Roaming Profiles are a blessing and a curse. If the user uses the internet, their browser’s cached files will grow like mad. If the user downloads programs to their desktop or creates large Powerpoint files anywhere in their profile, then they have to be managed whenever the user logs in or out. There are several […]
Using Python to Reduce the Roaming Profile Read More »
A few months ago, my employer needed to lock down some of our workstations to be compliant with some new software we were installing from another government organization. We needed to force those machines to lock after so many minutes elapsed and we needed to make it such that the user could not change those
Enabling Screen Locking with Python Read More »
Almost four years ago, I was tasked with converting a Kixtart script to Python. This particular script was used to lock down Windows XP machines so they could be used as kiosks. Obviously, you don’t need Python to do this. Any programming language that can access the Windows Registry will be able to do this
Lock Down Windows with Python Read More »
Last month I wrote a post about getting Windows system information and I mentioned in one of my comments that there was another script that did some of this as well as other stuff, but I couldn’t find it. Well, today I went digging for it and found the script I wanted. So we’re going
More Windows System Information with Python Read More »
In the first part of this series, we went over what some might call the “SQL Expression” method of using SqlAlchemy to interact with your database. The theory behind this is that we should learn the less abstract way of doing things before we get to the higher level (and more abstract) methods. This is
Another Step-by-Step SqlAlchemy Tutorial (part 2 of 2) Read More »
A long time ago (circa 2007 if Google serves me right), there was a Python programmer named Robin Munn who wrote a really nice tutorial on SqlAlchemy. It was originally based on the 0.1 release, but updated for the newer 0.2. Then, Mr. Munn just disappeared and the tutorial was never updated. I having been kicking around the idea of releasing my own version of this tutorial for quite some time and finally decided to just do it. I hope you will find this article helpful as I found the original to be.
Another Step-by-Step SqlAlchemy Tutorial (part 1 of 2) Read More »
Another script I had to come up with for my employer dealt with getting various bits and pieces of information about each of our user’s physical machines. We wanted to keep track of the CPU speed, hard drive sizes and the amount of RAM they had (among other things) so we would know when it
Getting Windows System Information with Python Read More »
A few days ago, I wrote an article about using ConfigObj with wxPython. The first question I was asked about the article regarded using a configuration file to generate the dialog. I thought this was an interesting idea, so I took a stab at implementing that functionality. Personally I think it would be probably be
Generating a Dialog from a File Read More »
Python comes with a handy module called ConfigParser. It’s good for creating and reading configuration files (aka INI files). However, Michael Foord (author of IronPython in Action) and Nicola Larosa decided to write their own configuration module called ConfigObj. In many ways, it is an improvement over the standard library’s module. When I first looked
A Brief ConfigObj Tutorial Read More »
During the summer, I stumbled upon an article on Ars Technica about using PyGTK to create a URL shortener. I thought that was pretty interesting, but I don’t use PyGTK. So at that point, I decided to write my own using wxPython and use the article’s code to do the shortening. I hacked together something
Shortening URLS with wxPython Read More »
Last week, I embarked on an adventure into the world of web application programming. Since my work place uses Python as much as possible and my boss likes TurboGears, I chose it for this endeavor. I have worked through various TurboGears tutorials and thought it looked pretty cool. However, it doesn’t take long to discover
Using Multiple Databases in TurboGears 2 Read More »
I received Ayman Hourieh’s Django 1.0 Web Site Development from Packt Publishers a few weeks ago for review. I had worked with Django before when I went through another book on Python web frameworks as well as one of their official tutorials. I had my doubts about this book because it was only 257 pages
Book Review: Django 1.0 Web Site Development Read More »
Steve Holden gave a talk on where Python is at Friday afternoon. For those not in the know, Holden is the current chairman of the Python Software Foundation (PSF). His first topic was about the PSF and how few member it had as well as how they were planning to add additional members at this
PyCon 2009 – The State of Python (Friday Talk) Read More »
New programmers start using Python and wxPython each week. So it follows that every few months, I see people asking how to redirect stdout to a wx.TextCtrl on comp.lang.python or the wxPython mailing list. Since this is such a common question, I thought I would write an article about it. Regular readers will know that
wxPython – Redirecting stdout / stderr Read More »
I recently started a Python Users Group for Iowa as there didn’t seem to be one and I thought it would be fun. We had our first meeting last Wednesday, the 24th of September, 2008. We had eight people there, including myself. Of that group, only half knew how to program in Python. Thus, we
Python Users Groups – Pyowa Read More »