NIL: .to write(1) ~ help:about

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  • RESTfully atomically incrementing a counter using HTTP PATCH

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    by

    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    So today I ran into the question of incrementing a counter in a RESTful manner, and wasn’t sure how to go about doing it. Googling around a bit didn’t find me a satisfactory answer, though I did find @idangazit asked the same question on Stack Overflow, but alas the question was answered by what I…

  • Walking Python objects recursively

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    Here’s a small function that walks over any* Python object and yields the objects contained within (if any) along with the path to reach them. I wrote it and am using it to validate a deserialized datastructure, but you can probably use it for many things. In fact, I’m rather surprised I didn’t find something…

  • pv: the pipe swiss army knife

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    When using UNIX, every now and then you run into a relatively unknown command line application which, once you master it, becomes part of your “first class” commands along with cut or tr. You wince every time you work on a computer that doesn’t have it (and promptly wget-configure-make-install it) and you’re amazed your colleagues…

  • nginx+gzip module might silently corrupt data upon backend failure

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    There are several elements that make absolutely certain the page you’re reading in your browser is an accurate representation of the resource the HTTP server meant to send you1. Disregarding caching for a minute, we have two elements making sure the representation you get is protected from errors. The first protecting element is, of course,…

  • zsh and virtualenv

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    A week ago or so I finally got off my arse and did the pragmatic programmer thing, setting aside those measly ten minutes to check out virtualenv (well, I also checked out buildout, but I won’t discuss it in this post). I knew pretty much what to expect, but I wanted to get my hands…

  • Eulogy to a server

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    You don’t know it, but I’ve started writing this blog several times before it actually went live, and every time I scraped whatever post I started with (the initial run was on blogger.com). I just didn’t think these posts were all too interesting, they were about my monstrous home server, donny. Maybe this is still…

  • The Curious Case of HID Malfunction

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    A quick tidbit for any interested hardware wizards out there (I know no one is likely to care, this is really more of an excuse for why the next Python’s Innards post is progressing slowly). As some of you know, I’m currently on a long trip with my wife (a trip which is already nearing…

  • Hacker irked by reincarnation

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    Today I chose a rather peculiar topic for a technology blog: the history of reincarnation research and its implications on science. This might seem a bit awkward or even off-topic, I think it’s neither (and I make up the rules here). Before we begin, I gather I should say that I’m a sceptic, I’ve always…

  • Switching to mercurial: taming zsh

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    by

    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    A quick one, so you’ll know not all my posts must have so many words. PEP 385 is materializing, and its time to learn Mercurial. I can’t say I’m a Mercurial expert, but I thought migrating all my git-oriented-zsh-gizmos would help me along the way. The conversion is almost done and had just one somewhat…

  • Searching mailman archives offline (python-dev, anyone?)

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    Yaniv Aknin
    in

    Since I’m a newcomer to python-dev, I often need to search the python-dev mailman archives. While I did find this way to do it (using Google with site:), it’s no good for offline searches (and at best it’s a kludge for online searches, too, IMHO). I’m offline quite a lot these days, since cellular 3G…