Python SVG scripting
Posted by: sito on: March 9, 2007
Was looking around the net for python scripts to work with SVG and I stumbled upon SVGDraw. Its a nice module if you are looking to output SVG, but even neater (I thought) was the xmlgen module to generate valid XML output for most standard XML languages (SVG, RSS etc) whose DTDs are available online. See the code to experience it first hand 
Python hack (PyFlickring?)
Posted by: sito on: March 7, 2007
- In: flickr| python
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Today I have added a new ‘photos page‘ to this blog for linking to my individual flickr photosets from here. But I do not want to keep updating this page manually every time I add a new set on flickr. Several developers have already written WordPress plugins to handle this issue so as to dynamically generate the flickr content on the server after querying the user’s flickr page. However, these solutions are not applicable to users of wordpress.com since we cannot run arbitrary plugins on the wordpress.com server with a free blog account.
In the absence of the server side solutions being applicable, I wondered if it would be possible to write a script to download flickr information using the flickr API and then update the blog page that I just set up using the WordPress API. If this worked out then I could potentially set up this script to run in a cron job and forget about updating this page manually. Turns out this is indeed possible using python and the associated API wrappers for Flickr and WordPress. The whole hack took me a couple of hours to get it working once I had located the API keys and appropriate python API wrappers. Its a bit rudimentary right now, but I plan to polish it a bit further to get better output and then I’ll post the script out here for others to refer, comment or use
Meanwhile if you just can’t wait, please drop me a note and I’ll send you a beta copy 
Counting days
Posted by: sito on: March 2, 2007
- In: books
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Counting days….
- For my wife and little one to come home.
- That my work is running delayed by.
- Till I go and splurge some more on my camera accessories
Meanwhile books that I read recently (in chronological order, latest last) are
Agatha Christie – Five little pigs (Poirot)
Agatha Christie – The A.B.C. murders (Poirot)
Agatha Christie – The mirror crack’d from side to side (Marple)
Agatha Christie – Cards on the table (Poirot)
Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile (Poirot)
Agatha Christie – Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (Poirot)
Agatha Christie – 4.50 from Paddington (Marple)
No prizes for guessing who my favourite detective story writer is at the moment Its been a while since the Poirot series was aired on television. I had seen it as a child and the sudden discovery of some of these books in my brother’s collection gave me the joy of a faint childhood memory visited all over again.
Update!
Posted by: sito on: February 6, 2007
Its been a while (understatement of the last whole year) since I uploaded my blog. I pondered about writing a wrap-up post for the year 2006, but that just remained as my new year resolution I guess: lofty by my blogging standards and unfulfilled like most new year wishes.
In any case, there are 2 events that spur me to post a note here after all. Firstly, we have now formally shifted into our own apartment. And more importantly, Vrushali and I have been blessed with a baby girl! Dear little Neha arrived at Ahmedabad in the early hours of the morning and filled our lives with a kind of joy that is hard to express in words! You just have to see me and Vrushali smile from ear to ear to believe that
Pics of her can be seen here.
