Irrational Exuberance

archive / 2008 / July

1. Title: BossArray for list-like Yahoo search results
   Tags: BOSS python

   I recently put together BossArray, which is a simple wrapper around the Yahoo BOSS search results (relying on the Yahoo BOSS Mashup Framework for the heavy lifting). It provides a dirt simple interface mimicking a normal Python list for most interaction.

2. Title: Replacing Django's ORM with SQLAlchemy
   Tags: django
   Series: Loose Coupling in Django

   The second example in the Loose Coupling in Django series. This one looks at a place where Django's loose coupling is at its tightest: the Django ORM.

3. Title: Replacing Django's Template Language With Jinja2
   Tags: Jinja django
   Series: Loose Coupling in Django

   The first example in the Loosely Coupled Django series, this entry looks at replacing Django's template language with the freshly released Jinja2 template language.

4. Title: An Introduction to Django's Loose Coupling
   Tags: django
   Series: Loose Coupling in Django

   One of the most valuable parts of Django is its loose coupling philosophy . This means you can plug in your own pieces into the Django stack without fighting against the defaults. However, it can be a bit difficult to understand how to take advantage of the loose coupling philosophy when you are just getting started, and this series will attempt to erase that confusion.

5. Title: Reflections on a Year of Blogging and Japan
   Tags: japan reflection

   I've been blogging for a bit over a year, and I've been in Japan for a bit under a year. Seems like time for some introspection. As a bonus includes the definitive answer to "Why did you come to Japan?" and "Why did you start studying Japanese?" As an un-bonus I am kind of tired and didn't put in any pictures to make the onslaught of text manageable. Life is give and take, don't cha know?

6. Title: 小学校と教える授業の最後の日
   Tags: JET japan
   Translation of Last Day of Elementary School and Classes in Japanese

   今週の木曜日は最後小学校に行く日だった。で、最後日本で授業を教える日もだった。ちょっと感動する日になったでしょうね。

7. Title: Last Day of Elementary School and Classes
   Tags: JET japan
   Series: JET: Leaving
   Translations: Japanese

   Thursday was my last day of classes at elementary school. Its sad to be saying goodbye, and there are a lot of kids I'll be missing after getting to know them bit by bit during forty-five minute lessons and brief exchanges in the halls.

8. Title: Stripping Reddit From HackerNews With BOSS Mashup
   Tags: BOSS python

   This tutorial looks at using the Yahoo BOSS Mashup Framework (a simple Python library) to retrieve the RSS feeds for HackerNews and Reddit Programming and strip the union of those results from HackerNews, returning HackerNews to an earlier era.

9. Title: Polishing Up Our Django & BOSS Search Service
   Tags: BOSS django
   Series: Django & Yahoo BOSS Mashup

   This is a continuation to the first entry on using Django and Yahoo's BOSS Mashup Framework, and takes our search service from something very small and ugly to something that is fairly usable.

10. Title: Search Recipes for Yahoo's BOSS in Python
    Tags: BOSS python

    This entry is a bit of a cookbook for using Yahoo's Python library for accessing the BOSS Mashup Framework. It has full examples for searching the web, images, news , for paginating results, and for limiting searches to specific domains.

11. Title: Yahoo's Build your Own Search Service in Django
    Tags: BOSS django
    Series: Django & Yahoo BOSS Mashup

    This is a fairly simple look at how to use Yahoo's BOSS Mashup Framework with Django. In the tutorial we create a simple news search.

12. Title: Release of LifeFlow 0.91
    Tags: lifeflow
    Series: LifeFlow Releases

    A few weeks behind my idealistic schedule, LifeFlow 0.91 has finally pushed its way through the doors, with a number of code refactorings, and enhanced flexibility for entry authors.

13. Title: Advice for ALTs Considering a Second Year
    Tags: JET japan

    Many ALTs undergo temporary insanity when considering recontracting for the their second year. Here is my advice for those in the process.

14. Title: A Thursday: Elementary School
    Tags: JET japan
    Series: A Week in Japan

    The first day in my Week in Japan series. This entry takes a look at a normal Thursday, which is the day I spent the morning at elementary school.

15. Title: An Introduction to a Week in Japan
    Tags: JET japan
    Series: A Week in Japan

    This is the beginning of a series of articles looking at what a normal week has looked like for me during my job here in Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher with the JET Program.

16. Title: ReST, Textile and HTML in Markdown
    Tags: lifeflow markdown

    Recently I have run into a few situations where I really wanted to avoid Markdown messing with segments of text, and there isn't a completely intuitive way to deal with that by default, so I put together a quick solution. And.. while I was at it I added some support for rendering Textile and ReST from within Markdown as well.