Better font rendering on Ubuntu

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/10/15/tweak-your-font-rendering-for-better-appearance/

Python with virtualenv, fabric

Wow, after a couple of busy months I've finally found a little time to spend on getting some Django love going on. Today, I started off with getting the development environment ready.

Virtualenv:
http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2009/05/notes-using-pip-and-virtualenv-django/
virtualenv wrapper:
http://www.doughellmann.com/docs/virtualenvwrapper/
make sure django-admin.py runs the local copy of django, not the os-wide:
http://iamzed.com/2009/05/07/a-primer-on-virtualenv/ (tips section)
and setting up a decent postmkvirtualenv
http://blog.doughellmann.com/2010/01/virtualenvwrapper-tips-and-tricks.html
enable tab-completion for pip in bash:
pip completion --bash >> ~/.profile

~/.bashrc gained the following lines:

#set defaults for python development
#from http://www.doughellmann.com/docs/virtualenvwrapper/
export WORKON_HOME=~/python-environments
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages'
#from www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/
export PIP_RESPECT_VIRTUALENV=true
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

maybe later some more nifty stuff, like automatically enabling a virtualenv when you cd into a directory
http://hmarr.com/2010/jan/19/making-virtualenv-play-nice-with-git/
maybe later for deployment:
http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2010/04/22/basic-django-deployment-with-virtualenv-fabric-pip-and-rsync/

Google, stop stealing my keyboard focus!

For the last few weeks, I've become increasingly annoyed by google's search-as-you-type feature. I like it's speed and responsiveness. Yet, when I try to go back to the page I came from and hit `backspace`, the search input field is focussed and my query is edited. Obviously, this does not what I wanted.

I can disable search-as-you-type to get rid of this behavior, but that's like killing a mosquito with a laser.

Has anyone found a good workaround for this yet?

Google, don't steal my keyboard focus!

Merge two directories on Linux using Tar

From linuxquestions.org:
tar cf - . |(cd /targetdir; tar xvf -)


or
alias merge=pushd $1 | tar cf - . |(cd $2; tar xvf -); popd
(untested)

Add all unversioned files with SVN

from stackoverflow:
svn status | grep '?' | sed 's/^.* /svn add /' | bash

Python unicode

Python doesn't strip the byte order marker when reading an UTF-8 file. Using unicode.strip() won't remove it from the first line either.

From the link:

if u[0] == unicode( codecs.BOM_UTF8, "utf8" ):
 u = u[1:]

CKEditor

Wow, events in CKEditor are sometimes hard to decipher. For example: why does the dialog not close when the 'Ok' event is fired on a dialog?

Well, the ok event is not responsible for hiding the editor. That is something the ok-button.onClick() does. So, if you want to simulate hide the dialog as if the ok button was clicked, do the following:

if(dialog.fire('ok', {hide:true}).hide !== false) {
  dialog.hide();
}