AIAIO: Our Blog

April means a lot of things both good, start of major league baseball, and not-so-much, rain showers and tax deadlines. But for us at Ai it also means supporting of March of Dimes, March for Babies.

Each year Team Levine, Chief Experience Officer and cofounder Josh Levine, his wife Paulina and their two (adorable!) children, raise astronomical numbers towards preventing premature births and finding solutions to the problems that threaten our babies. This year is no different, and Ai is there to join the fight.

This past Friday’s Hamster Time was March for Babies themed including strawberry milk baby bottle contests and a variety of baby foods. For any contest winners (and even those activities which there was no clear winner), Josh donated $50 to the March of Dimes, raising $350 for the cause.

The fight doesn’t stop there- many Ai-ers will attend the Team Levine Annual Fundraiser, Thursday, April 26^th at 6pm at Traffic bar & Restaurant, 986 2^nd Ave. This weekend Ai will take the campaign to the streets as we proudly stroll beside Josh and his family at the walk on Sunday, April 29^th at Lincoln Center.

For more information about the cause, fundraiser or walk, or to make a donation check out the Team Levine website:  http://www.goteamlevine.com/.

At Ai, we have sites that use various versions of Django, so there is a need to switch packages. On my mac I use virtualenv to handle this, but I’ve never quite gotten it to play nice with windows, and just switching Django versions has sufficed so far.

1. Download junction (think symbolic links for windows). Put the executable somewhere in your path. I put it in my Python scripts folder (C:\Python26\Scripts)
2. Plan out your directory structure: Make sure you don’t have any stock django eggs or folders in your site-packages folder
3. Create a django_veresions folder in site-packages (C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions)
4. In this folder I put my different django installs

    C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\1.1\django
    C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\1.3\django
    C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\1.4\django
   

5. I also put a txt file inside the django folder to easily see what version is there (this will be helpful later to double check)

   C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\1.4\django\1.4.txt

6. Create a file called djangoversion.cmd and drop it in C:\Python26\Scripts

   junction -d C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django
   junction C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\%1\django

7. The first line removes any links that may have been there. The second line creates a new link to the version you’ll pass in.
8. Now, to switch versions, just run this from the command line:

   djangoversion 1.4

   PS C:\Users\tbroder> djangoversion 1.4
   
   C:\Users\tbroder>junction -d C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django
   
   Junction v1.06 - Windows junction creator and reparse point viewer
   Copyright (C) 2000-2010 Mark Russinovich
   Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
   
   Deleted C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django.
   
   C:\Users\tbroder>junction C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\1.4\django
   
   
   Junction v1.06 - Windows junction creator and reparse point viewer
   Copyright (C) 2000-2010 Mark Russinovich
   Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
   
   Created: C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django
   Targetted at: C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\django_versions\1.4\django
   PS C:\Users\tbroder>
   

9. Switch as needed