Plurrrr

Think that web form has got your number? If you used input type="number", you may be surprised to find that it doesn't.

Python is, in a lot of ways, a very rich language. After years of using it, I still regularly discover new parts of the ecosystem, even in the standard library. In particular, there are a few modules which are not very well-known, but can be very useful in some situations. Today I discovered dbm a persistent key/value store.

I’ll make the case for one practice that works very well operationally: deploying small units of code to production on a regular basis. I think that your deploys should be measured in dozens of lines of code rather than hundreds. You’ll find that taking this as a fixed point requires only relatively simple uses of revision control.

Once, Sancia Grado was just a thief with a grudge and a rare talent. Then she learned how to use that talent, and beat the great merchant houses of Tevanne at their own game. With Clef and Berenice, she even saw off an immortal hierophant - but the war they're fighting now is one they know they can't win.

This time, they're not facing robber-baron elites or an immortal hierophant, but an entity whose intelligence is spread over half the globe: a ghost in the machine using the magic of scriving to possess and control not just objects, but human minds.

Despite all their efforts their enemy marches on, implacable, unstoppable - and it's closing in on its true prize: an ancient doorway that leads to the centre of creation itself.

Sancia and her friends glimpse a last desperate opportunity to stop this unbeatable foe - but to do so, they'll have to unlock the centuries-old mystery of scriving's origins and pull off the most daring heist they've ever attempted.

And as if that weren't enough, their adversary might just have a spy in their ranks - and a last trick up its sleeve . . .