First alpha release of Python 3.0 (formerly Python3000) is out today. And it even works! Gotta do something about that executable name, though…

$ ./python.exe 
Python 3.0a1 (py3k, Aug 31 2007, 15:11:11) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5367)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

(Download, What’s New)

The biweekly Western Massachusetts Developers Meeting was small tonight, but still high-quality. Topics in our typically rambling discussion included:

• Are crawlers from some search engines following links embedded in Javascript (i.e. Ajax) code? And if so, what’s the use?
• What should Chas use for a CMS? (I don’t think any conclusion was reached; the two leading contenders seem be “build it in Django” or “just use Drupal”.) I do appreciate the argument that sometimes it’s good to think of yourself as a regular ol’ “business user” rather than someone who custom-develops everything just because he can.
• When does testing happen in your process? A range of answers here, from “before I write code” to, well, a bit later in the process.
• XPath and XQuery are worth knowing if you touch XML
• Various WTFs, including the company that replaced their SQL database with a single gigantic XML file because XML was, you know, magic.
• Google searches that find embarrassing mistakes. (It’s been a while since I updated that page)
• Another round of olde tyme computer reminiscences, prompted by my “Home Computer Handbook” from 1978. (Chris knows EBCDIC!) Have you ever heard of SLIP, GPSS, or SIMSCRIPT?
• Another round of version-control appreciation (Subversion and svnmerge, Darcs, Mercurial)
• Is there any OS X web design application somewhere between Coda and GoLive or Dreamweaver? I.e., not bloated, but still pleasant to use for people who need some WYSIWYG editing (my students)?
• BBEdit: What’s still good about it? (Palettes for nontechnical users.) What’s bad about it? (Kitchen-sink approach to multiple language features.) Make no mistake, though, BBEdit was definitely cool back in the day.
• The scriptaculous Ajax in-place editor
• Will inaccessible (in the Section 508 sense) web pages become more widespread now that the argument against them is being reduced from “What about all the crappy browsers out there, and what about accessibility?” to “What about accessibility?”

We also agreed to try doing some lightning talks or similar short presentations at a future meeting. I think this could be very cool. Chris said he would volunteer to run the gong.

From Apple’s release notes on the latest QuickTime update (emphasis mine):

QuickTime 7.2 addresses critical security issues and delivers:

• Support for full screen viewing in QuickTime Player
• Updates to the H.264 codec
• Numerous bug fixes

Finally! Now Steve Jobs can rest easy, knowing that nobody is going to pour boiling-hot coffee on him. Not over this, anyway.

At the end of this old post by John Nack at Adobe I found corroboration of my feeling that putting “RAW” (as in, raw image files from digital cameras) in all caps is silly. Some might feel this is a level of detail that only concerns copy editors and trademark lawyers, but I’m like that sometimes.

I’ve always preferred the nice, simple “raw” as the term for this sort of format. Saying “RAW” seems a little aggro (“RAW is WAR!!”), like you need to make the little devil-horns with your hand while saying it. The term is neither an acronym (RAW) nor a proper name (Raw), but rather a generic descriptor for a whole class of formats. Therefore Adobe just says “raw.”

Shared hosting is starting to feel pretty quaint in the face of cheap and easy virtualization, but I still have some clients who use it. While doing some maintenance work today on one client’s Pair.com account, I started to twitch when I realized I was about to make some changes without using version control. I checked for Bazaar, Mercurial, and darcs command-line binaries; only darcs was installed, luckily a fairly recent version (1.0.8). Problem solved.