rcook.net

I’ve been learning and using Python for several months now, and decided to port my Windows based RTEncoder utility to Python. On the surface it seemed rather straightforward, and it would have been if not for one small issue, Python versions. You see, the goal is for the end user to run RTEncoderPy from within Poser. But which Poser? Poser 6 has the Python 2.2 runtime. Poser 7 has the Python 2.4 runtime. I’m not even sure about Poser 4 (Pro Pack) or 5, or the new Poser Pro that is probably coming out this summer.

On my development box, I’m running Python 2.5 for my personal projects. But this weekend I finally broke down and figured out how to run Python 2.2, 2.4 and 2.5 on the same machine, and to easily switch between them. The differences are quite subtle in some cases, especially for someone still learning the nuances of Python style coding. But hopefully, I’ll now be able to nail down the last remaining version differences and be able to release RTEncoderPy with a week or so.

I find it rather amusing that people would want to pirate RTEncoder, but they do. It’s a small utility with a limited audience, but I guess some people will try to pirate anything, whether or not it’s really useful to them.

About once a week I do a Google search for where RTEncoder has turned up in the past week. And always, I see it showing up on a few of the hacking/cracking/warez sites in their recent search term listing. So far, no cracked versions have appeared and none of my customers have posted their license file publicly. I’m pretty confident in the technologies used to protect the software and the license files, but I’ll keep a watchful eye to see if RTEncoder gets pwned.

A short rant here about something that really gets under my skin. It happened to me recently trying to get RTEncoder 2.0.0 out the door, and has even happened to me at work in the last week. It’s very simple …

Do what you say you are going to do.

Sure, something may come up that puts a crimp in your time, but then tell someone so they aren’t depending on you to come through for them. Just blowing people off causes a loss of respect, and certainly will keep them from being as reliant on you in the future. It’s just common courtesy. I guess I’m just an old fashioned southern boy, and just assumed too much. C’est la vie!

Whew, another software release out the door. Spent the better part of the weekend executing the release plan for the RTEncoder 2.0.0 release. Not only releasing the software, but giving the whole site content a major update. However, I must say, it went pretty smoothly given that I had planned things out ahead of time and just walked down the checklist, rather than sitting and staring at the screen wondering what I was missing. I had over a week to do that, and get it into the release plan.

However, not everything went as smoothly as I had hoped, and I’ll do a rant post in a few days about that.

The site has been quiet for a while, and is currently getting a bit of a make over. I have some future plans that should bring this site back into some activity. So, pardon the occasional breakage while I get things in order.

I want to make my first real post about my newest favorite application — Google Reader. I’ve been an RSS junkie in the past, or at least I tried to be. I could never quite find the right interface on an application for my tastes. Most recently I tried RSS Ticker and was quite happy with it for a while. However, I soon felt that it just did not scroll fast enough for me. I wanted more, I wanted faster access to my feeds and I wanted to be able to see more than just the new posts.

Then, I found Google Reader. Like most people I know, I’ve been an avid Gmail user for years. I don’t remember exactly where, but I was reading a blog post somewhere that made a passing reference to Google Reader and thought to myself that I should go check it out. And am I ever glad I took the few minutes to give it a try.

I have found that in the last few days of my using Reader, I rarely browse my old bookmarks. Once I had set up my favorite sites in Reader, I found I rarely left Reader’s browsing page. Sometimes, I would find interesting commentary referencing another site and would browse over to it long enough to grab it’s RSS link and add it to my ever growing list of feeds in Reader.

I think my main attraction to Reader is the way it presents the feed to you. It’s not simply text or basic marked up HTML like most readers pose the feed, in Google Reader it looks like a web page. The Google developers seem to have taken great pains to try to recreate the web page experience within the RSS feed reader. On the web, presentation matters, and Reader does this right.

The last feature I’ll touch on that really impresses me, is my ability to share the interesting posts or news bits I find with others. At the bottom of every feed item, is a “Share” link. By sharing a post, it makes that post available on my own RSS feed from within Reader. Reader gives every user a public feed page from which they can share items they find interesting. That feed is available as either a pseudo-web page browsing experience, or as a more traditional RSS feed. I find myself using it as kind of a my “My Favorites” list, where I can go back to interesting articles and re-read them if I want. Here is my link to Russell’s Shared Items and the link directly to Russell’s Shared Items RSS Feed.

For more information, see the Getting Started With Google Reader help pages.

I’m currently in the process of moving rcook.net to a new Wordpress site. As such, I’ve decided not to move all the old content, and just make a fresh start of it. So, please pardon the white space on the pages while I get settled in.