echo "mysql-server mysql-server/root_password select (YOUR PASSWORD)" | sudo debconf-set-selections
echo "mysql-server mysql-server/root_password_again select (YOUR PASSWORD)" | sudo debconf-set-selections

sudo apt-get install postfix

Under “General type of mail configuration” select Local only

System mail name: localhost (I will presume from here on out that you are sending email to <user>@localhost)

Once complete, issue this command to tell postfix where to deliver mail:

sudo postconf -e "home_mailbox = Maildir/"

Now we install mutt:

sudo apt-get install mutt

And then configure mutt to know where our email will be delivered to and what kind of mailbox it will be:

vim ~/.muttrc

Paste this into the file:

set mbox_type=Maildir
set folder="~/Maildir"
 
set mask="!^\\.[^.]"
set mbox="~/Maildir"
set record="+.Sent"
set postponed="+.Drafts"
set spoolfile="~/Maildir"

Then start mutt so that it can create our mailbox.

mutt

You will probably get a message that says:

/home/USER/Maildir is not a mailbox.

Don’t worry about it for now. Postfix will fix that for us on first delivery.

This part is optional – set where any mail sent to root is forwarded to.

sudo vim /root/.forward

and in it, type:

USER@localhost

If you want all mail for root to be sent to the user mike, you’d write
mike@localhost

Now you can test this out using python

import smtplib
import string
SUBJECT = "Test email"
TO = "root@localhost" # This is to test forwarding from root to another user. if you didn't set up forwarding, use your username
FROM = "python@localhost"
text = "blah blah blah"
BODY = string.join((
        "From: %s" % FROM,
        "To: %s" % TO,
        "Subject: %s" % SUBJECT,
        "",
        text
        ),
"\r\n")
server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
server.sendmail(FROM, TO,BODY)
server.quit()

Now you can send mail to any users on the system. If I ever want change the delivery from local to something that gets sent out, I can follow one of the many articles on the internet describing how to set up relaying through Gmail and set my local user’s .forward to an email (not verified, hypothesized).

There is a simple work around for this: shove the value for the “next” url paramter into the session of where ever your login page is. Upon return, check to see if a session value exists for url redirection and if so, use it. Here is the code I came up with:

    # If we have a redirect URL in our session, redirect to it.
    if request.session.has_key('redirect-url'):  
        redirect_url = request.session.get('redirect-url')
        del request.session['redirect-url']
        return HttpResponseRedirect(redirect_url)
 
    # if the url has a next paramter, save it in the session
    if request.GET.get('next', None):
        request.session['redirect-url'] = request.GET['next']

Note here that where the user is redirected to if not logged in and where the user is redirected to post-third party authentication is the same for me. If you have two separate views for this, you’d break the above code up and put them where they make sense.

I will try to update my blog whenever I update the app with what I changed, but we’ll see.

1. Create a meta class for the model with a field “app_label” being set to the name of your app
2. In your __init__.py file, import that model.

For example, if you started an app by typing out ‘python manage.py startapp foo’, you can delete your models.py file, replace it with a directory named models (what I do), and inside have an __init__.py and Bar.py files.
in Bar.py:

from django.db import models
 
class Bar(models.Model):
    bar    = models.TextField(blank=False)
 
    class Meta:
        app_label = "foo"

then in __init__.py:

from Bar import Bar

This also goes for other things specified outside of the Django “norm” I guess?
If I wanted to associate Bar with the admin, I create a subdirectory inside my app named admin, and inside it I have
BarAdmin.py

from foo.models import Bar
from django.contrib import admin
 
admin.site.register(Bar)

Inside the __init__.py for the admin subdirectory, you’d have:

import BarAdmin

Now I could be doing this all wrong but this is the only way I managed to get everything working. If there is a better way to do this, I am all ears. To you Django/Python professionals out there, this may be common knowledge but I am noobing it up right now trying to better learn Python and Django.

One issue I’d run into switching between OSX and Linux for development  - and one thing that really bothered me – is OSX’s home directory is /Users while any Linux box is /home. Call me lazy for not having a better way to manage configuration files but I didn’t want to manage configuration files. I finally decided that my OSX box should probably match my Linux box in terms of directory structure, at least superficially. I backed up the current /home directory on OSX and created a symlink to /Users so that /home -> /Users.

I don’t know if this is a bad thing or not, so try this at your own risk, but so far for me, I like it. I don’t know what’s taken me so long to do this.

These commands backup your current /home to /home_bkup, in case you ever need it again. Why? I don’t know.

cd /
 sudo mv home/ home_bkup

This creates the symlink.

 sudo ln -s /Users/ /home

1. I’ve taken time off to do the life thing. Cliche but needed.
2. Now that I’ve got back into developing software, I am trying new things out: Python/Django and Javascript

Now my Javascript experience has always been very poor but lately I’ve been finding videos that talk about Javascript and it is really getting me interested and excited about the language. The two so far I’ve found are:
JavaScript: The Good Parts talk by Doug Crockford

and the 10 Things I Learned from the jQuery Source by Paul Irish:

Now let me be honest: I’ve never been a fan of front end development. HTML sucked, Javascript wasn’t close to my favorite (I’d much rather code up some assembly than touch Javascript) and their interaction with each other was dirty, at best. With the dawn of HTML5, I’ve become interested in HTML again and viewing (or, trying to view) the Javascript source of the very prominent websites got me interested in Javascript. The real turning point for me was watching Paul Irish’s 10 Things I Learned from the jQuery Source. That video, really, has turned me around on the power of Javascript.

Here’s what I’ve got out of it so far:

test.html

<html>
    <head>
        <script src="test.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
        <script src="test.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <span>hi</span>
    </body>
</html>

test.js

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

(function(){
    var TEST = window.TEST || {test: 0};
 
    TEST.test++;
    alert(TEST.test);
    window['TEST'] = TEST;
}());

Now what am I going on about?

Now after some research, this looks to be the “cool” way to do Javascript these days. I kind of like it. I wrote this up due to line #1 in test.js as a test. Many times I’ve seen people write

var OBJ = OBJ || {};

Now the cool part about this is including the file multiple times by mistake. That line tries to guarantee that regardless of how many times you try to include the Javascript on the page, only one object is created. The problem is, without checking window.OBJ, the reference will be lost and overwritten. The two test files I’ve pasted tests this. The HTML includes the Javascript twice. The EXPECTED behavior is to include the file once, have the alert show you 1 include the file again then the alert should show you 2. Leaving off the window. part of window.OBJ alerts you with 1 both times. Probably not what you want. Anyway I thought it was just an interesting test to confirm what I thought was correct. Also, I am asking for input. Is this correct? Is there a fancier way to go about doing this? Any references out there that will help me learn the latest and greatest way to use Javascript?

1. Adblock for Chrome – This has been around for a while, yes, and it’s been installed for a while.
2. Personal Blocklist (by Google) – This I’ve just discovered today (I think it was made available today) and this is something I’ve been wanting in Google search results for a very long time. This plugin gives you an option to block domains from Google search results. Say “bye-bye” to those stupid content farms. This also sends block information back to Google so that they can further tune their anti-content-farm algorithms. The only shortcoming of this is that the extension’s data still doesn’t sync to my Google account which means I’d have to add each domain in on each instance of Chrome, which isn’t a deal breaker, but I can’t wait to everything just automagically works everywhere.
3. RSS Live Links – This is, by far, the most important thing for me. I have a bunch of “daily” links set up through del.icio.us and setup through Firefox as live links so that I can open my browser, click one button and have all my important links open. This was not available on Chrome for a while. I just found this extension today.

And with the RSS Live Links extension, I am content enough with Chrome to get rid of Firefox for my daily browsing needs. Congrats Google, you’ve won again. No amount of Firefox 4 is going to convince me to switch back to it.