“Tornado is an open source version of the scalable, non-blocking web server and tools that power FriendFeed”

We’re using Mako to handle our templates (vs the template module that comes with Tornado). It’s super fast and feature rich and has good documentation. Bellow is a base class I wrote that illustrates how to render Mako templates from a Tornado RequestHandler class. It takes care of setting your template directory, template cache directory and your output encoding (utf-8).

Note: This example assumes that you have your template settings defined as tornado options but they could be very easily just hard coded in.

from tornado.web import RequestHandler
from mako.template import Template
from mako.lookup import TemplateLookup
from tornado.options import options

class BaseRequest(RequestHandler):
    def __init__(self, application, request, transforms=None):
        RequestHandler.__init__(self, application, request, transforms)
        self.lookup = TemplateLookup(directories=[options.template_dir], module_directory=options.mako_modules_dir, output_encoding='utf-8', encoding_errors='replace')

    def render_template(self,template_name, **kwargs):
        new_template = self.lookup.get_template(template_name)
        self.write(new_template.render(**kwargs))

Basically you would just derive your handlers from BaseRequest vs from RequestHandler and you will then be able to render your Mako templates via the render_template method.

Here is an example:

class ExampleHandler(BaseRequest):
    def get(self):
        self.render_template('example.html')

Shoot me a comment and let me know if you have any questions.

Since I always forget this and have to go searching for it, I’m going to post it here. And if it saves someone else out there from wasting time looking for the same thing all the better.

  1. Install update-manager-core if it is not already installed:

      sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

   2. Edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set:

      Prompt=normal

   3. Launch the upgrade tool:

      sudo do-release-upgrade

   4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Anyway me being the generous person that I am (lol) I sent out the bulk of my personal invites to fiends and coworkers. Lets face it waving with yourself is a bit of a bore. Sadly though 24 hours + later and none of the invites I’ve sent out yet have been delivered. According to the invite others wave “Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.” The weird thing is that when you send out what they are calling invites the user shows up in the invite window as “nominated”. Exactly what does that mean? Sorry if I’m being dense here but those two terms don’t really go hand in hand.

So suffice it to say I’m a little frustrated with the whole process. It’s like having a shiny new bike and not being able to ride it. Sure I would wave with strangers for the sake of waving but that’s a tad anticlimactic to be honest.

As for wave itself it seems pretty cool. Still definitely some bugs to work out but it def looks very promising. Took a sec before I figured out about the extensions setup which really is whats interesting about wave. I mean the email meets IM setup of wave is cool unto itself but it really gets fun when you start embedding more dynamic components into the conversation. Last night I played with the google maps extension which was pretty cool and started looking into the 6 rounds extension (a multiuser video chat service).

This would all be allot more compelling if I had more people to test it out with. Hopefully they get the invites sent out sooner then later. Fingers crossed. Has anyone out there gotten invites sent from friends yet? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Todays topic is actionscript 3 (as3).
I’ve been doing a ton of flash stuff at work lately so I’ve had a chance to dive deap into the mirky pool of as3 and oddly enough I’m starting to really enjoy it. To provide a bit of back story I have worked with flash here or there since the 90s but never found it to be that fullfilling. It always felt very design/animation centric which is cool but not really my bag. That being said as3 is a total game changer for me. Assigning classes to symbols and having a central document class makes me happy. There is something profoundly pleasing about opening up a fla full of flashy goodness and not haveing anything on the timeline. Not to mention it confuses the fuck out of designers lol. Annnnyway… Stay tuned as I will be posting a series of tips for as3 over the next few months.

At this point I think its about time I started blogging again so over the next few weeks check back for some new posts. Work has been heavy on the flash lately so I plan on doing some posts about as3 and perhaps even some Adobe AIR stuff.

Stay tuned

This is a painting by an old friend of mine from LA named Nasim Peterson. I used to work with him at a flash animation studio in hollywood named Scribline. Nasim was one of the people that got me started doing oil paintings and for that I am eternaly greatful.

I haven’t seen or heard from him in FAR too long so I figured I would post this in hopes that he stumbles upon it one day. So if your out there Nasim, shoot me an email.