If you read this blog on the web­site (and you do, be­cause my feed is garbage ;-) you may have no­ticed a goodread­s.­com wid­get on the right.

It's not that my read­ing habits are in­ter­est­ing to any­one, since I have be­come a very shal­low read­er in the last two years or so (a ter­ri­ble, ter­ri­ble in­vo­lu­tion caused by all the free sci­fi ebooks float­ing around), but I love that site. In the past I post­ed some book-re­lat­ed stuff here, but it was al­ways sort of guilty about it, post­ing things my read­ers (few as they are) prob­a­bly don't give a damn about.

With goodread­s, I have a way to vent my shal­low opin­ion about my shal­low read­ings. I need the same thing for movies.

Al­so, it's a much more rea­son­able thing than all that "now lis­ten­ing" idea. Who care what you are lis­ten­ing? It lasts for 3 min­utes! A book is some­thing you have in your head for at least a cou­ple of days! It is so much more mean­ing­ful.

I have been think­ing about us­ing rst2pdf to cre­ate pre­sen­ta­tion­s. I fin­ished ex­pos­ing PDF tran­si­tions to­day, and that part works nice­ly.

Still need­ed:

• Some sort of "page dec­o­ra­­tion" fea­­ture.

• Hand­out sup­­port? I think this would work nice­­ly with some sort of "con­di­­tion­al" di­rec­­tive. I need to think about it some more.

I in­tend to have that done for next fri­day, and re­lease then.

First a huge an­nounce­men­t: I will not re­lease any­thing to­mor­row. For the first time in 6 week­s, no fri­day re­lease from me!

Now, let's see what I'm plan­ning.

1. I will be at Lati­noWare 2008 speak­ing about PyQt. The usu­al free beer of­fer: if you men­­tion this blog, I will buy you 1 (one) not very good beer. Be­ing in Brazil, that's prob­a­bly a Brah­­ma.

2. rst2pdf de­vel­op­­ment is slow­ing down. The easy stuff is all done. There are some things I can do, though:

   • Ex­­­pose tran­si­­­tions to the writ­er (good for pre­sen­­­ta­­­tion­s)

   • "Back­­­­­ground" forms (a­­­gain, for pre­sen­­­ta­­­tion­s)

   • A mini-lan­guage ex­­­pos­ing the can­­­vas, so there is a use­­­ful "raw" mod­­­e.

   • Us­ing svglib in­­­stead of uni­­­con­ver­­­tor to han­­­dle SVG (but keep uni­­­con­ver­­­tor for oth­­­er vec­­­tor for­­­mat­s)

   • Re­­­do­ing list­s, which have a shaky code and bad lay­out

   • Fix half a dozen bugs

   • Make it work more like a unix app when in unix (re­spect en­vi­ron­­­ment vars, for ex­am­­­ple)

   How­ev­er, I am tak­ing a lit­­tle time off from it, and go­ing to try re­­viv­ing oth­­er pro­jec­t­s. Fo­­cus­ing in rst2pdf for two months did won­ders for it. Let's see if it can be re­­peat­ed!

3. Try some more code golf­ing. I helped Nu­bis from PyAr reach the low­est­-s­­core of 74 in the grid chal­lenge. This is re­al­­ly fun stuff.

4. I need more mon­ey. We have spent lots in ... plumb­ing. Yup. Two years of sav­ings spent on that. So, I need mon­ey. If you read this blog and want to make me hap­py, get me free­lance work. It can be sysad­min stuff, it can be pro­­gram­ming, it can be babysit­t­ing. I am good at all three things. Con­­tact me. I'm easy to find, and I am cheap­­(ish).

5. No, I am not starv­ing. No, I am not in mon­ey prob­lem­s. Yes, my com­­pa­ny is do­ing very well, but it's an in­­vest­­men­t, not a cash cow (yet).

I spent a few hours to­day round Code Golf and here's a neat thing I did.I think this is python's short­est pos­si­ble fac­to­ri­al:

f=lambda x:x<2or x*f(x-1)

You may say it's not cor­rec­t, be­cause f(1) re­turns True, but in­t(True) is 1, so it's al­most there ;-)

And here's a sur­pris­ing­ly read­able (as long as you know pas­cal's tri­an­gle) and not too long an­swer to their choose chal­lenge:

n,k=input()
a,c=1,0
while c<k:a*=n-c;c+=1;a/=c
print a

Well, what the ti­tle says. Get it at the usu­al places. No, it does­n't re­quire ac­tu­al La­TeX. Just Mat­plotlib.