PyWidgets.com

http://www.pywidgets.com

While participating in a thread on http://tech-artists.org, it occurred to me that I am not the only one making custom little widgets for Maya and Qt in general.  I had an idea of a plugin type site to share all of our stuff with each other, thus minimizing wheel re-creation.

I was inspired by the Mootools Forge and liked how everything was read from a github repo.  The user just maintained that and the forge would do the rest.  It was just a way to see what stuff was out there.  What I don't like is that I have to have a github repo for every little thing.  There's no way in hell I'm setting up a repo for a spinbox with a slider attached!

So I figured these would be small enough that a github repo would be overkill and too much of a barrier.  If I want to share a widget, it should be pretty painless to do.  I am also learning AppEngine for shits n' giggles so this was a good project to learn with.  I also learned knockout.js, bootstrap, and a little jQuery which didn't hurt.

Anyhow here it is, feel free to send any bugs, problems, or suggestions to me.

The process to adding a widget is this:

• Zip it all up
• Include a README.md file with descriptions
• Include any screenshots you'd like
• Log in with your google id
• Click Add Widget and add your zip file

For more information on how to add a widget or some tips on Qt in general, visit http://www.pywidgets.com/resources

Frog 1.0

Over the past week or so I've been trying to get docs ready for frog and along the way I cleaned up some cruft and added some much needed polish to the system. The docs turned out better than I'd hoped, I'm really glad RTD is a thing!

There is now a quickstart page which should get you up and running within a couple minutes.  The quickstart is meant to test it out, not roll out a production server, though there are full instructions on that too.

Thanks to JonL over at CCP for the help.

Anyhow, I still need to add unit testing (i'm just so damned lazy) and add some examples on how to integrate it with other apps, then I'm not too sure where to take it.

http://frog.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html
http://frog.readthedocs.org/en/latest/admin/install.html

Video
http://www.youtube.com/embed/Brfzw7CyuGo


As always, any feedback or problems are more than welcome!

What if you worked for Steve Jobs?

I read an article in passing recently about working under Steve Jobs.  In the article it mentioned he was tough to work for and one thing that caught my attention was that he would call out anyone if their work sucked or what have you.  That got me thinking about my own little place in the world.  I am starting to treat my work as if Mr. Jobs would be using it himself.

That is a very scary thought.  But it forces you to give your own work a more critical eye.  How could this tool break?  What would Mr. Jobs say if it did and how would you handle it?  I ask these questions before the end of every sprint.  I would be devastated if my tools were previewed by someone like Steve Jobs in front of the entire company and have them break or just suck in any way.  Having your boss call you out in such a public way seems like a dick move, but the threat of it in your own little head will keep you honest with the quality of your work.  I suppose it also has a lot to do with how you handle that sort of pressure.  You could get gun shy and never commit another line.  But we won't let that happen will we?

This thought process is forcing me to go over every touched file and what systems each has affected.  Testing has become more aggressive and thorough.  Things are not perfect and tools still break, but it's getting better.

First post out of the way!