Python

So there is a good use URL Shorteners, as they are most commonly known, are pretty useful in places where you are limited to the amount of characters you are allowed to type. Twitter being the prime example. However, it is not only because of services like that that these URL shortening services exist. Sometimes, URL’s are are just plain crazy long, and very error prone when you have to copy and paste/link them someone. I guess we can call this a useful feature? ...

Stuff to what…? Not too long ago, a colleague introduced me to Gource. In case you have not heard of Gource before, I highly suggest you take a few minutes and check out the project home page here. If you have been developing, or are part of a development project that has been around a while, then Gource should be able to tell you a tale in a strangely mesmerising way about its progression. Go ahead, download and install it. You are going to need it to try the rest of the stuff anyways. Be warned though, watching the output is highly addictive and strangely entertaining, so if you value your productivity, don’t continue reading this post. ...

Bots! Bots! Bots! Generally speaking, a ‘‘bot’’ is something that like does work for you. But, for this purpose, the need for a jabber bot came from the fact that I had to deal with a lot of email on a daily basis. This large amount of mail sometimes would cause me to completely miss critical mail alerts. Realising later that I could have prevented a catastrophe if I didn’t miss that one email was just not on anymore. So, I started investigating ways to get the important stuff delivered faster. As a team at work, we have long gone dropped the whole Skype group chat thing for our own Jabber server. My privacy related concerns back then was recently heightened here when a trap URL received a HEAD request from 65.52.100.214. The user that received the URL in a chat was under strict instructions not to actually click it… ...