I recently started a contest for a logo design (The link is not to my contest, just an example). Soon I had over 60 entries and I needed an easy way to present these logos to the client in a Power Point presentation. It takes two clicks to get to each image… no good. Thus the following script was created. It should serve as a good tutorial on how to use Python to do some basic web interactions.
continue reading "Using Python to Grab Images From a Web Site"

There are two books I recommend to any startup: The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything and Getting Real. I created a guide based on the former, and now I have created a mind map based on the latter. I suggest that you use the mind map for review or to gain an overview of the key points. You can download the mind map here (it is in the FreeMind format): Getting Real Mind Map.

As an undergraduate, one of my favorite classes was Software Engineering. It was in that class, I learned about applying Computer Science theories to the “real world”. We learned about things such as CVS, Cron, Python, UML, etc…

One of the books that was recommended reading, and remains in my library, was The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master. Chapter 3 talks about the basic tools needed for any programmer. Here is a review and description of the tools I use and consider fundamental.
continue reading "The 8 Essential Tools for Programmers"

I had the great fortune of spending some time with Paul Maximov, owner of Cyberian Soft at Orange County’s Largest Mixer. He shared some essential tips on managing his nine person programming team in the Ukraine.
continue reading "3 Powerful Offshoring Tips"

So you have your shiny new *buntu installed and now you want to start hacking with your favorite framework, Symfony. This quick guide will have you up and running in a few minutes. I assume you have installed Apache 2, PHP5 and MySQL 5 using the defaults with Synaptic.
continue reading "Setting Up Symfony on Ubuntu 7.10 64bit"

This snippet is used to hide specific elements on the front page only, that are not hide-able using the home menu parameters (menu->main menu->home). For example, you may want to hide the breadcrumbs only on the front page.

continue reading "Hide Elements on the Front Page of a Joomla Site"

In order to maintain harmony among several developers it is important to follow some core standards. With Symfony, it is standard practice to use a two space convention. Here is how to make PHPEclipse honor this policy while still allowing you to use the tab button.

continue reading "Converting Tabs to Spaces in PHPeclipse"

This post is for those that are new to Ruby on Rails, or those that have not spent the time learning the various debugging techniques. The objective is to get you quickly up to speed on how to debug your Ruby on Rails application.

continue reading "Quickstart: Debugging Ruby on Rails Applications"

Interest in Symfony has increased since del.icio.us announced it developed its new version on the Symfony framework. If you are running Vista and you need to get a quick Symfony development environment going, then look no further. Follow these easy steps to going in 20 minutes.
continue reading "Get Symfony Installed in 20 Minutes on Vista"

One of our programmers had the following comment in a recent Subversion commit: “Verified to display correctly with IE6, IE7, FF Ubuntu, FF, Galeon, Konqueror”. Sigh… don’t you hate when you have to do that? Frameworks like Prototype and Symfony has made development life much easier, but sadly CSS cross browser hell still brings the pain. So I ask, can some brave master-hacker create a Prototype/Symfony like framework for us poor CSS/HTML programmers?

continue reading "CSS Equivalent of Prototype?"