Zac Witte - Latest Comments

Re: Resolving HTTP Redirects in Python

TheChrisONeil — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:51:44 -0000

I agree, this is excellent code and thanks!

Re: Resolving HTTP Redirects in Python

Zen — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:22:20 -0000

Two years later, this code is still useful, thanks! :)
Just to err on the safe side, I'd wrap the
conn.requestcall inside a try/except, in case some URL is mangled.

Re: Running cherrypy on multiple ports (example)

Deecodameeko — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:19:00 -0000

Can I set a specific app config to a server? How would I do such a thing?

Re: How-to Set Up Ubuntu w/ MongoDB Replica Sets on Amazon EC2

Zac Witte — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:51:36 -0000

Hey Zed, first make sure that the bigger disk you mounted in /db is correctly mounted. An easy way to do that is by running the command "df -h" which will give you the list of all devices mounted in your filesystem, the size of them, and what percent is used. Second, make sure that you changed the location of your database in /etc/mongodb.conf so that it uses /db instead of the default location. If the mongo database is, in fact, using the larger volume mounted at /db, then there might be something else filling up your root directory. You can play around with the command "du -sh /" in various directories to see how much stuff is in there.

Re: How-to Set Up Ubuntu w/ MongoDB Replica Sets on Amazon EC2

Zed — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:15:57 -0000

Zac - I tried implementing this on an AWS EC2 and followed your instructions closely (changing the name of the disk, of course, as it would apply to my ami).
The problem I had was that the root directory is mounted on a relatively small 8.5G disk. I mounted the larger disk (about 450G) onto /db, per your instructions and started filling up that Mongo DB nicely for a while... until the root directory got "full" (and now I can't do anything on the server except watch the Mongo DB get bigger).
What's happening, in your opinion, is it that the root (/) is mounted onto a smaller disk than the /db directory? Or is it that I should configure Mongo differently as to have it not overwhelm the smaller disk somehow? Your insight is greatly appreciated...

Re: Getting Wikipedia Summary from the Page ID

Zac Witte — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:16:55 -0000

yep - fixed it. Thanks!

Re: Resolving HTTP Redirects in Python

Ken — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:06:57 -0000

just what I needed. However for Python 2.4 needed to refer to the urlparse components as [0], [1], etc

Thanks!

Re: Resolving HTTP Redirects in Python

etrain — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:41:40 -0000

Does the trick, thx.

Re: Running cherrypy on multiple ports (example)

Rodrigoteles — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:40:28 -0000

Thank you!!!

Re: Running cherrypy on multiple ports (example)

Zac Witte — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:57:40 -0000

site_config is optional in this example. It just defines some static directories. For more info see http://tools.cherrypy.org/wiki...

Re: Running cherrypy on multiple ports (example)

Sdfsdf — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:01:40 -0000

what does site_config do?

Re: Getting Wikipedia Summary from the Page ID

Rizky Syaiful — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:42:04 -0000

Should it be "<div>"+data.parse.text['*']+"</div>" ?

Re: Resolving HTTP Redirects in Python

Aaa — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 03:00:25 -0000

that's work!!

Re: How-to Set Up Ubuntu w/ MongoDB Replica Sets on Amazon EC2

Zac Witte — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:02:06 -0000

This is the elastic IP, what you'll be putting in your replica set config. I'll edit the text to clarify. Thanks for the comment.

Re: How-to Set Up Ubuntu w/ MongoDB Replica Sets on Amazon EC2

Donald Kainama — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:04:23 -0000

(where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is this machine’s IP address)?
Is this the Private IP Address or a Elastic Ip Address

Re: Getting Wikipedia Summary from the Page ID

Jonathan Soeder — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:06:53 -0000

Ha. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks my dude.

Re: Democracy 2.0 with Micro-voting

Shantha Balakrishna — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 07:55:19 -0000

exploring possibilities for south africa

Re: How-to Set Up Ubuntu w/ MongoDB Replica Sets on Amazon EC2

ciferkey — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:44:19 -0000

Excellent article. I didn't need to set up a replica set at this point yet, but this was perfect getting getting and will be a big help later on.

Re: Getting Wikipedia Summary from the Page ID

Tda — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:24:29 -0000

Thanks a lot!

Re: Visualizing Wikipedia As One Large Node Graph

Kraken — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:08:28 -0000

Wikiwiz looks very interesting, but like you say it gets incomprehensible. I've been thinking about the limitations of restricting information relationships to 3 dimensions and can't help but think of wormholes with how certain topics can be closely connected in some ways while being far away when graphed out in 3 dimensional space. I have limited technical knowledge about computer networks, but this area still fascinates me...I feel like Wikipedia could be an interesting model for neural connectivity - like how a sensory input can trigger several memories in different directions, of which many are seemingly unrelated. It's sort of a crowdsourced collective word-association model and might be an interesting approximation for how we access and associate information. Anway...it was harder than I expected to find information/discussions about this so this post was much appreciated!

Re: Upgrading to MySQL 5.1 and PHP 5.3.0 on Centos with Plesk

Zac Witte — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:56:46 -0000

Thanks for the heads-up. It looks like the links were just cut off. I've updated them so it should be more clear now.

Re: Upgrading to MySQL 5.1 and PHP 5.3.0 on Centos with Plesk

Tom — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 01:00:26 -0000

Hello, I just wanted you, and any other readers, to beware that this method does not seem to work with dv 3.5. The link to http://download.fedora.redhat.... … noarch.rpm is a 404. Though if you manage to get the same rpm file, when used, it broke my server. Just worth mentioning because MT is recommending this article to its dv 3.5+ customers.

Re: Top 10 Tracks of 2010

Paul — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:37:55 -0000

Sweet collection, Zac. I'm really enjoying this.

Re: A False Sense of Security with Test-driven Development

Jim Griswold — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:31:09 -0000

I think that writing tests first is as much about API design/documentation as it is about a sense of security that your code is working properly. Essentially, if you do it right, you can start programming with your interface before you have it. This gives you a gut feel as to whether what you're building will actually help you easily accomplish your goals. If it's awkward to write a test for a particular design, it's probably going to be difficult to be sure it's working, whether you have tests or not. Driving the code through tests can help you identify cases where you might want to rethink your API so that it's more loosely coupled, easier to debug etc.

I agree with you that, as you start writing tests at higher levels of abstraction, it's much more difficult to anticipate every possible combination of inputs because so many more components come into play. I think tests serve a different purpose at this higher level. Here, having tests that run through your core use cases is very valuable. Like you said, this detects regressions and gives you some degree of confidence that the product works for the cases you care about. It doesn't guarantee that you've properly composed all of the components to handle every case, and it doesn't guarantee that it will work in production, but it gives you some more confidence, and like Anthony said, doesn't excuse a developer from thinking!

Re: A False Sense of Security with Test-driven Development

Anthony Eden — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:57:42 -0000

I find it best to have both tests that define the behavior I expect before I've written the implementation as well as regression tests to catch edge cases that are missed on earlier passes. The problem with only having regression tests is that refactoring becomes nearly impossible to get right. Unfortunately a lot of developers leave out the "refactor" part of red-green-refactor and thus don't see the true value of writing tests first.

Also, having a comprehensive set of tests doesn't excuse developers from thinking.