Reading: goodreads.com
If you read this blog on the website (and you do, because my feed is garbage ;-) you may have noticed a goodreads.com widget on the right.
It's not that my reading habits are interesting to anyone, since I have become a very shallow reader in the last two years or so (a terrible, terrible involution caused by all the free scifi ebooks floating around), but I love that site. In the past I posted some book-related stuff here, but it was always sort of guilty about it, posting things my readers (few as they are) probably don't give a damn about.
With goodreads, I have a way to vent my shallow opinion about my shallow readings. I need the same thing for movies.
Also, it's a much more reasonable thing than all that "now listening" idea. Who care what you are listening? It lasts for 3 minutes! A book is something you have in your head for at least a couple of days! It is so much more meaningful.
rst2pdf: presentations
I have been thinking about using rst2pdf to create presentations. I finished exposing PDF transitions today, and that part works nicely.
Still needed:
- Some sort of "page decoration" feature.
- Handout support? I think this would work nicely with some sort of "conditional" directive. I need to think about it some more.
I intend to have that done for next friday, and release then.
Programming and Life plans.
First a huge announcement: I will not release anything tomorrow. For the first time in 6 weeks, no friday release from me!
Now, let's see what I'm planning.
I will be at LatinoWare 2008 speaking about PyQt. The usual free beer offer: if you mention this blog, I will buy you 1 (one) not very good beer. Being in Brazil, that's probably a Brahma.
rst2pdf development is slowing down. The easy stuff is all done. There are some things I can do, though:
- Expose transitions to the writer (good for presentations)
- "Background" forms (again, for presentations)
- A mini-language exposing the canvas, so there is a useful "raw" mode.
- Using svglib instead of uniconvertor to handle SVG (but keep uniconvertor for other vector formats)
- Redoing lists, which have a shaky code and bad layout
- Fix half a dozen bugs
- Make it work more like a unix app when in unix (respect environment vars, for example)
However, I am taking a little time off from it, and going to try reviving other projects. Focusing in rst2pdf for two months did wonders for it. Let's see if it can be repeated!
Try some more code golfing. I helped Nubis from PyAr reach the lowest-score of 74 in the grid challenge. This is really fun stuff.
I need more money. We have spent lots in ... plumbing. Yup. Two years of savings spent on that. So, I need money. If you read this blog and want to make me happy, get me freelance work. It can be sysadmin stuff, it can be programming, it can be babysitting. I am good at all three things. Contact me. I'm easy to find, and I am cheap(ish).
No, I am not starving. No, I am not in money problems. Yes, my company is doing very well, but it's an investment, not a cash cow (yet).
Golfing
I spent a few hours today round Code Golf and here's a neat thing I did.I think this is python's shortest possible factorial:
f=lambda x:x<2or x*f(x-1)
You may say it's not correct, because f(1) returns True, but int(True) is 1, so it's almost there ;-)
And here's a surprisingly readable (as long as you know pascal's triangle) and not too long answer to their choose challenge:
n,k=input() a,c=1,0 while c<k:a*=n-c;c+=1;a/=c print a
rst2pdf 0.9 is out, now with LaTeX style math support!
Well, what the title says. Get it at the usual places. No, it doesn't require actual LaTeX. Just Matplotlib.
What may be in rst2pdf 0.9...
If I manage to make it work well: Math!
Here's how it looks:
It does not require TeX. It is not an image. It does require external software, and it does require you to write TeX syntax.
If you are a reportlab user: this is a platypus flowable.
As usual, it's not me that's doing the heavy lifting. I am just good at using other tools.
With a little luck, it should be usable this friday.
Forgot t omention it: rst2pdf 0.8.1 is out
I announced it on all other places except here: rst2pdf 0.8.1 is out. What's new?
- Complex headers and footers
- Optional inline links
- Wordaxe 0.2.6 support
- Many bugfixes
Get it at the usual place
uRSSus in a magazine DVD?
Of course I could be misunderstanding this, but it seems they included uRSSus 0.2.10 in a DVD for some reason :-)
The link and I will not make a "in soviet russia" joke.
Uqbar? Fail!.Rst2pf: Win!
So, I failed to release uqbar this week. However, I am releasing rst2pdf 0.8, with SVG support! Get its vectorial goodness from http://rst2pdf.googlecode.com
Using vector images in reportlab, improved
I just committed into trunk of rst2pdf a nicely working SVGImage flowable for reportlabs.
The code is self-contained in two files:
You can use them in your app if you want (I'd like to know, though). One of them is GPL/LGPL (it's basically copied from uniconvertor) the other is MIT-Licensed.
The output is astonishing: svg.pdf is only 32KB and completely resolution-independent. Graphics in your PDF That look good printed and on screen! And are not huge! Yay!
This will be the flagship new feature in tomorrow's rst2pdf 0.8.
All contents of this site written by me are free. Copy, modify, whatever, just put my name in it, and if you change the contents, clearly say so in the same page. Please provide a link back to the original. All images that are not my own should be available under a Creative Commons license. If that's not the case, please report and I will fix it.
