monkinetic weblog | redmonk.net

Yes, Jodi and I both managed to contract the flu while out of town for the holiday. I think I got it on the plane headed out east, and, well, Jodi got it from me.

I spent a couple of days fighting a fever (which got up above 104 at one point), chills and aches and pains, and eventually had to postpone my return flight a day while I try to recover enough to travel.

Poor Jodi started with a small cough yesterday before she left for Arizona (we had seperate flights due to ticketing issues) and she’s now bedridden at our home in Gilbert. Crap.

I think having a sick spouse and not being able to do anything about it is one of the more difficult aspects of marriage. Hang in there, Jo, I’ll be home soon!!

Well, I was going to write an essay on what I’m thankful for this year, but it would be way too long and I’m headed out of town tomorrow early. So here’s the short list: 1) My awesome, loving wife, Jodi. 2) God giving us the grace to survive 18 mos of unemployment to arrive here with two jobs. Thanks God.

Hello from my new professional home. W000t! I’m not unemployed anymore!!!

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a python library for Apple’s Keynote file format, APXL.

After slogging through 4 objects and realizing that to do it right was going to be a LONG process, I started looking around for code generators that might read an XML Schema (which Apple provides for APXL - see the above link) and spit out python code.

Well, here it is: generateDS - generate data structures from XSL.

It seems fast enough, though I’ve had to hack it a good bit to work around Apple’s element names, many of which have dashes in them (ie, ‘font-styling’,'outlined-drawable-style-type’) and are not valid python identifier names. So I had to add a function to remove the dashes and camelCase them, then make sure that the code calls my function every time it uses the name. I also modifed it to not put “get” in front of get accessors, but that’s personal preference.

Still, it spits out 3500 lines of python in about .75 seconds. Once I’ve got it tweaked and played around with it some, I’ll post the code.

I’m day-tripping up to Sedona today to do some Mac troubleshooting for a client. Gorgeous country AND Macs? How nice.

Anyone out there interested in (or know of) a python users group in the Phoenix metro area? I’d like to find like-minded individuals to hang with and learn from.

Objectis is providing free Plone sites. If you’re interested in Content Management, Python, Web Applications, or such, and have not checked out Plone, here’s your chance.

See my test site at:

http://steveivy.objectis.net