I want to create something similar for Inzolo.com. I assumed that Django, with all its awesomeness could handle this without much fuss. But I really wasn’t sure how to put all the pieces together. Essentially, I need to create new sites on sub-domains that use the same models with different views and templates. My initial search of Google returned various results of simply creating mobile versions of existing websites by providing alternate templates, but that is not want I need to do (well, I suppose I ought to, but that’s not on the priority list yet). I don’t want my sales & info pages at the root of the site, I want the actual app that users log in to budget with – only a dumbed down version without all the ajax.

Creating a new project is one solution, but it is not ideal. I could have my settings point to the same database and copy or symlink my model, but it seems a bit kludgy.

So I went to where I normally go to get quick tips on Django – the #django IRC channel. jumpa was particularly helpful in providing the tip I needed.

Since I am using mod_wsgi, I can create an alternate settings file for my mobile sub-domains. That works great on my live site, but for my testing environment I don’t use mod_wsgi. I simply use “manage.py runserver”. I learned that is not much of an issue either as I can call “manage.py runserver –settings=mobile_settings 0.0.0.0:8001″

So now, I have the preliminary info I need, I can start building. Just one last thing. I figure I can use most of the existing settings in my main settings file, so I plan to just extend it to mobile_settings.py. At the top of mobile_settings.py I would just add the following, the proceed to overwrite/add the necessary settings:

from settings import *

** UPDATE **

As I suspected there wasn’t much to it. I created a new app in my project name mobile. I also created a new template directory for my mobile templates. Here is an example of what my mobile_settings.py file looks like:

from settings import *

ROOT_URLCONF = 'mysite.mobile_urls'

TEMPLATE_DIRS += (
 "/path/to/my/mobile/templates",
) 

INSTALLED_APPS += (
 'mysite.mobile',
)

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Exception Type: ProgrammingError
Exception Value: can’t adapt

Unless there is something I’m forgetting, it seems 100% of the time it has been a simple error. I use the get_or_create function to retrieve a model, but I don’t account for the “created” variable. So then I try to use the tuple as a model object somewhere and it throws this error.

For example, here is the wrong way:

person = Person.objects.get_or_create(first_name="Dustin", last_name="Davis")
print person.first_name

And now for the correction:

person, created = Person.objects.get_or_create(first_name="Dustin", last_name="Davis")
print person.first_name

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I got some basic API calls working in my local machine running “manage.py runserver”. Once I pushed it live, the basic authentication would not work. I’m hosting with Webfaction so I posted to the forum for help and continued to look.

I wasn’t making progress at all so I started looking for another API framework and learned of Piston. In hindsight I would have started here because it was developed by bitbucket.org and it seems it will have much longer longevity.

In any case, while reading the docs for Piston I saw this note:

Note: that using piston.authentication.HttpBasicAuthentication with apache and mod_wsgi requires you to add the WSGIPassAuthorization On directive to the server or vhost config, otherwise django-piston cannot read the authentication data from HTTP_AUTHORIZATION in request.META. See: http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/ConfigurationDirectives#WSGIPassAuthorization.

That was the clue I needed! I added this one-liner to apache config and… still didn’t work.

I then went through the process of upgrading. I was running Django (1.0.2)/mod_wsgi (2.0)/Python (2.5), I upgraded to Django (1.1.1)/mod_wsgi (2.5)/Python (2.5). Now, with the “WSGIPassAuthorization On” it works.

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Despite being totally proprietary, IE seems to be the most easily exploited browser due to its support of active x. (It’s no coincidence that IE users suffer from the most viruses, but that is neither here nor there). What if someone were to hack IE and make use of the popular open source rendering engine webkit?

So instead of the ugly display because IE still can’t do CSS rounded corners and other goodies, and instead of lame javascript errors, IE could finally work!

Surely I’m not the smartest guy on the planet. Someone had to have thought of this already. But would that person spend the time to make it happen?

Sure they would… if they worked for Google.

I was delighted to find Google Chrome Frame. It

I tried it out on a particular site I was working on. I have never seen IE render so beautifully!

Thanks Google for making IE suck less!

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from copy import deepcopy
old_obj = deepcopy(obj)
old_obj.id = None
old_obj.save()

Voila!

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I think the system is excellent. I do believe it “hurts” more to spend cash. It is hard for me to break a $20. I like that fact that when I spend cash I usually end up with change that becomes savings because I never spend change (I don’t know that Dave ever mentions that one, but it is a nice bonus).

My wife and I tried the cash envelope system. We gave up after only two months. Here are the reasons why:

1. Inconvenience. Let’s face it, debit cards make life so much more convenient. It is not convenient to got to the bank or ATM once or twice a month to allocate cash in your envelopes. I hate waiting in line at the bank so I avoid it at all costs.
2. Inconvenience. Yeah, same reason, but different. It is inconvenient to pay with cash. Grocery stores are not so bad really – unless you use the self-checkout, which I often do – again, because there is usually no lines there. Putting cash in those machines is downright painful. And really, who pays for gasoline with cash anymore?
3. Location of the envelope. It’s happened on more than one occasion that my wife is making dinner and finds she is missing an ingredient. So what does she do? She calls me and asks that I pick it up on the way home from work. If I don’t have enough blow money in my wallet I reach for the debit card.
4. Have you ever reached the checkout and when it is time to pay you realize you don’t have your wallet. That is really mortifying to me. I’m frantic in that case. I start looking through my car for a hidden $100 bill (it’s never there) or a blank check (never there either). Even if I only live 3 blocks away it is inconvenient and super embarrassing. If you forget your envelope and you don’t realize it before you get in line to checkout, are you really going to go home and get it? Not me, I’ll pull out the debit card again. Of course my intention is to go back to the bank and deposit the amount of cash I spent, but I don’t because that is so… inconvenient!
5. While it “hurts” me to spend cash, it seems to have the opposite effect on my wife. If money talks, all it ever says to my wife is “goodbye”. I’m not being rude here. She readily admits this. It’s not more difficult for my dear wife to spend cash than it is to spend money in any other way. Basically, it is just more (there it is again) inconvenient.

Let’s face it. I love debit cards. What I like about them is that if you use your debit card as a debit card (as opposed to credit card) it withdraws the cash out of your account immediately. Your bank account balance is updated immediately (at least where I bank it is).

Here are some more things I love about my debit card:

1. It is free to use. I have a free checking account. I don’t have to pay for new checks as long as I use my debit card.
2. My bank let’s me customize it. I generally put pictures of my kids on it so people can tell me how cute they are. I sometimes wonder though if my bank would be opposed to me scanning in my drivers license so people don’t have to ask for it when I use my debit card in place of a credit card.
3. It’s thin. With all that cash, your wallet can become a pain in the butt – literally.
4. It doubles as a credit card. For those places that don’t accept debit cards but can take credit cards, my debit card works fine. I generally have to wait a day or two for the transaction to appear on my bank statement though.
5. Did I mention it is convenient?

So, how do we make use of the timeless & effective envelope budget system with debit cards? We use Inzolo.

Whenever I get income, be it a paycheck or any other form of income, I decide where we are going to spend that money and allocate it to a virtual envelope.

Whenever we spend money using our debit card, the transaction imported lightning fast into Inzolo and I specify what envelope that money came out of. I can visually see all my envelope balances. If I go over in an envelope I can easily move the exact amount I need to cover the difference from another envelope.

It’s basically like haveing dozens of savings accounts set up in your bank and deciding where each transaction will come out of. I can even split transactions so that different portions come out of different envelopes.

So if you love the idea of the cash envelope system, but don’t feel you have the will power to stick to it, I urge you to give Inzolo a try.

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Well apparently IE caches the JSON file, so any changes are not reflected. Firefox and Safari seem to work fine. I tried a number of mime types (as I understand it, the defacto standard is application/json), but the only one that seemed to keep IE from caching it was text/plain. Go figure. And people wonder why developers hate IE so much…

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That is what I needed to do. I’m still learning Python so I wasn’t sure why the methods he described in his article didn’t work for me. (OK, I have an idea, but for the fear of looking stupid I’m not going to try to explain it.)

I’m using Webfaction to host my site, so I turned to their forum for assistance and found this topic. Still the examples didn’t quite work for me either. Finally I found a clue in my WSGI script. Adding the following lines to my python file is what I needed to get me going:

import sys, os
sys.path = ['/home/mylogin/webapps/mysite, '/home/mylogin/webapps/mysite/lib/python2.5'] + sys.path
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = ‘mysite.settings’

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To use this tool, click the ruler icon and use the path tab to draw polygon shapes.

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This morning was the first time I heard an official release date for Windows 7. I’ve been running Windows 7 betas for the past 3 months and it has been far more stable and responsive than Vista was for me. I will definitely be upgrading this one on release day! I have just put in my pre-order at Amazon. I’ll be going with the Ultimate version ($219) since I have a media center PC and I want all the bells and whistles. Really, this is the first time EVER I’ve been excited for a Microsoft launch. Crazy.

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