If you haven't tried the IPython Notebook yet, you're missing out on a very neat tool. I just started using it a few days ago myself and I regret not having used it much sooner.

I'm currently working on a new Django project where I need to use Amazon's MWS API. I find myself using the Django shell a lot to experiment with the API while building the app. While the IPython shell is quite …

Back in the early days of Docker Compose, when it was still called Fig, you couldn't use ipdb with it to do interactive debugging because the container's service ports weren't exposed when using the run command. This has been fixed by including a ---service-ports option to the docker-compose run command.

Below is a sample usage for one of my Django projects, EZ Price Alerts.

In my detail view, I added import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace() …

Before Docker came along, virtualenv was pretty much the tool of choice for Python developers as it allows you to separate package dependencies for different applications you're working on without having to create separate virtual machines for each one. It worked very well for me.

However, there are still some annoying things the developers will have to deal with. Such things include having to install additional applications and services required by the project such as …

Yup, that's right, another Django project template!

I know there's a ton of these projects already on GitHub, but as I was in the process of rewriting an old Django project last week, I found out that Django 1.8 just came out. I figured this is a good opportunity to create another one I could use for future projects as I already have a few small ones in mind. Django 1.8 is also an …

I had been using Shelfari for a few years to keep track of books I've read and plan to read. I really liked the website's interface and they had this nice widget that lets you display a bookshelf of your reading list on your blog. But when I forced SSL on my blog, it stopped working. The widget doesn't work over https.

I then looked for other widgets and tried Amazon's widget. But their widget …