Fanfiction Reviews, Interesting Links, and General Geekery
Charles Fraser-Smith - The man who was ‘Q’
I can’t remember how I originally found this page, but I finally remembered to blog about it. For those who don’t know, Charles Fraser-Smith is the real life man upon whom Ian Fleming based “Q” in his James Bond novels. Considering how clever some of his World War 2 spy supplies were, I think any James Bond fan will like this bit of history.
Spirit Walk and Martial Arts Motherhood Challenge by glainfach (Juliet Carnell)
Length: Oneshot and 13 chapters plus prologue, respectively.
Sources: Ranma ½
Rating: 5/5
There are many indicators of bad fanfiction and in Ranma ½ fandom, one of the most obvious is when authors arrange for Ranma Saotome to get pregnant. Of course, one of the biggest indicators of a true fanfiction jewel is when an author takes such a “mistake in the making” and turns it into a good story… and that’s what this review is all about.
The Last One by The Smiling Shadow
Length: 14 Chapters, Ongoing
Sources: Terminator
Rating: 5/5
I’ve always loved stories which explore alien mindsets (robots, aliens, and people like Rei Ayanami) and follow them as they learn about the aspects of the human mindset that were alien to them at the start of the story. (It’s excusable. I am human, after all.)
In case you were unaware, GTK+ doesn’t let you set_active(False) on every single button in a RadioToolButton group. One must be pressed at all times.
So, if you want to have a user interface where it’s possible to have none of them pressed (for example, using RadioToolButtons for “Zoom 100%” and “Zoom to Fit” and regular buttons for “Zoom In” and “Zoom Out”), you need to use a little trickery.
self.zoom_100 = self.wTree.get_widget("zoom_100")
self.zoom_fit = self.wTree.get_widget("zoom_fit")
self.zoom_manual = gtk.RadioToolButton(self.zoom_100)
zoom_100 and zoom_fit are the RadioToolButtons as defined in my Glade XML file. The trick is zoom_manual. It is now part of the button group, but I’m not adding it to the user interface.
PyGTK - EntryCompletion hacked up to give nicer tab-completion
While working on a batch organizing tool, I found out the hard way that GTK’s EntryCompletion is not meant for people who want speed. (It’s a memory aid, not a speed aid) I also couldn’t just switch to PyQt or wxPython because they all do basically the same thing.
As such, I hacked the GTK auto-complete up a bit so that it behaves more like shell auto-complete. (It doesn’t do anything until you hit Tab. When you do, if there’s one match, it’s completed. If there are multiple matches, it pops open the normal auto-complete list so you can pick one.
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