I wrote a toy url shortener and people started using it

So yesterday I gave an introductory presentation on how to write web applications using Python, Flask and dokku. In my talk I shown how to go from zero to a fully functional application with a small but functional deployment environment based on Dokku.

The nice thing I noticed is that people started using it, and now I have some URLs shortened through my system.

The application is called musho, as in Micro Url SHOrtener. Here it is live, and you can find the source code on Gitlab.

I hope you like it 🙂

Annunci

Gin-gonic improvements

While writing simple web applications using gin-gonic web framework, there are some things that should be improved, in my opinion:

Ideas

1. Static file serving: it should be improved to use browser caching, according to https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/LeverageBrowserCaching
2. Default values for templates rendering: there are some values that I am going to need in pretty much every template i am rendering. It would be nice to be able to set them once and for all so that when I render a template, the values i want to be always present are added to the ones i am passing on the fly.

Dell XPS15 9530 BIOS reflash

I recently acquired a broken Dell XPS15 9530. As far as I’ve been told, the BIOS got corrupted during an update. As my research suggests, this is quite a common problem with this laptop.

I am going to try reflash a working bios in order to make it work again. After all, it has some nice specs.

WordPress, again.

Long story short, I am giving WordPress another try.

The main reason is that most static blog engines are awful under the usability point of view, and I really need a blog: when I do stuff I would really like to take notes but every time is a mess like “How did octopress/jekyll implement this feature? What was that?” and such.

As my blog is not a goal but a tool to me, I want something that JustWorks™. Thus, I’m going for WordPress, hosted on WordPress.com: no hassle, no maintenance, just features.

Hopefully.