A very cool idea

My python blog stream picked up http://www.snakebite.org/ today. It is a farm of computers with lots of different OSs on it so that Python can be constantly built and made to build on them. It is an amazing idea. I have always wondered how a sparse organisation, like a open source project, have the resources to build on so many platforms. It turns out they just rely on their members to have the OSs laying around to build on. Now Python doesn't have that problem. Big Win.

Name on Patent

My company just got one of its patents through and my name is on it. See it here For the record it is: European Patent Application No. 07712914.6 - Image Design System in the name of Serverside Group Limited - Our Ref: 601256PEP (066371-0075)

New Books

Amazon delivered "Expert Python Programming" and "CherryPy Essentials" today. Once they are read reviews will be written.

CherryPy

I am loving CherryPy. I just ported my star tracker to it in about 2 hours. Maybe I will put it up somewhere. Or just bring it back at work.

.emacs

Is it wrong to be becoming increasingly proud of my .emacs file? It is still very small, but I love it. Maybe it has something with slowly learning some lisp. Now I have to find a good way to sync it between work and home.

Running CherryPy behind Apache

There are a couple of options on to run CherryPy behind Apache. I have chosen to go for mod_python as the mod_rewrite runs the CherryPy server at the same time (from what I can tell) and it seems to be a little silly to run two servers at once.

It all comes down to the Apache config (which goes in /usr/local/etc/apache22/Includes/cherrypy.conf on my laptop) once you have mod_python installed and in your base Apache config

The actual configuration file for CherryPy takes the following form: <Location "/"> PythonPath "sys.path+['<path to any python modules required>']" SetHandler python-program PythonHandler cherrypy._cpmodpy::handler PythonOption cherrypy.setup <python module to run>::<function in module to run> PythonDebug On </Location>

so on my system with a basic app:

<Location "/">
    PythonPath "sys.path+['/usr/local/www/cherrypy/']"
    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler cherrypy._cpmodpy::handler
    PythonOption cherrypy.setup myapp::serverless
    PythonDebug On
</Location>

My references: The CherryPy wiki on the subject Mod_Python docs Now just to write some code that actually makes use of it all :)

Upgrading to FreeBSD 7.1

FreeBSD 7.1 is out (see here)