Python's documentation states that one has to use the is operator to compare a variable to None. What happens when you avoid that advice?

If you've been using python for a long time, then you surely know that os.listdir() function returns an unsorted list of file names. I didn't care much until facing a situation, in which the sorted-sequential processing of files was crucial, and I could not remember whether the previous file processing were done in sorted order. Well, luckily they were. But hey, this is a little bit annoying, isn't it? Why os.listdir() returns an unsorted list of files? Would you like to find out?

About introductory book to programming using assembly language.

Back in my "Windows" times, I was a fan of Foobar2000 music player. One of my favourite plug-ins was "Alarm", which could turn user's computer on during "suspend" state. So, I could switch my laptop to "sleep" mode, and be awaken in the morning by music from Foobar's playlist :) Is it possible to reproduce a similar trick in Linux? It depends on your hardware. Let's give it a try!

There are so many browsers out there! Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari - are the major players on the market. But hey, there is another major and one of the oldest browsers in the world: Opera. You might have heard lots of rumours about it. Maybe even used it. Or maybe you belong to a small group of people, who actually use this browser everyday. Would you like to know, why I've been using Opera for 10 years?

Sometimes, it's really hard to understand what happens inside a function or even a whole module of Python's Standard library. For example, the subprocess module contains a very tricky Popep class. I tried to use the the module to communicate with a MATLAB subprocess shell (e.g. send MATLAB commands to subprocess and read the output). Unfortunately I failed and was just able to pass a MATLAB script via command-line arguments. Yet, I learnt much about the Popen.communicate() method and I'd like to share this knowledge with you.

The worst thing has happened: I have an unexpected drive failure. That's how my Easter has started :(

Python never stops surprising me. While doing my master IT project, I was looking for a way to add dynamic properties to classes (we're speaking of new-style classes of course!). I did a little research and here are the results...

There were no blog updates during 8 month! But I am finally back to life!

It's been a while since I wrote the first part of this guide. I'm happy to introduce you the second part of the tutorial. This part continues the story about applet-only techniques. Even if you're skilled in PyGTK, you are adviced to read this part.