Today I found Geany . . . and my search for the perfect Linux text-editor finally ended. If you’re already a VIM or Emacs ninja then you may want to stop reading now, if however you come from a Windows background (like me) or you like the niceties a true GUI tool can offer, then Geany may be everything you’ve been looking for.

I use Python, so whitespace management is *very* important to me, for this I need some key functionality:

• Whitespace display
• Correct tab/space handling

On Windows my editor of choice was Notepad++, it did all of above superbly. When I moved to Linux most of my development-related tasks became much easier, however I sorely missed some of the key editing  features that I had become used to (as a side note – I also miss the GUI repo browsing offered by the TortoiseHG).

Why I love Geany

It’s fast, lightweight and has some killer features . . .

1. Whitespace

Geany shows whitespace clearly.  It handles tabs and spaces properly without interchanging the two. These features make all Python indentation issues just drift away.

2. Folding

It’s great to be able to collapse all the classes and functions that you’re not working on to save some screen real-estate (not to mention the scrolling up/down).

3. Class/Function browser

This sealed the deal. The browser on the left pane lists all the classes, functions, variables and imports found in the open file. This makes navigation very quick, and is a boon for working your way around an unfamiliar piece of code.

3. Other great stuff

And there’s more: Built-in file browser, shell, scratchpad, and support for 3rd-party plugins are just some of the other great features that Geany has to offer. As a bonus, Geany can also run on Windows too.

So Geany it is, and I’m finally happy. Here are some of the other editors I tried (and why they didn’t quite fit the bill for me).

Gedit
The default editor in Ubuntu is actually a really nice little tool and does 99% of what I need, but something I cannot live without is whitespace display. None of the available Gedit plugins seem to offer this..

VIM
Immensely powerful, but has a learning curve that right now I’m just to busy for.

Emacs
See VIM.

Wing IDE
I had high hope for Wing, but it let me down massively when it started to mix up tabs and spaces within the same indented sections.

Eclipse
I really don’t want to wait 10mins for Eclipse to load every day. It’s far too big for my needs.

I’m off to Prague tomorrow ahead of next week’s EuroDjangoCon.

In a great demonstration of crowdsourcing, jacobian has created a Google Map for Prague which is now being populated by conference goers.

View EuroDjangoCon in a larger map

So far it includes the conference hotel, tram stops and a bunch of bars, restaurants and sites. Who needs a guidebook!

EuroDjangoCon has been organized by Robert Lofthouse and takes place in Prague on 4th-6th of May 2009 (with development sprints on the 7th and 8th).

I’m looking forward to meeting up with fellow Django folks so please stop me and say Hi if you see me wandering around.

Our first step: the logo. ..

I think we nailed it . . . well, actually our graphic designer did (with a little help and guidance from us of course!).  

Our logo is the foundation for all of our branding. It’s a strong image that stay’s recognizable in single/reverse colour and has an identity that we can build on. The ‘bars’ image reinforces the monitoring theme.

Next up: business cards . . .

Our business card design builds on the logo theme and extends it even further. On the front of the card we have subtle grey bars, and on the reverse we have a striking blue theme with a large logo image. 

Nick and I spent some time discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using the back of the business card (versus leaving it plain white). After seeing the initial design concepts the decision became a no-brainer – we loved the image, and it’s a great addition to our branding. As Nick said: “It’s a walking advertisement”.

The holding page . . .

With our logo and business cards in place we moved on to our holding page. With lots of work still to do on our web-app we wanted to make sure we had something in place to point people to and capture their interest. Back to our trusted designer we went, and again he came through.

Instantly recognizable if you’ve been given one of our business cards, the holding page continues the blue theme to create a bold and striking image. Our holding page will be around for a while so we wanted to get it right in order to make a great first impression.

Seeing all of our branding come together has started to make everything seem more real. It’s no longer just an idea, it’s something I can actually see, hold, and touch.

I’m using linux in this scenario, but it would probably work fine in Windows too.

First I configured my cron job (actually the .sh script that cron job runs) to output to a file called report.txt. This would be overwritten each time the job ran, so would always be the latest version.

An existing Django project settings.py had the following settings to enable email sending via a Gmail (or Google Apps) account. The settings are based on Nathan Ostgard’s Gmail and Django article.

EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'user@domain.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

So I knocked up a standalone python script sendreport.py that would take these settings and email the report.txt file to me.

#!/user/bin/python
#
# Get settings from an existing django project
import sys
import os
sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)), '/..'))
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'my_django_project.settings'

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage

# Set up email fields
recipient = 'myemail@mydomain.com'
subject = 'CRON Job Report'
body = 'CRON Job Report for blah, blah, blah . . .'

# Create email object, attach file, send
email = EmailMessage(subject, body, to = [recipient])
email.attach_file('report.txt')
email.send()

The EmailMessage class makes it very easy to attach a file and send the email.  I can tag this on to the end of the .sh script executed by the cron job and jobs-a-good-un

Well sort of . .  it’s functional, but not ideal. It works by reading email settings from an existing Django app’s setting.py. I wanted it to be more portable, and not dependent on a specific Django configuration/app.

Then I found out that you can specify Django settings from within a standalone python script. Could this method be used to break any dependencies and make the script more portable? Absolutely!

#!/user/bin/python
#
# Configure some standalone django settings
# These settings are for a gmail or google apps account
from django.conf import settings
settings.configure (
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'user@domain.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
)

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
import datetime
import sys
import socket

# Get the hostname and current time to put in the email
hostname = socket.gethostname()
timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().ctime()

# Set up email fields
recipient = 'myemail@mydomain.com'
subject = '%s CRON Job Report: %s' % (hostname, timestamp)
body = 'Report for %s on %s attached' % (hostname, timestamp)

# Create email object, attach file, send
email = EmailMessage(subject, body, to = [recipient])
email.attach_file('bkp_report.txt')
email.send()

I also made use of hostname()and datetime() to provide some more detail for the email subject and body.

Now the only dependency is Django itself – which I’m happy with, my job reports are archived in email – which I like, and I get to use more Python – which is good for me.

I’m now on a VPS running

. . . with and

I grabbed the latest version of 

. . . and hooked it up to a database.

Let’s see where it goes.

I’ve ported accross my single post for posterity. Maybe someday I’ll find the time to build something nice for myself in Django.

I’ve recently been helping some friends ditch Internet Explorer and move to Firefox for their web-browsing. In the past this hasn’t always been an easy sell, especially to non-techies who just want to get their job done and have little interest in installing new toys to play with. Let’s face it, most people don’t have the time to understand security and compatibility issues, they just want to visit their favourite websites. I’m now finding that just a few simple ‘add-ons’ form the silver bullet. The range of Firefox add-ons available is incredible, they extend out-of-the-box functionality to enable extra features, and there are a few killer add-ons that once you have used you’ll never be able to go back to IE.

Here is my list of ‘must-have’ add-ons that close a Firefox ’sale’ every time:

Dictionary

Does your webmail, forum, Facebook page, or blog have a spellchecker? No? Most of them don’t, and we’ve become far too dependent on those wiggly red underlines that help us right-click away our fat-fingered mistakes. This add-on automatically brings in-line spellchecking to every text entry block on the web. Simple, effective and fantastic.

Must-have-rating: 5/5

Bookmark with del.icio.us

This has completely changed the way I use bookmarks, helped me keep track of far more sites than I ever could before, and massively improved my productivity. Most of all this add-on guarantees I always have an up to date bookmark list in my browser no matter which PC I am using (laptop, desktop, work, etc.). It enables searching, tagging and sharing too.

Must-have-rating: 5/5

You will need a del.icio.us account, don’t worry it only takes 30 seconds to sign up.

Tabs Open Relative

A long name for a small add-on. This is essential for those currently using IE7. It forces new tabs to open next to the current tab, mimicking IE7’s new tab behaviour. A great help for keeping tabs the ‘relative’ to each other. Simple and effective.

Must-have-rating: 5/5

Capture web pages with FireShot

Have you ever wanted to save or capture a web page? Need to include a web page in a document, or to archive a page for posterity? The ‘Save page as …’ function often fails and <ALT>+<PRTSCR> is useless when half the page is off-screen.

Step in Snapshot – one click image capture for the web page you are viewing, either the viewable portion or the entire page (no scrolling required). Edit and annotate if required and save to a file, clipboard or email.

Must-have-rating: 4/5

(Picnik does something very similar. It’s impressively gorgeous in true Web 2.0 style with all the AJAX pop-ups, rounded-corners and pastel colour fabness you could ever wish for. Sadly there are a couple of sites that it hasn’t worked on, and it does take a bit longer to process the image, however for pure eye-candy it’s unbeatable)

Better Gmail / Better Gmail2

One for the Gmail (or should that be GoogleMail) crowd. A neat add-on that adds just enough useful additions to the Gmail interface without overdoing it. It also works with Google Apps for your domain. My favourite options are:

• Attachment Icons (shows attachment icons for word, pdf, excel, etc.)
• Coloured labels (makes labels stand-out alongside message text for easy identification)

Must-have-rating: 4/5

IE Tab

Some sites don’t work with Firefox, and some probably never will. Microsoft’s Windows Update for one. This add-on allows you to open a web site using IE in a separate Firefox tab. The addition of this right-click option saves the effort of copying and pasting URLs into IE, and it keeps all your browsing in one place. Nice and simple, gets the job done.

Must-have-rating: 3/5

These are the ‘essential’ Firefox add-ons. Unlike most on ‘top 20′ or ‘top 50′ lists all of these will add real value and increase your productivity and efficiency. So what are you waiting for? Get Firefox!, Get add-ons! and Get productive! I’ve added some step-by-step instructions to get you started below:

Get Firefox: step-by-step

1. Download and install Firefox by clicking on the orange banner above (or here)
2. Install add-ons by clicking the add-on section titles in my blog post above
3. Browse with efficiency and be more productive

Job done!

Go to Tools/Add-ons/Get Extensions to find more great add-ons, there are loads to choose from.