Month: January 2017

Using pip to check outdated packages

It is always difficult to know if you have the latest stable packages installed in you requirements, and with the fast pace of releases, due either
to new features or security releases, it’s very easy to keep up.

Luckily, latest pip has now the --outdated function, which makes very easy to snipe these packages.

It would be good to have something that finds the outdated packages, installs the new stable and then update the requirements.

To that end, I’ve written this little gist:

It would be very nice to have this used as one of the pre-check before a Pull request, which will give the ability to know if we have the latest packages in the code or not. On that regard I’m pretty excited by this tool called beefore, which I found listening to Talk Python To Me, which in turn I recommend.

2017 is prime, which is kinda of cool

#xmas #holidays in full swing #bella #bologna

A photo posted by Myrto Kostadima (@myrtulina) on


Picture taken from the top of the Asinelli’s tower in Bologna, on a short two days visit when we went back in Italy for Xmas

So I was really waiting on the classic Annual Review which wordpress was sending out every year to write a bit about 2016 (for example this is the one about 2015), but instead this year nothing arrived in my mailbox.

Digging into the problem it seems that WordPress (the company behind it, technically speaking) was actually building these reports by hand, and therefore it was extremely resource intensive process. You can find more info on this thread. The gist is, it was too costly, so they decided to not do it this year, and maybe restart with a more automated system next year. I guess a big thank you is in order for the other annual reviews that were available in the past, then.

But fear not! I decided to look at the stats myself, and while the virtual fireworks will not be available, we can still have a look at my 2016 posting activity. I’ve published a whooping 5 posts in 2016. To be honest I thought I had published fewer posts. It was a good surprise. They have a peculiar distribution: we have 2 in January, 1 in February, 1 in March and 1 in December. I guess there are several factors that have concurred to this kind of pattern, most importantly that I’ve got busy in the middle of the year, I guess with work and with my wedding as well :D. This blog had 46,223 Views and 37,954 Visitors in 2016. Pretty happy with these numbers TBH, given that is a super niche blog talking about very sparse array of arguments that interest me somehow, so readers never know what they are gonna find here.

Interestingly two posts written in 2016 got quite a little bit of traction, in particular one about my Apollo laptop, and another one on how to run Webex on Linux. In details, we had 7,825 Visits for the Webex one, and 1,930 for the Apollo post. So far, my best post is What do I do when my Pull Request does not merge automatically in master? with 17,025 Visits, sporting 10,000 more visits than the best 2016 post.

The bar Cart post didn’t do too bad, with its honest 23 Visits :P. Given that it was published on the 5th of December, it had less time to build up so it is kind of expected. I’m confident it will in time, maybe.

Well then, this was just a quick home-made annual review for 2016, let’s see what is gonna happen in 2017. Once again, Happy New Year!