nicobo*playground

A quick "pros & cons" to choose between Python or Shell scripting, from what I've observed through the years.

This could probably apply to other high level script languages* vs shell.

* Like Ruby, but not like Perl, as it shares more with shells from my point of view, like unreadable syntax and execution speed.

Starting up with Web 2.0 development ?

Let's choose between three essentials tools to begin a new project !

Here is a tutorial to draw an egg with Gimp.

With the following techniques, you will be able to build a realistic egg for a serious business (!) as well as a cartoonish one typically for a gamification usage ;-)

You will find the full Gimp source attached to this article, which I invite you to reuse at will.

Voici un petit guide pour dessiner un oeuf avec Gimp. 

Les techniques décrites ici permettent à la fois de dessiner un oeuf réaliste pour les boulots sérieux (!) et un oeuf type "bande dessinée", typiquement à usage de gamification ;-)

The PyCrypto library provides Python with implementation for a lot of algorithms for cryptography. It's very useful.

Ubuntu has it by default but if you want to have it for Python 3.2 on Windows, you must use Active Python, as there is no other binary release for Python 3.2 on the web.

In case you want to use the official Python distribution or if ActiveState did not (yet) released a PyCrypto for the version of Python you are using, this article might help you by putting together the steps to build it from source.

Also attached : a binary exe for the impatients.

Android requires developers to sign their applications with a digital certificate and that each future release be signed with the same certificate.

Sadly, bad things happen when the developer (you) looses access to the certificate : he (you) will not be able to release updates for the application without it. Never. Ever.

Android does not currently support multiple certificates per application so the best you could do would be to release a new app with the same name, in the hope your users will find a way to it by themselves.

As years go on, you will change your computer, wipe USB keys, reinstall OS, ...
So many dangerous operations for your digital certificates, hidden among millions of files !
If, like me, you are anxious at the idea of losing your certificates or passwords, just print a paper copy !
Although it is not invulnerable, paper should be less prone to mass erasing than a simple electronic file.

The idea is simple, not new, and you just need to know two commands to get a printable hard copy of your certificate.

Let's start.

This small article might help you to figure out quickly how to work with the AddThis module for Drupal.
It is not a substitute to the original documentation : it just provides a concrete view of the configuration process from my experience.

Here is a sample "toolbox" generated with the AddThis module :

Here is an overview of the main steps to get AddThis working on Drupal :

1. install the module : http://drupal.org/project/addthis
2. choose in which nodes it appears : page, story, teasers, ...
3. select which type of widget you want : they are called "button" and "toolbox" in the configure tab
4. build the widget by adding components to it (only for "toolbox") : components includes popular buttons like facebook like, google +1, tweet, but also custom elements like separator, addthis 'more' button
5. add a service customization for each component you listed : this step simply provides each component with adequate parameters
6. customize it more using the numerous other options

[...]

If you want to display your latest tweets on your Drupal blog, you will probably want to use the dedicated Twitter module. Among other features, this module provides a new block type that lists a selection of tweets from an account. Tweets are retrieved via a cron job and stored in your website's database, making them available even through corporate firewalls that banish twitter.com. Just-what-you-need !

There are a few catches however : it will likely not work if you are on a shared host because Twitter puts rate limits to the usage of their API, and there is a bug in the block view that can be circumvented.

Need to migrate from Subversion to Mercurial ?

This is a quick guide to migrating an existing SVN repository to a new Hg one.

It takes 2 major steps :

1. make a local copy of the existing SVN repository
2. convert it to Hg

[...]

Successful import from SourceForge's SVN to Google Code's Hg :

I was just trying to implement client and server authentication over SSL on IBM Websphere 6 (JRE 1.4.2)...

[...]

It may sound awkward in 2012, but if you wish the HTTPS server to identify your Java client (versus : only the server is identified), you will have to write your own implementation of a socket factory.

The Java Runtime Environment doesn't provide ready-to-use classes to do this. Yes : there is javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory.getDefault() but it requires to set some system (therefore global) properties to point to the certificates files !!!

Even with Apache's HttpClient (at least version 3.x), you have to use a custom SSLProtocolSocketFactory.

The HttpClient SSL Guide provides sample code to implement mutual client and server authentication ; unfortunately the latest stable release of it (contrib 3.1) is bound to Sun's API with imports such as com.sun.net.ssl.KeyManagerFactory. Needless to say that this will not work on an IBM Websphere JRE...

This article contains an implementation of a SSLProtocolSocketFactory for HttpClient, to whom may be interested...