I grabbed a (free) copy of VMWare Server tonight to try it out, and so very I’m very impressed. My first test was to try to get an Ubuntu VM loaded on my Windows box…

Nice! More on this later.

If you are a Django user, you might want to check out Django Forums:

Welcome. Here you can discuss with others about the exciting new framework, Django. Registration is free and Guests are welcome as well.

Not much there at this point, but it looks like a good start. And I’m not just saying that because they had some kind words for me. :)

Here’s a quick guide for a minimal Django install on Windows, as opposed to my more complex Django on Windows HOWTO from a while back.

Quoth Yasushi Masuda:

Django works on Windows. This article describes a quick setup guide for Django release 0.95 with SQLite configuration. This is handy enough for trial or learning, and functional enough for practical developement. It will take only 3 minutes: actually, if you already have Python 2.4 installed, just only 30 seconds!

It’s a .jp domain, but the guide is in English.

Bitlbee is an IRC gateway application that allows you to use an IRC client to chat with people on any of the major IM networks. Basically, you run Bitlbee as a daemon, and then connect to it as if it were a standard IRC server (6667/tcp). From there, you have Bitlbee log in to the various networks, and each of the people on your contact lists shows up in the #bitlbee channel.

It’s a really cool idea. It’s particularly useful if you predominantly use IRC for chatting, but you have a few friends who only use, for example, AIM.

From the earliest versions of Bitlbee it has been easy to connect to AIM, MSN, and ICQ. Now that Google has launched their own IM service (based on the Jabber protocol), many people would like to connect to that network as well.

So here’s how to use Bitlbee to connect to Google Talk (aka GTalk)…

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Well this is interesting…

root@metis:~ # python Python 2.3.4 (#1, Nov 6 2005, 22:06:26) [GCC 3.3.3] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more... >>>

Apparently IPCop ships with Python 2.3 installed. Why?

For those of you using the Python Imaging Library (PIL):

The current free version is PIL 1.1.5, which has been tested with Python 1.5.2 and newer, including 2.3 and 2.5.

Nice.

If you go to the download links, it only lists up through versions 2.4. But, if you just change the URL, you can download it directly.

After a couple beta and release candidates, Python 2.5 (FINAL) was released today.

Quoth Anthony Baxter:

This is a *production* release of Python 2.5. Yes, that’s right, it’s finally here.

Python 2.5 is probably the most significant new release of Python since 2.2, way back in the dark ages of 2001. There’s been a wide variety of changes and additions, both user-visible and underneath the hood. In addition, we’ve switched to SVN for development and now use Buildbot to do continuous testing of the Python codebase.

There’s a ton of new stuff in 2.5, but I’m personally happy to see SQLite3 included. Some might say that packing a full RDBMS in with a language is bloat, but I think it’s the natual progression of the “batteries included” philosophy that I like about Python. And SQLite is a really top notch module, so I think it’s a great addition. Other highlights include the addition of ElementTree and wsgiref.

Here’s a quick roundup of reactions from around the web…

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Max Ischenko is looking into using RRDTool for project tracking:

I think this kind of tool can be very effectively used to track various software development-related metrics, like LoC, number of commits per day, number of outstanding issues, etc. I was a bit surprised than my search didn’t reveal much.

Sounds like he might use py-rrdtool.

The B-List gives some tips for laying out a Django application:

Continuing the theme of dealing with common questions from the Django mailing lists and IRC channel, today we’ll look at how to organize the various bits of a Django-based project or application.

This includes a good explanation of the difference between a project and an application, default file layouts, and a few other items. Definitely worth reading if you are new to the Django web framework.

Joe Gregorio (of httplib2 fame) created another Python web framework just to see how easy it is to create one.

Quoth Joe:

When asked about the plethora of web frameworks for Python the answer is often that it is way too easy to put together one in Python. That certainly seems plausible since there are so many libraries that implement the components of a web framework and if it’s easy to plug those pieces together then maybe that lowers the bar of entry for new frameworks. So let’s give it a shot, we’ll pick some components and spend a couple hours seeing how far we can get building a web framework…

Three hours and 60 lines of code later, Robaccia was born.

It’s a really interesting post. Check it out.