TheCrypto's Blog

At my work, I have been trying to get data out of a C++ library for a project in Python I've been working on. I've been trying to wrap the library in SWIG or PyCXX but none of them have worked well enough to actually get the task done.

So, Today, I realized that I could use pickle from Python to get the data out of the library since I'm going to serializing it anyways. So I went out to try and figure out how to output a pickle program and found there was barely any documentation. All I found was the source code to pickletools.

Now, I am starting an essays section to contain information I'd like to update often and not get lost in a blog either. I'm still working on getting it to a publishable state but it's in the works. The first essay is going to be a consise explaination of what pickle is and how to write it from a language other than Python.

My WSGI Authentication code is still being worked on as well. I'm in a block at the moment to figure out how to do templates in a generic way. I don't want to force people into my favorite templating language to use my Authentication code.

TC Out

The first project I am planning to release is a generic WSGI authentication middleware. The idea is that you'll have a class that you pass a callable for the templates to use and a callable for verifying a username and password pair. Then the middleware will take all of that together and create a authentication interface.

To let the middleware to know it needs to authenticate the page, the application just has to return a 403 status. I currently have it finding the status code and messing with the headers but the authentication isn't there yet.

This project is a small part of yet another application I am working on. I need to protect one specific page from a application but I couldn't find any WSGI authentication that worked in such a general way. The idea is that you could start with a single username and password pair, migrate to a dictionary, and then move up to a SQLObject setup easily. Or you could completely change the templates without affecting anything else about the authentication. I'm also trying to make it a single file that a person would have to put into thier code since all the other ones I found required a huge library along with it. I like small code snippets to huge libraries.

The most helpful thing I've found for making the middleware is 0xDECAFBAD's XSLT Filter. It's a single class that implements everything for a piece of middleware and the class is designed very cleanly into the different sections for initalization, pass through, and the actual filter part.

TC Out

I just redesigned my software pages to match the general design of everything else. I'm still working on some other parts of the site, like a web interface to the repositories. gitweb requires git to be installed on the server which doesn't work for me, so I might just hack something out to show what's in the directories but not much else.

In the next week, I should be posting some more useable projects on the site. In between my school work, I should have plenty of time.

TC Out

Yesterday, I mentioned I had some issues with my source code management. Then I remembered Cogito which is an interface around git, the new source code management system for the linux kernel. After installing it, I found that it's actually very useable system and works well with my setup for management. So you can now check out all my software and checkout the various repositories. I am still in the process of redesigning my software section. The colors and design will be changing soon.

TC Out

This is the re-beginning of this blog. I did not feel that my previous work was worth keeping online. So, I have archived it and set it aside. I have left a permalink around for my most popular previous article but besides that, this is a completely new blog.

My name is Julian Krause. However, I go by the alias TheCrypto pretty much everywhere. The nickname came from when I was trying to register for a domain name after reading Cryptonomicon. I enjoy cryptography and security is all of it's forms so the name stuck.

My current job is programming web applications in Python at my university's bioinformatics department. My hobbies include lots of programming but also things like role-playing games, juggling, and getting organized.

I do most of my programming in the Python programming language as I enjoy programming in it the most. The simple readability of the language combined with the intricate pieces that fit together beautifully make it my favorite language.

Role-playing games is another activity I enjoy. I'm currently playing in the World of Darkness games but I enjoy a good game of Dungeons and Dragons or Shadowrun.

I picked up juggling recently from some friends of mine and it's a pretty interesting hobby. Also seeing what some people can pull off with their hands is just amazing. And you can't hurt improving your hand-eye corrdinatation.

Getting and staying organized is another activity. I've join the rabid group of people Getting Things Done. I also follow 43Folders and the Lifehacks groups as well. It's been the first system that has helped me in any way so I'm sticking with it.

The main point of this blog is to get down my ideas and, hopefully, find some people to help with them. I am probably going to be rewriting my blog software soon as well to do some things that PyBlosxom, which I do enjoy using, just can't do without a major rewrite. A log of my current development projects will be on the development section of this site that you can see in the sidebar.

My development work I do on a seperate subdomain, software. I'm currently investigating several version control systems that will work in my setup. I need something that I can rsync the entire repository into a web server and it should just work. Darcs has some issues and Bazaar-NG isn't working enough yet either.

Welcome to TheCrypto's Blog.

TC Out