* add a _bytes wrapper for API that expects bytes in py3k but str in py2
* fix some more exception handling using sys.exc_info()[:2]
* use range instead of xrange, items instead of iteritems since py3k
  dropped support for the different ways of accessing iterators
  - this is less efficient in py2 but we plan to target py3k as the
    primary platform
* use list(dict.items()) since py3k only returns iterables which are not
  indexable
* missed some _long wrapping

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615872