install Django on my MacBook Pro.

I did have it all installed on my G4 laptop, but I am going to be using it with at least two different databases on this machine. I am not going to give a complete, what I typed style install, just an overview because it is fairly easy.

1. Install latest version 2.4.* of Python from http://www.pythonmac.org
2. Check out the development version of Django from http://www.djangoproject.com/download/ (I checked it out in /django - probably not the best place to put it.)
3. Install latest stable version (5.1) of MySQL from http://www.mysql.com/
4. Install latest stable version of MySQL tools http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/
5. Install MySQLdb from http://www.pythonmac.org/packages/py24-fat/index.html
6. Create a symlink so Python can find django: ln -s /django/django_src/django/ /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django
7. Then I followed some instructions on blog.vixiom.com to add the path that I need.
8. edit your .bash_profile file in your home directory with the following path: /django/django_src/django/bin/:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:

Now that should be everything needed to start running with Django and MySQL. PostGreSQL is of course the better database but for the testing work that I am doing my webhost at the moment doesn’t support PostgreSQL..

Just a quickone, but I have upgraded wordpress on this site to version 2.2.1 which should be the very latest. I had it stuck at a very old version before so it should operate better now, and also I should have all the latest bug fixes.

The modification I made to zussaweb the PHP frontend to HellaNZB is now available in sourceforge for downloaded as a 0.3 release.

They tidied it up abit, but I am glad it made it in after all the requests and emails that I got for this feature.

Now perhaps I should integrate a Newzbin RSS feed!!

So firefox 2 the latest release from Mozilla is out to the public today, and so I am typing this to you from it.  I think its looking good, though I am not sure what it is doing to the padding on the backend of Wordpress.

I am really liking the built in spell checker.  Its a nice feature particularly when you spend a lot of time typing into websites.

Available from http://www.mozilla.com as always.

The excellent Langalist now has a blog up at  http://www.langa.com/blog/  to compliment the always excellent email list.

Today I am going to try out the X1 desktop indexed search tool that they recommended.  For more information on that either check out langa blog or visit http://www.x1.com/download/
directly.

I have been looking at how I backup my data at home, and one thing that always comes to mind is how to get these backups of site, and preferrably into a different geographical area easily.

Well Amazon S3 storage was always on my mind, but recently Dreamhost have gone crazy with their storage offerings.  I know have over 400Gb of space with over 4Tb of transfer for a small outlay each month.

A cost comparison has been done here by Joseph Scott showing how the two compare:
http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2006/10/03/amazon-s3-vs-dreamhost/

I am going to be looking at implementing something with Dreamhost I think, I am not a major corporation, I am a home user with some data so I think Dreamhost will be fine.

Bacula and Backuppc are two projects that run on Debian that I will be checking out, and first and foremost I want to make sure that my data is encrypted quite strongly.  Though I am probably going to put up my photo archive just as is, to have easy access when needed.  More posts to come on this.

Over the last few days I have been playing with Django quite alot, installing it on a couple of machines and on Dreamhost. The Dreamhost configuration is now well documented by Jeff Croft in his post: http://www2.jeffcroft.com/2006/may/11/django-dreamhost/ and the on Dreamhost Wiki here: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Django

I did seem to use a few different settings on the file:

django.fcgi:
#!/usr/bin/env python import sys sys.path += ['/home/timc3/django/django_src'] sys.path += ['/home/timc3/django/django_projects'] from fcgi import WSGIServer from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler import os os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'drunkonpetrol.settings' WSGIServer(WSGIHandler()).run()

Which seemed to help no end in getting it working.

On my own development machines I have had to set the PYTHONPATH environmental variable in .profile which is what python uses to search along when doing its imports. This is also set when using Mod_Python in the VirtualHost settings of Apache.

DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is another env var that can be set this time for django itself. I haven’t yet configured it on my machines at the moment but I will do no doubt.

The base configuration that django gives via its admin tools is very good, but it has been extended by this project: Nesh DjangoUtils , which helps when setting up a djangoproject to do everything from creating the directories to creating the fcgi and modpython entries.  I haven’t needed to use it yet as I already started my django project before using it, but it is one to try in the future for sure.

So far I am finding django quite rapid in development, but I am spending alot of time looking for documentation on things, but the IRC channel is proving invaluable for help.  I will be putting up alot more articles as I go forward.

Excellent interview by Network World with Radia Perlman who the also named one of the 20 most influential networking personalities of the last 20 years.

She talks about Networks, her spanning tree protocol and what she is doing now including working at Sun on many projects including looking at networking and security. A most interesting Lady (though she doesn’t seem to want any treatment regarding her gender either).

Also related is this entry on 20 people who changed the industry, of which she is one and 20 network-changing products in 20 years.

So I was looking for a way of creating site maps and I came across a google tool that I didn’t know that had been created, namely Google Sitemaps.

This got me thinking, actually how many tools are there by google, and what do they all do. Google sitesmaps could do any number of things (check out the blog at http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/), and how does it compare to google analytics? So I came up with a list:

Google Earth. A download that provides mapping streamed from Google to your computer. It supports both Mac and PCs, but requires a fast internet connection and uses satellite images with maps to display the Earth in pseudo 3D form.

Gmail. The google mail service, with huge storage, google style searching all in a web interface which has become extremely popular thanks to its referral signup process.

Google Groups. Search and find information on Usenet with google powered search.

http://www.google.com - Allows users to search the web, usenet and the web for images.

Google Maps. AJAX powered maps of the US, and some of the rest of the world in differing detail. Satellite images can also be used and it provides an API so that third parties can integrate.

http://news.google.com/. An aggregated news viewer with google search integrated. The news can be personalized to your taste with news from all over the world.

Google Scholar. Keep abreast of new research, literature and papers with this Beta service.

Google Sitemaps - Experiment in web crawling where you define your site, upload a map and let google crawl it.

Google Talk A google online chat client which integrates nicely with gmail.

Google Video Upload and share your video, and offer it for sale straight from the webpage. Videos are automatically thumbnailed and can be keyworded.

http://toolbar.google.com/ A toolbar offering extra features to your web browser such as auto form filling, spell check, search and notification of unsafe sites.

http://books.google.com/
Search inside books

http://desktop.google.com/ An application that runs on your desktop and indexs content such as files, emails so that you can quickly search and find information on your computer. It also integrates with google search so that you can search the internet and your computer at the same time.

http://directory.google.com/ A categorized directory of weblinks alot like the original yahoo site.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/google blog site, where you can build your own blog and host it. Comes with many features and a well defined API for extension.

http://labs.google.com/ Googles own technology playground. All sorts of new and interesting bits are posted here.

http://www.google.com/notebook Google notebook, add notes and clipbook information while you are browsing the internet without leaving your browser with this browser extension.

http://www.google.com/coop Help others with finding information and create specialised search topics and subscribed links on specialised subjects.

http://www.google.com/trends Compare searches. i.e. Dogs vs Cats (looks like dogs are winning!).

And of courses there is:

http://moon.google.com/

answers.google.com
http://blogsearch.google.com/
http://pages.google.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/
http://calendar.google.com/
http://pack.google.com/
http://finance.google.com/finance
http://froogle.google.com/
http://picasa.google.com/
http://code.google.com/
http://catalogs.google.com/
http://webaccelerator.google.com/
http://www.google.org/
http://www.googlealert.com/
http://sketchup.google.com/

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

http://www.googlestore.com/

Of course after putting together this list I find out that Wikipedia has an entry, in its own unique style, but I am going to update this in a while with information on each of those, I have used all of them. Then perhaps I will be looking at what Yahoo and Windows Live is doing…

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The whole darknet thing has been interesting me recently, not as a way of doing anything undercover, just more of the potential of running networks on top of networks and closed community creating new content.

One post that really got me into it was that at:

http://blogumentary.typepad.com/chuck/2006/03/mpaa_smackdown.html

When Kori Bernards of the MPAA got many questions thrown at her about copyright, when the discussion should have been about Darknets. It goes a little way to show the passion that users have for buying content and using it in the ways they want not in the predefined ways that the middlemen think we should.

The reason it arose in the darknets talk was obviously connected. I have mirrored the videos that are of the event here:

JD Lasica’s Darknet Mashup
SXSW audience and MPAA
Ian Clarke - Encoding broke my DVD
DCMA and Flickr

One of the most interesting papers on darknet is a must read if you are interested in the subject, The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution by Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado and Bryan Willman.