Daily Grind 2: Python Sorting

Daily Grind 2: Python Sorting

I have only been recently getting into python – at first for fun on CodinGame, and then more recently for some side work (including the MailChimp integration).  Something that I often find necessary for the various CodinGame puzzles and contests is sorting lists and dictionaries.  I often have to look up the correct ways to sort, especially when my the lists or definitions contain more complicated objects.  I figured this would be a good opportunity to share some of what…

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Daily Grind 1: Python Problems & Solutions

Daily Grind 1: Python Problems & Solutions

To start things off I am tossing out a few python problems I have come across recently, and the solutions I found for them. Python Date Manipulation While creating a python integration for MailChimp I needed to create a SQL query that would grab all records of a certain type that were created since Friday of last week.  If you have spent any time in the land of PHP, the strtotime method may come to mind.  Python even has a port of that…

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An Experiment: Search Volume Through Daily Posts

An Experiment: Search Volume Through Daily Posts

This blog has been sitting here for quite a while. It’s something I set up to play around with back when I was in college… I made a few posts related to stuff I was working on, and then it just sat idle for the next 7 years. Now, taking a look at how the blog has performed over those 7 years, I am starting to get curious. Will additional posts garner similar traffic? Will more posts mean an even…

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Practice Coding with CodinGame

Practice Coding with CodinGame

I have recently started playing around at CodinGame, and I have been enjoying myself enough that I felt the need to share.  The site generally falls under the development e-learning category, but stretches to a whole new level.  After setting up an account, you can start by diving right into the many code puzzles available. The puzzles are broken down by difficulty, and offer a wide range of categories to help users improve skills in various areas.  When starting a puzzle,…

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Configuring Zend Framework with Dwoo

Configuring Zend Framework with Dwoo

I spent some time trying to set up Zend Framework using the Quick Start Guide, combined with the Dwoo Template Engine.  Even though there is an actual guide written for the Zend Framework side, as well as a Dwoo adapter and corresponding wiki help page – there still seems to be a lot of confusion around this setup process.  The number of complaints in the comments in the quick start guide combined with the lack of help I was able…

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Discovering and Getting Started with Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries

Discovering and Getting Started with Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries

The Google Webmaster Tools site has been around for quite a while, offering a wide array of information to help website owners manage and track google specific information for all websites the owner may have published.  These services include crawl errors, popular google keywords, external and internal links, crawl rates, sitemap information, and more.  More recently, an exciting addition has come to Webmaster Tools called Search Queries. Search Queries gives users the ability to track Google searches in which their…

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The Ext JS datachanged event.

The Ext JS datachanged event.

During my recent performance testing with Ext JS I came across the Ext.data.Store datachanged event, which was causing some pretty large performance issues.  The datachanged event is documented as fired “when the data cache has changed in a bulk manner (e.g., it has been sorted, filtered, etc.) and a widget that is using this Store as a Record cache should refresh its view.”  This seems to be used often in the specific application I have been looking at, due to the…

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Clever Spam

Clever Spam

I have been amazed recently by the amount of spam comments this blog has been receiving.  I have discovered that there are a couple different levels of spam: 1.  The ugly spam.  This spam has no bounds.  It usually starts with a sentence that has either been poorly translated or created by someone that obviously does not speak English too well.  After this comes a decent sized listing of links to sites mainly consisting of either ring tones, gambling, or…

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Limited Wooden Skins and Covers for Macbook and iPad

Limited Wooden Skins and Covers for Macbook and iPad

A friend of mine from high school passed this one on to me, along with the hint that KARVT is a new company that he is starting.  Looks like the site is selling authentic wooden skins for all sizes of recent macbooks and macbook pros, with many choices from an original line – as well as an artist series that offers custom designs.  It even seems that other artists have the ability to submit custom designs to be reviewed and…

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ExtJS Introduction

ExtJS Introduction

I have spent a lot of time lately working with the Ext JS javascript library, and decided it would be worth it to share my tips, tricks, hints, and overall experience.  I originally started using the library a couple years ago during my senior projects class in college.  There still seems to be a web page up describing the project…  Overall, the project didn’t end too well – but it did get me a good start in web development. My…

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