The Python Holy Grail

This checkin to python brings a long-awaited (and sorely needed, IMO) enhancement to python: SSL certificate verification support. Once the API support percolates up from socket through the various network libraries in python proper, for the vast majority of developers there will no longer be a need for PyOpenSSL, M2Crypto, or rhnlib. »

Using Hostip Berkeley DB Files From Python

I needed to process some IP addresses the other day to associate them with their originating Country. I implemented the code in Python (as usual), and decided to try out Hostip for the IP address to Country mappings. Hostip provides freely downloadable bdb data files (along with a mysql db and a CSV file). Using the bdb files isn’t straightforward, so here is a general recipe for consuming them: Download the bdb files from hostip. »

New hosting

I’ve moved my blog and associated pages from Dal CS to the dangerously incompetent data center. Also, I’ve moved it from pybloxsom to wordpress, mainly because of what Marc has written about it. So far I’m very impressed. The most difficult thing has been setting up redirects from my old cs pages to these new ones, due to the apache configuration at Dal. I’ve had to do silly things like making a directory called “cv.html”, and placing an index.php file in there that will write out redirect headers. »