Twitter2Rss in Python (and how I use Twitter)

When Twitter stopped serving RSS feeds, around May 2013 I think, I implemented a small and light Python Twitter-API to RSS proxy. It connects to Twitter using their API, reads the Tweets and generates RSS or Json.

The Json output is similar to the output served by the Twitter API but if you use this […]

User pain and developer shame

There is the concept of User Pain. Useful concept which I’ve used at work. It’s not perfect, might need tweaking for each situation but works well.

In a nutshell: given a software bug it is possible to quantify the pain caused by the bug to all the users based on the type of bug (crash, […]

Getting social (in Github)

Time to get more social. No, not jumping to Facebook. Or to Twitter. But I’ve been moving some code from my “private”, or a at least, not very public, Git repositories (http://git.pinux.info/) to my Github account (https://github.com/cpina?tab=repositories).

I’ve been using github as a collaborator for some projects and I thought that was time to move […]

Chocolate-ware licenses

There is a “free software” license called “Beer license” (or beerware). It doesn’t seem to be recognized as a free software license by theOpen Source Initiative.

In one of the Mendeley hackdays I did a Calibre plugin. I wanted to release it, so it had to have a license. I thought to release with some […]

Fosdem 2013

This year I also went to Fosdem.. It has been my 8th Fosdem, and I keep saying that it is Amazing! It’s the biggest Free Software conference in Europe (more than 5000 attendees).

Nice talks, about 20 at the same time, different topics (from distributions to Ada language, from Voice over IP to LibreOffice…).

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Pythonanywhere is very nice

Some time ago, in a London Python Code Dojo, I heard about Pythonanywhere.com. I thought that it was interesting but I didn’t visit the webpage or register myself (lack of time, lack of need, whatever).

In general speaking I’m a bit reluctant to start depending on more Internet services. I try to use and reuse […]

Should we unit test trivial code?

Should we unit test trivial code?

A dilemma that I’ve had long time ago: should I unit test a very trivial code, with a very trivial unit test? Answer: yes.

I remember that once I had a class which, in that moment, had only a getter and a setter. Something like:

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The Zen of Python

Some years ago I mentioned the Zen of Python. But this time I’d like to expand a bit more.

To access The Zen of Python you could just run Python and execute “import this”:

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Olfactory notifications: presentation, code

Previously I talked about how to power off a USB device.

That small task was to build a system in order to have some olfactory notification, like a scent, when some emails are received. This could also be triggered by other events in the system: compilation has finished, a new RSS entry, outside is warmer […]

Power off a USB device

I wanted to power off a USB device. Searching in Google for “power off usb” returns different results but I didn’t succeed in any of the suggestions (Linux version 3.2.0).

I asked on the linux-usb mailing list (question, see one of the relevant answers (from Alan Stern). In short: not possible. When using a USB […]