Use dict to Speed Up Your Code

In Python, dictionary access is very fast. You can use that to get some speedup in your code  by replacing if/else with dictionary get.

In [1]: fn1 = lambda x: 1 if x == 't' else 0

In [2]: fn2 = {'t': 1, 'f': 0}.get

In [3]: %timeit fn1('y')  # Check "True" branch
10000000 loops, best of 3: 124 ns per loop

In [4]: %timeit fn2('y')
10000000 loops, best of 3: 79.6 ns per loop

In [5]: %timeit fn1('f')  # Check "False" branch
10000000 loops, best of 3: 125 ns per loop

In [6]: %timeit fn2('f')
10000000 loops, best of 3: 81.3 ns per loop

About 30% speedup - not bad :)

HTTPDir - Small OSX Utility to Serve a Directory over HTTP

HTTPDir is a small utility that lets you serve content of a directory over HTTP.

This is handy when you develop static sites that has reference to external resources. It is also aimed to people who are not comfortable with the command line.

HTTPDir is a simple Python script that uses Tkinter. It is packed in a format that OSX recognizes as an application. See the code here (look under HTTPDir.app/Contents/MacOS).