Any way for the django shell to suck less?

[andybak]

1. I miss the syntax colouring of shell_plus - and I'm sure there were a few other features it had that were worthwhile
2. The timeout is absurdly short - and getting back to where you were is painful and relies on replaying your session history by hand
3. The thing that makes this even worse is that if the timeout disconnects you, then your shell history isn't saved

2 and 3 combine to turn the shell from "incredibly useful" to "an annoying waste of time"