Microsoft Product Excellence

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How to make an URL-shortening service

Recently I was a little bit bored. And always when I’m bored I gonna start working on small projects just to drive away boredom. What I did this time was an URL-shortening service. URL-shortening service? What’s that? I’m pretty sure, most of you have used one before. Everybody hates long addresses like http://www.example.com/this/is/a/horrible/long/url.php?id=laksdfjlkfadjoweiu - they are extremely uncomfortable, especially when you want to copy them into an email or share it on a service like Twitter. So URL-shortening services like tinyurl.com come in handy, as they shorten an address like above to something like http://tinyurl.com/AB734 (this is just an example).

These services use special algorithms to shorten URLs. Although I was using this service regularly, I was never paying attention to how it is achieved. Until yesterday. As I already mentioned I was bored. And suddenly it struck me - why not build an URL-shortening service? This can’t be so difficult, I thought. So I started to google a little bit and then started to code. And to be honest, it was not that difficult. In this blogpost I gonna show you how I wrote my URL-shortener.

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Automated Backup-Jobs on Mac OSX

It is always a good idea to backup a system. In my case I was looking for a bulletproof way to backup the mysql-databases on my web server.  In the past I used to run mysql-dump locally on my Mac to backup those databases. When I lived in New Zealand and had only restricted access to the web (due to the restricted network of the University of Otago) this was no option anymore. So I ended up with making the mysql-dump directly on my webserver. A cronjob would control it and periodically backup the databases. This however, was not the most intelligent way to solve the problem as the backup now was done on the same system as the database. So if the system would go down, not just the database would be gone but also all the backups. So I ended up downloading the dumps manually using sftp which was possible as I used Corkscrew to bypass the proxy. I’m pretty sure that I would have found another way to automate the backup on my Mac, but it would have definitely been awkward and complicated.
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iPad@MadTv…

R.I.P Sun

Installing Canon LBP 3100 on OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard

Upgrading my Mac from OSX 10.5 Leopard to 10.6 was quite easy - at least more easy than I originally expected. Nearly everything worked out of the box and just a few applications needed some minor tweaking. However, when it comes to printers it’s always a game. If you are lucky and the printer-driver ships with the new version of the operating system, everything is fine. But if not - well, then you might run into problems.

I have one of these printers which are not supported by OSX 10.6: the Canon LBP 3100, a very cheap laser-printer. After upgrading my operating system, the printer was not recognized. Unfortunately the Canon printer-support page did not provide an up-to-date printer-driver and I nearly thought: okay, Nat, that’s it, get you a new printer. But being a tinker when it comes to computers I didn’t give up so fast. And after playing around for some 10 minutes I found a solution which is very easy. However it is not so obvious to find out about that. As I’m pretty sure that there are people out there banging their heads on the wall having a similar problem I thought it would be nice to share my solution with you.

The first step is to download the latest printer-driver from the Canon homepage. I don’t provide a link as by the time you are reading this they might already provide a newer driver. But I’m confident that you can search for the correct driver using your favourite search-engine :)  (just be careful that you download your driver from the manufacturers page only!). Read the rest of this entry »

Spendet für Wikipedia!

Dear Natascha,

Thank you for your gift of XXXXX to the Wikimedia Foundation,
received on November 23, 2009.

Your donation celebrates everything Wikipedia stands for: the power of
information, freedom, sharing, learning and discovery.   Thank you so
much for helping keep Wikipedia freely available for its 330 million
readers around the world.

Many people love Wikipedia, but surprisingly few know it’s run by a
non-profit.  Please help us spread the word, by forwarding this e-mail
to a few of your friends.

If you have questions about your donation, please send a message to
donate@wikimedia.org.  To learn more about the Wikimedia Foundation,
visit our blog at http://blog.wikimedia.org/ or our website at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/. Or, follow us at
http://twitter.com/wikimedia, http://identi.ca//wikimedia, or
http://bit.ly/wikiFacebook.

And again, thank you.  I’m really, really happy to have
your help.

Sincerely Yours,

Sue Gardner
Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Python-howto: converting a string into a tuple

Recently I had the problem to convert a string with coma-separated values into a tuple. Unlike a list a tuple is an immutable way to represent data, once it is created its values cannot be changed. Googling just brought up some really weird solutions which I either didn’t like or they did not work anyway. So I played around a little bit and came around with a single line solution that should work sufficiently.

Lets assume you have a string with coma-separated values like ‘value1, value2, value3′ and you want to convert it into a tuple (value1, value2, value3). A direct conversion from string to tuple is not possible, however there is a convenient way to create a list from a string using the .split() function. Lists can be easily converted into tuples. And this is basically the solution: convert the string into a list and then into a tuple. Putting it all together into a single line of code we end up with

s = 'bla, blub, blubber'
t = tuple(s.split(', '))
print t
# ('bla', 'blub', 'blubber')

Please note that the argument for the split-method is a comma and a blank. The blank has to be added as the blanks in the string are considered as valid characters. If you just use a comma as an argument, the blanks will be part of the resulting tuples (ie. ‘ blub’ instead of ‘blub’).

So the conversion is not such a big mystery

Spam, lovely spam!

Passend zum Thema meiner Diplomarbeit:

Unbedingt ganz anschauen

Moblin - a new Linux experience?

Recently I learned about Moblin, which is a new desktop for Linux, taylored especially for Netbooks. To be honest, what I saw looks very promising. I don’t wanna say that this could be the Linux killer-app we all were waiting for (like the tale we hear every year that this year is gonna be the year of the Linux desktop), but it could definitely make Linux accessible to a broader audience. AFAIK the Moblin project is supported by Intel, so the support of the greatest chip-manufacturer could also be very helpful.

But why not take a look at Moblin for yourself?

This is one of the most professional adds I have ever seen for Linux. Being a technical person I never underestimated the power of good marketing. And if you look at the features of Moblin it has everything a modern desktop should have: a shiny user-interface, nice graphical effects (not that they important for functionality, but they make it interesting) and it seems that it is easy to use. At the moment I’m very happy with my Macbook and I doubt that I will drop OSX for another operating system on the desktop in the next years, but I will most certainly give Moblin a try. And should I ever buy me a Netbook I’ll most definitely get me one with Moblin installed.

I’m very anxious what will happen to this project? Will it proove successful or will it fail like other projects before? We will see…