Finally I too went to see Reloaded. We went to a particularly cozy little cinema in Delft called The Apollo. This is a “Service Bioscoop”, meaning that you have a little table in front of you and can press a button to have a waiter pop by and serve your favourite drinks and snacks. Smoking is also allowed. As we haven’t been taking part in this in- and exhalation-driven activity for a while now, this point isn’t so high up on the list of advantages, but it definitely does contribute to the cozy atmosphere. We will most definitely be going back there… In case you were wondering: No, the big screens and digital sound systems of the surrounding cities are unable to drag us away from our beloved Delft, thank you. There’s nothing like taking a relaxed walk back home from the cinema along a Delftse gracht.

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This is from the first recipe in my brand-new Python cookbook. It’s quite obvious, but it hasn’t really struck me before. Well doh.

In most languages, swapping the values in two variables means using an intermediate temporary variable, e.g.:

int a = 1;
int b = 2;
int temp;
temp = a;
a = b;
b = temp;

With the tuple packing and unpacking in Python however, we don’t need no steenking temporary variables!

a = 1
b = 2
b, a = a, b

Obviously this principle scales to any number of variables, e.g.:

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Have a look at this brief snippet:

In [2]: a = range(10)
In [3]: 3 in a
Out[3]: 1
In [4]: 3 not in a
Out[4]: 0
In [5]: not (3 in a)
Out[5]: 0

Input/output 4 should strike you as a tad strange if you don’t know Python that well but are familiar with similar constructs in other languages. At first glance, it almost seems like the sense of an operator can be negated with the not operator.

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This should be very useful:

In [5]: class oldObject:
   ...: ....def __init__(self):
   ...: ........self.someVar = 1
   ...:
In [6]: o1 = oldObject()
In [7]: o1.someVar = 2
In [8]: o1.someOtherVar = 3

This is of course expected behaviour. Have a look at this though:

In [9]: class newObject(object):
   ...: ....__slots__ = ['someVar']
   ...: ....def __init__(self):
   ...: ........self.someVar = 1
   ...:
In [10]: o2 = newObject()
In [11]: o2.someVar = 2
In [12]: o2.someOtherVar = 3
AttributeError: 'newObject' object has no attribute 'someOtherVar'

Neat huh? In short, deriving from the new Python class object means you have a “new-style” object. Amongs other things, this means that you can define a __slots__ list which will prevent the use of attributes not in that list. These objects are available from Python 2.2 onwards.

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I broke down and ordered Python in a Nutshell by the Python guru Alex Martelli as well as The Python Cookbook, edited by Alex Martelli and David Ascher. Amazon UK will now proceed to bend my credit card even further, but that’s okay. It’s really flexible.

EET VILL INCREEEZE MY PYTHON POWERS 10-FOLD, UND ZEN I VILL TAKE OVER DE WORLD!

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Yes, where are those Weapons of Mass Destruction that the US was warning everybody about? Those same WMDs that were used as some of the primary excuses for violating Iraq have not popped up yet, it seems. Funny…

In related news, this article reports that there was a certain pressure by the US administration on the intelligence services to generate reports that would help to convince the public that attacking Iraq was urgent business. Also funny, right?

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According to the new VESA CVT (Coordinated Video Timing) system for describing display pixel formats, the display on my laptop has magically turned into a 1.47M3. SXGA+ is now officially passé.

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Today Paul discovered ZomboCom. You can do anything at ZomboCom. ZomboCom is strangely comforting. Why can’t I stop staring at ZomboCom?

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I’m reading some more juicy bits from the Microsoft Windows Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers. This section details the specific layout of controls in windows and dialog boxes. At least now the dialogs I design are more or less consistent with some standard. :)

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Most of us outside the borders of the USA know this, but nothing we do or say will probably have any kind of effect on the status quo: The American government is supported by an extremely efficient propaganda machine that ensures that the majority of its citizens will support it in its most barbaric of ventures. The big problem is that this propaganda machine consists primarily, contrarily to tradition, of “independent” media entities.

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