I use the Pydev plugin to develop Python programs on Eclipse. It’s a free plugin. Here I am listing down the step by step process to install and start working with Pydev.

1)      Download the Pydev plugin here

2)      Install the Pydev by just following the instructions

3)      Once the Pydev is installed open eclipse

4)      Goto Window -> Preferences -> Pydev -> Interpreter Python

5)      Click on the New Button Read more…

Ever since I started working on Ruby on Rails I have been asked by people to help them find links of some good tutorials to learn Rails. Well, the thing about Rails is that it is best learn’t by just jumping into the code and starting out, referring the basic stuff from RubyOnRails.org.

Leaving behind this thought, we at technoticles have started started creating a compilation of some good tutorials available on the web. We will keep updating this list as and when we find more of such interesting and useful tutorials.

Rails Introduction

Rolling with Ruby on Rails – part 1 – by Curt Hibbs

Rolling with Ruby on Rails – part 2 – by Curt Hibbs

Ajax on Rails – part 3 – by Curt Hibbs

Specific Topics

Rails Migrations -  IBM developerWorks

Using Facebook Connect with Rails – by Stuart Eccles

Improving Rails Performance -  by Stefan Kaes

Deployment related

Creating single executable to distribute Rails applications – by Erik Veenstra

Deploying using Capitrano on Fedora from scratch – Tutplus.com

Sikuli is a new graphical scripting language created at MIT. Sikuli, the word, means “God’s eye” in the language of Mexico’s Huichol Indians, the power to see and understand things unknown.

It is amazing as its a paradigm shift in the way we can code interactions with any GUI. It enables programming using GUI screenshots rather than lines of code.

As the article on MIT site says : A programmer using Sikuli doesn’t need to know anything about the code underlying a GUI. Infact even Sikuli doesn’t know anything about it, either. Instead, it uses computer vision algorithms to analyze what’s happening on-screen. “It’s a software agent that looks at the screen the way humans do.

Lets take the example of a weather map maintained by some Meteriological deparment, which specifies with a certain color (say dark gray) that it is going to rain in a particular region. A programmer using Sikuli can actually specify that a message should be sent to him mobile when the particular region changes to the rain colors. Instead of using language (as in terminology) to describe the color or the region, the programmer can simply plug screen shots into the script: when this (the region) becomes this color (the color of rain, dark gray), send me a text message. This is a hypothetical scenario i could think about similar to the bus example that is present on the Sikuli website.

Sekuli looks for the targets that receive the commands on the screen using a ‘computer vision engine’ that finds the best matching region. The script is based on Jython, a Python implementation on Java VM so you can use virtually any Python module with it. So there is a learning curve, but a basic understanding of Python is probably all that’s required.

You can watch a You Tube video demo of the language in action here.

The first release of Sikuli contains Sikuli Script, a visual scripting API for Jython, and Sikuli IDE, an integrated development environment for writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API’s support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator.

Data Sources:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/screen-shots-0120.html

Tutorials :

Tutorials on the Sikuli site

Videos:

YouTube video : Script for automating a Coda/Firefox workflow

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OtmMKYhEjg]

YouTube video : Automatically setting IP on Mac OS X

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxDOlhysFcM]

YouTube video : Tracking a Panda on a webcam

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGC9AJqJUqA&feature=related]

Downloads:  Sikuli related downloads are available  here