I <3 Django
December 1st, 2008Last month(November) had been quite busy for me, had many things going on including :-
- My new Secret Project : Its a new Django based web project, if all goes as per plan I take over the world and declare windows illegal
- Visa issues : Apparently the process for a Non-Immigrant visa in Thailand is not an easy route.
- Thai Political Uncertainty : The drama is simply too irresistible to not follow, constant fights, arguments and lame comments from both sides (pro-govt and PAD)
- Trip to India : I had gone on a short trip to India on Social visit in the beginning of the month.
- Mumbai Terror Attacks : The bastards struck the Indian financial capital of Mumbai. Even though the 62 hour long ordeal is over now, the blame game drama has begun and would make major news for months to come.
So… apologies to my regular readers (just in case there are any besides me) just had too many things shoved into one month.
A couple of months ago I wrote about how I had finally chosen Ruby on Rails over Django. Well… at the time of writing I hadnt taken a serious look at Django. Soon after making the post i decided to give Django a second look. The more i dugg, the deeper I fell in love Django and Python. I have Ben and Kirit who I can regularly irriate with n00b questions, the Django-Users group is quite active and the Django documentation is just awesome. Django truly rocks.
About my new secret project, it is a website about -SNIP- and I aim it to be one of the authorative websites in it domains. The topic of the site is not one I am an expert in, however that shouldnt be an issue. The website is located at -SNIP- . For this project Archit is helping with css n stuff for free 
.
As expressed above, the website is made using Django, and is un early development stages and even while development the data entry is already in progress. It would eventually become a really huge database.
The best thing i liked about Django is that you can import the Django enviornment in any regular external script and have access to all the functions, models defined in your project. You even have access to all the django APIs within your project. See this awesome post for more info of what im saying. I modified it a little to suit my project.
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#for portability
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project = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
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sys.path.append(project)
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os.environ[‘DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE’] =‘topsecretproject.settings’
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from django.core.management import setup_environ
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from topsecretproject import settings
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from topsecretproject.app.models import model1, model2
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setup_environ(settings)
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data = model1.objects.all()
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#… and so onn….
Tools used : Postgres, git, github, gedit, Komodo IDE(looks nice but free trial gonna run out soon 
), Ubuntu(my notebook), CentOS(development server - crappy VPS)
Since this project is being built from the ground up, I have full control of everything. Keeping both usability and Search Engine Optimization in mind and not really feeling like there is a compromise in any.
Perhaps in a couple of weeks the site would be somewhat presentable, then id discuss various aspects about the code and techniques im using in keeping the site SEOed. Its too early to talk about it at the moment.
Disclaimer : No windows users were harmed during the production of this post.
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Messing with ROR
September 15th, 2008Last few weeks I have beed gazing over Django and Ruby On Rails web frameworks. Spent some time with both, read numerous ROR vs Django posts. Even attended Django 1.0 launch party in Bangkok, to give the Django fanboys a chance to convince me into Django… I did look into both frameworks and have decided upon ROR for the following reasons.
- I love the Ruby language syntax. Looks neater and less confusing.
- I have done some perl hacking last few months, shift to Ruby was easy.
- Loads of gems available to do cool stuff.
- When I first looked at Ruby, I started picking it up without much problems, however Python confuses my head.
- I don’t know a lot of SQL… need framework to do everything for me.
- Got free tech support which is called @luke_bkk
- See point 1
The thing is even if i outsource the development, the code needs to be in something which I am personally comfortable with. I am not a software development company, but in my line of work (online publishing), we regularly need to mess with stuff, tweak things, add features, thus the control needs to be there with us. Thats what differentiates us from the bulk. If you don’t test and innovate few things, your website would suck like the online version of an English Newspaper in Thailand.
So about an hour into development, here is screenshot of my accomplishment so far. It displays a list of stories in a blog format.
If my project starts looking good I might consider GPLizing it… but thats a rare possibility… the main reason im making it is to have fun and get a command over whatever my site runs on.
Edit 1 : Added point 6 …
Sphere: Related ContentHas Chrome killed Firefox?
September 3rd, 2008… well not yet…
Just a while ago, Google launched their own browser Chrome. It does look good, has many cool features, more secure, more stable, but still a beta. And this time its really a beta. Currently its available only for windows, however the main point is that its opensource and a Linux and Mac builds are expected soon.
My 5 minute experience with Chrome.
Screen 1 > Every thing looks good…
Screen 2 > Overflow!!
And No! I dont use windows! Just fired up VMware with Windoze XP to test Chrome
PS : If anyone got Chrome working with wine on Linux do gimme a buzz. Would like to know.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude
August 25th, 2008This is really funny… potentially NSFW
Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook.com banned in Thailand?
August 15th, 2008Since the past few hours, it appears to me that True ISP of Thailand is trying to block one of the most popular socual networking site Facebook. The situation is not as serious as the title makes it sound…. but what the he_l it would be reality when someone at the ministry logs into it for the first time….
On attempting to open any page within facebook we get the friendly message which looks very much like it is generated from True’s stupid transparent proxy.
Just now my staff called True and guess what? The true helpdesk simply asked us to use their proxy in the settings.
Proxy server : proxy.asianet.co.th
Port : 8080
So does changing from transparent to an explicit proxy mean we are going from the frying pan into the fire?
Long live ’ssh -D’
Now, didn’t some lawmaker dude say that its illegal to connect via proxies or sumthin?
Sphere: Related ContentTwitter is down again, Mein Führer
August 9th, 2008via @luke_bkk
Sorry if it offends anyone… Couldn’t just stop laughing really awesome!!!
Video by CrunchGear
Leading Thai Undergarment company threatnes the press
August 6th, 2008I run a news.google.com published website. Recently we ran a story titled “5000 undergarment workers storm Government House“. The source of this story is National News Bureau, Public Relations Department of Thailand (Who has now pulled off the story).
The story on my site was published at August 5th, 2008 - 2:59 pm (Thai Time). At about 8:30 pm (too late to expect anyone working), I get a call on my landline *allegedly* from the PR company who takes care of the PR for “Triumph International (Thailand)”, the company the news story is about. I am really a dumb ass for not making a note of her name or the name of the company she works for.
She demanded I pull off the story as it is incorrect. They have made my source (and even their source) do the same. She said that the figures and facts were incorrect. I politely asked for the correct information, but she insisted I remove the story. I tried explaining to her that simply deleting pages which exist in many places in my link structure is harmful for my site. I told her ill comply to her request by morning as all my staff have left work. At this point I thought all was well, when all of a sudden she brought out a point that this is story is wrong and that there can be legal action taken against us.
WTF!!! I said ill comply why you wanna talk about legal action?
At this point the story is still active on the site for the following reasons.
- For all we know the the call was not from someone authentic. Someone was fooling with me.
- I haven’t received any request or threat in writing.
- The request came in too late, beyond our office timing (9am to 5pm)
- We have not received any press release or press statement from the company. Even their pressroom doesn’t have Thailand in the list.
Friendly tip : If you want to damage reputation of your competitor, call up all media outlets you can think of, pretend to be the competitor, and give them legal threats. Make sure to leave no paper trail.
Would love to see your opinions via the comments. I believe this is not an issue to be taken lightly. Should i suck up to the TPTB?
Edit1 : The original story is also published here.
Edit2: Very interesting discussions at the Bangkok Bugle
