Protocol Buffers in App Engine

I was disappointed the other day when I was playing with Google App Engine and tried to use a protocol buffer.  No dice.  After a bunch of digging, I've found a solution.  It isn't pretty but it works.

1. Download and build the latest version of the protocol buffer source.
2. Copy the python/google directory into the source directory of your App Engine project.
3. Create an import_fixer.py in your App Engine project, and include the source referenced in this thread: http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/msg/12e6c7d9bcda7a46
4. Follow the rest of the steps on that thread, i.e. after all of your google.appengine.* imports, include these two lines:
   

   import import_fixer
   import_fixer.FixImports('protobuf')
   

It's definitely disappointing that this is necessary: hopefully it won't be required in future versions of App Engine.

WA 365: Fruit

I was full of ideas for this weeks Fred Miranda assignment, but this is the one that I ended up running with tonight.

It turned out to be the perfect assignment: I feel like I learned a lot while setting up and taking this photo.  I'm still labouring on in the absence of flashes, so this was lit with two incandescent blubs and a hand-held LED flashlight.

Here are a few things I learned:

• When lighting glass from below, make sure you keep the light away from the front-facing edge of the glass.  Otherwise, every little imperfection in the glass glows quite hideously.  I accomplished this with some black bristol board.
• Making the liquid a little cloudy also does wonders for hiding imperfections, as well as enhancing the glow.  A little milk does the trick.
• 100W bulbs can make duct tape fail, causing lights to crash to the floor.

And so it begins...

A friend of mine has been bugging encouraging me to start blogging for months now...so here goes.

You'll find thoughts and information on lots of topics here: photography, Argentine tango, bikes (the human-powered kind), food and who knows what else.  It's going to be focused more on me keeping track of things for myself than being entertaining, but hopefully some of you will find the odd interesting post as well.

And so it begins...