A couple of months ago at work, we received a report that a file was locked. The dialog that appeared showed the initials of a user who wasn’t even working for us any more. Thus we discovered an annoying bug that can crop up with Office. Basically, a user is asked by Word or Excel […]
Python: Changing Microsoft Office User Initials Read More »
One of my first self-imposed projects at my job was to recreate a certain annoying application that was a Frankenstein monster: a Microsoft Access file with a VBA GUI. For the most part, the application didn’t even have a database. Anyway, part of the application allowed the user to type in an amount for a
Python: Converting Numbers to Words Read More »
Earlier this year, I was tasked with creating an application that would download information from our organization’s website using Python. The tricky part was that it would be encrypted, gzipped and the payload would be JSON. Could Python do all that? Well, that’s what I wanted to find out. Now it’s time for you to
Downloading Encrypted and Compressed Files with Python Read More »
I’ve been working on an article about the various Python projects that took part in the 2010 Google Summer of Code for over a month. There are a lot of projects and people to contact and I would say of the ones that I did contact, only 50-60% responded back. So I’m going to go
Python and the 2010 Google Summer of Code Read More »
Just an FYI for those of you who like this blog. I have recently opened a Mouse Vs. the Python Twitter account to make it even easier to follow updates to this blog. You can find it here: http://twitter.com/mousevspython I am experimenting with WordPress plugins that can auto-post to Twitter, but haven’t had much luck
This Blog Gets a Twitter Account Read More »
The wxPython project is one of the most popular and easy to use Python GUI toolkit. It wraps the popular C++ wxWidgets project using SWIG. It is also the only cross-platform toolkit that I am aware of that uses the native widgets on each platform wherever possible (for better or for worse). Some like to
Whether you’re new to Python, been using it for a few years or you’re an expert, knowing how to use Python’s introspection capabilities can help your understanding of your code and that new package you just downloaded with the crappy documentation. Introspection is a fancy word that means to observe oneself and ponder one’s thoughts,
Python 101: Introspection Read More »
Update (10/12/2010) – One of my alert readers told me that SqlAlchemy 0.6.x currently does NOT support the Access dialect. Read here for more info. A year or two ago, I was asked to transfer some data from some old Microsoft Access files to our Microsoft SQL Server. Since I enjoy using SqlAlchemy, I decided
SqlAlchemy and Microsoft Access Read More »
Python Multimedia Application Beginner’s Guide By Ninad Sathaye Amazon Packt
Book Review: Python Multimedia Application Beginner’s Guide Read More »
The other day, I was tasked with finding a way to get a list of all running processes on a Windows XP virtual machine. I was also supposed to include information about how much CPU and memory each process used. Fortunately, this didn’t have to be a remote script, but one that could be run
How to Find and List All Running Processes with Python Read More »
Some people learn through doing it, others are better with visual stimuli. At least, that’s what we’re told. So in the spirit of what we’ve been taught, we’re going to take a look at the visual half of the equation and see how we can make graphs with wxPython. You may not know this, but
wxPython: PyPlot – Graphs with Python Read More »
Jesse Noller just put out the call for proposals for PyCon 2011. That means that you have the chance to give a talk to a whole bunch of geeky pythonistas! Get your thinking caps out and put those suckers on! If I go this year, I want to see some amazing and interesting talks so
You Could Speak at PyCon Read More »
I’ve been thinking that it would rock if this website had a cool logo or artwork of some sort. So I thought I would create a contest to allow my talented readers a chance to help me out here. Here’s what I’m looking for: Some kind of banner or background picture A mouse (the furry
Contest: Create a Logo for My Blog! Read More »
This week, I finished editing another book for Packt Publishing. The book’s name is Python Graphics Cookbook by Mike Ohlson de Fine (I think). You may wonder why I don’t know if de Fine is the author. Well, Packt thinks that its Technical Editors shouldn’t know that information. In fact, Packt is so cagey (and
Book Preview: Python Graphics Cookbook Read More »
Back in March of this year, I wrote a simple tutorial on Reportlab, a handy 3rd party Python package that allows the developer to create PDFs programmatically. Recently, I received a request to cover how to do tables in Reportlab. Since my Reportlab article is so popular, I figured it was probably worth the trouble
Reportlab Tables – Creating Tables in PDFs with Python Read More »