Nifty
I was trying to deal with LiveJournal’s XML-RPC interface to transmit some UTF8 encoded text. It wasn’t working so well, so Andrew introduced me to the following Python snippet (which will test your installed fonts nicely):
The output is:
Note: you should actually run this file rather than just whacking the script into your Python command line interpreter, because my console or interpreter didn’t like unicode input and mine was set up by those whacky Python nuts at Canonical.
Get that? (Pfft, don’t look at the HTML source, I had to change all of the & signs to &.) It takes the nasty Unicode string "abcdefgó€ñçﺥઘᚨ" and reencodes it in ascii, replacing all the non-ASCII characters (everything except ‘abcdefg’) with XML character references to their Unicode value. The upshot being a XML snippet that you can transmit in ASCII if you’re ever dealing with an interface that doesn’t seem to like your UTF-8 encoded strings.
Job
Not that I have a good resume online, but with half my holdiay over, I’m looking for six months or so of work in Sydney when I get back. I’m available from early December. Python, Perl or Java programming, or possibly tech support, tech writing or office admin, but I’ve got a better resume for the junior programming positions. Leads appreciated!