JotSite.com

updated Stock Quotations

I got tired of coming back to the Yahoo page just to check on stock quotes. This is a small program that gathers and updates stock quotes from Yahoo Finance. It utilizes HTTP to obtain the quotes so will work through corporate firewalls.

Installation instructions:

• unzip quotes.zip into a new directory
• create an icon that points to app1.exe
• Edit symbols.lst using NotePad to include the stock symbols that you choose.

Limitations:

• It can only gather while the market is open. Note that Yahoo uses a delayed quote system where each quote is about 15 minutes old and not exactly realtime.
• The list is limitted to 5 symbols.
• It queries and updates from Yahoo each minute. To do so immediately, click "update"
• Don't muck with the menus, they don't work.
• I apologize for the large file. It is a result of py2exe packaging for windows programs.
• Do with it what you will; it is just a good use of wxPython and Yahoo web-services together on a Win32 platform.
• Disclaimer: to the best of my knowledge, the program only performs what is stated above.

in praise of love

Every once in a blue moon, we encounter something good in life. For a very brief moment in time, our life is enriched by its presence. We bask in happiness and everything is right in the world. Then the moment passes and the good thing is gone. And in its absence, we ache with the emptiness filling the hole which it leaves behind. The pain is so overwhelming and difficult to bear that (deep in our mind) we wish that the thing had never interrupted our life in the first place.

One such thing is love.
How easy it is to say "it is better to have loved and lost rather than to never have loved at all". He who said such has never experienced the gaping years of torture and loneliness. He has never felt the pain of yearning for that which he knows he cannot have. The hole never fills, it only widens.

Beware love, thou art a dangerous thing.

To fall in love takes only moments, to heal from love takes a lifetime. Would you love if you know in advance that it won't stay beyond the present moment?

some links of interest

• Five Truths about Code Optimization
  This is a very good read to pass along to people working in the realm of programs. A lot about optimizing relies on fighting your first instincts. More often than not, first instincts (about the root cause of the problem) are wrong. Before changing working code, it's important to know that the piece of code being changed is actually causing a problem. Next up is to be confident that the new code you introduce won't cause further instability in the system.

• Examples of using ImageMagick
  If you happen to need to manipulate images from the command-line, this is a great tool to use. For simple manipulations via batch, there are probably example scripts that already do what you might need. For more advanced manipulation of images, there is the PIL (Python Imaging Library).
  
• TextBox to simulate IronPython console
  This is another project to exercise IronPython. I can't wait until IronPython gains enough steam so that people will be using it seamlessly with the .NET framework classes as opposed to using C# or VB.NET to access them. This is my previous marker at looking at IronPython.

• Ocemp - Ocean Trading Simulation
  Game framework based on pyGame.