This week is so busy that I don’t have time for a longer post, but I wanted to mention DjangoKit (attentive readers may have already spotted it in the sidebar), an OS X application wrapper for Django projects. Tom Insam went and did something that I’ve had on my “someday” list for a long time. It’s very much a 0.0.1 project right now, but I think it has great potential as an application testbed and as a platform for hybrid apps.

Perhaps ironically, one of the great technological advances of OS X over previous versions is the availability of a command line. Someday we won’t need this, but today it turns out that the pure point-n-click GUI was something of a premature optimization, and that in fact certain types of users find they work faster and better when typing commands.

While its simplicity is part of its charm, terminal applications invite tweaking. One of the earliest celebrated novelties of OS X was Terminal.app’s option for translucent windows. I initially thought this was useless, but have come to really appreciate it. With the right opacity setting, you hardly notice the background, yet when you refocus your attention you can see it easily. It’s like having on-demand X-ray vision!

As I said in my last post, I haven’t found many tech/software podcasts worth sticking with, but since people have asked, here are a few that I generally like.

• LugRadio. Loud men swearing in a small room. Plus Linux and whatnot. This show has some very funny moments, a rarity in tech podcasts. I hear they’re going to do an all-Haskell episode pretty soon.
• Audible Ajax – good, though relatively infrequent
• The Ruby on Rails Podcast is worth following. Even for a Django guy like me.
• For OS X development, CocoaRadio can be instructive.
• And finally, just recently I’ve been picking through the archives of a podcast with some interesting esoteric (for me) discussions: Industry Misinterpretations. Terrible name. It’s about Smalltalk. Remember Smalltalk?

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James Robertson commented on Tue Apr 3 16:07:35 2007:

I periodically go searching for new tech-related podcasts to make my commute-time more edifying, interesting, or amusing. I’ll admit right up front that I’m picky – the only one I find myself returning to consistently is LugRadio, which I know is not everyone’s cup of tea. But I’m not looking for “Bob’s Gadget News”. Anyway, content aside, there are some production and style problems that have turned me off to so many podcasts that I’ve come to view them as established antipatterns.

Python 3, formerly known as “Python 3000”, is coming. If you want to get up to speed, here’s my simple three-step program:

Thanks to the helpful folks on the #svn IRC channel I learned that it is possible to turn a directory into a svn checkout in-place, i.e. without having to replace the directory itself with a fresh checkout after you svn import. This is very handy for things like /etc files and other stuff that you’d rather not be shuffling around unnecessarily.

The key nugget of info is here in the svn FAQ.

An opinionated minority of advanced computer users are rebelling against the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointers) model of HCI. They are developing and promoting alternative interfaces (typically desiigned to work with unix-based systems) that embody their opinions.

I haven’t used any of these yet, but here are the ones I keep encountering references to:

• Ion
• Ratpoison
• Orion
• StumpWM

Most if not all of these credit the terminal-only GNU Screen (a program I do use) with inspiration. The ideas of Jef Raskin undoubtedly are a factor too.