For the longest time I wasn’t a fan of desktop widgets. Namely because I never saw my desktop since it was always covered with applications. That changed when I discovered Hocus Focus, a neat utility that automagically hides windows that have been inactive for however long you specify. I was skeptical at first, but now I’m a believer.

So you’re setting up a VPN server and it’s all going very smooth except for when you actually try to connect. You check the server logs and notice something like this:

The Python language is easy. As a long-time programmer, however, I found it surprisingly difficult to wrap my head around how to do things with Python the “right” way. There are tons of great tutorials out there, but none of them put it all together in a way that really made me feel like I had a complete setup that wouldn’t have experienced Python programmers chuckling to themselves.

Today I found myself needing to grab a copy of the messages in a RabbitMQ queue. After a few minutes of deliberation, I decided a quick and dirty way would be to use the REST API provided by RabbitMQ to grab the messages and the REST API provided by RavenDB to shove them in to RavenDB. While it’s perhaps not the most elegant solution, it is straight-forward and simple.