Project rewrite building steam

My Python rewrite of my project is now on parity with the ruby version, only with a bunch of bugs fixed. (As usual in a rewrite, I'd imagine.) The Python code looks messier than the Ruby code, and I find myself missing some of Ruby's syntactic sugar.

For instance, properties are ugly: write a predictable getter and setter (less typing than Java would force on you, but in the same category), then type
title = property(fget=lambda self: self.getTitle(), fset=lambda self, v: self.setTitle(v), doc="the title, no really")
over and over. Note that this isn't the obvious way to do properties, but it's the way you have to to get the results you expect. Lame.

On the other hand... woah faster. Woah yay sensible string slicing.

Though I am still catching up with the changes in Python since 2.4, which was the last time I really paid attention. Decorators improve some of the clumsy syntax.