Wicked [stuff]. published on May 22, 2008

It’s been a while since I’ve posted regularly, and those of you who really keep your ear to the community already know why. Last week, news broke that I’m writing a book. I’ve actually been writing it for several months now, since before the sprint last December, toying with the idea of contacting a publisher. After getting positive feedback from several people at the sprint, I bit the bullet and contacted Apress in January, got a …

Google App Engine: First Thoughts published on Apr 8, 2008

Like much of the Web development world, I caught wind of Google’s new App Engine launch last night, during the NCAA championship game. I wasn’t following the Scobleizer video though, so I was relying on the TechCrunch article and people in #django and #django-dev to fill me in on what all the fuss was about.

Well, once I realized what was going on, my interest was piqued. I hadn’t delved into any of these new scalable systems …

Post-PyCon published on Mar 17, 2008

So, PyCon proper has come and gone, and today begins the sprint. I had a great time, got my talk on (I’ll try to fix the fonts, but it’s online, anyway), and learned some fascinating stuff.

This week, I’m working hard on my file storage patch, which I sincerely hope gets committed without too much trouble. I may be able to help Jacob work on rewriting the signal code as well, if I can fnd the time …

IE8 and Upcoming Standards published on Mar 6, 2008

Along with the rest of the Web, I’ve been following the recent months of discussion regarding IE8, its version targeting behavior and its support for Web standards. There are a number of opinions about a whole variety of things regarding IE, and I won’t get involved in most of them. In fact, I tend not to follow these discussions very closely, but I’m trying to get better about it lately, now that I’m taking a more …

Review: The Definitive Guide to Django published on Jan 16, 2008

While I normally prefer to write about code, I’d like to take a few minutes and review the recently-published definitive guide on my favorite subject. That’s right, I’m talking about The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right by Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss (and special quest author Simon Willison).

The process

I can’t really discuss this book without describing the process it went through before it was published. While Adrian and Jacob were writing …

A Simple Plugin Framework published on Jan 10, 2008

Since getting involved with Python, I’ve read a few discussions about Zope, and though I haven’t used it, I do enjoy reading articles about it, to see how other people approach common problems. In particular, a recent Satchmo discussion pointed me to an article about using Zope3 interfaces to essentially manage plugins. I knew Trac did this, as I had tried to write a Trac plugin a while back, but I hadn’t really seen a good description …

Google Chart API Revisited published on Dec 7, 2007

A comment on my previous post prompted me to do a little digging on what Google’s Chart API is and isn’t capable of, and what I found gives me reason to worry.

I’ll preface the remainder of this post with a disclaimer: I do realize that Google is a corporation, and its ultimate goal is to make money. I’m not disputing that, nor do I find it offensive in any way. It’s the type of …

Google Chart API published on Dec 7, 2007

So, I was surprised to see my news this morning, when information aesthetics spread the news of the new Google Chart API. Looks like they’ve been reading my blog, and they decided to save me the trouble of installing matplotlib or anything.

It’s not interactive, which still makes Dojo charting a very useful alternative, but it’s good to have a quick, easy API for just embedded charts for simple data. As an example, here’s a chart …

Looking back at the sprint published on Dec 3, 2007

Sadly, the sprint is now over, but we got a lot done. I won’t go over the whole list, but I will regretfully admit that I didn’t get anything finished in time to get committed during the sprint.

I did get a ton of work done on the FileField refactor, and a new patch will be ready this week. I didn’t realize just how hacked that patch was, so I had to a lot of cleanup and …

Closing out November published on Nov 30, 2007

It’s been a long month. It’s been a very long month. I’ve had my ups and downs, but over all, it’s been a good time. I stuck it out to the end, and I’m proud of that.

With the sprint this weekend, I’ll probably be updating a few times with smaller posts, indicating the progress I’m making. But after that, I’ll be going back to fewer posts with higher quality. This has …

Django Projects published on Nov 29, 2007

A while back, Jacob posted a list of Django projects he found outstanding. I’ve now had some time to work with several projects myself, and I’d like to take the opportunity to recommend a few of them.

Coltrane

It might not look like much from the “Coming soon…” note on the front page, but Coltrane is a nicely-done blog app, containing the most necessary features. It’s not a full-on WordPress, but it really doesn’t need to …

Preparing for the Sprint published on Nov 28, 2007

The sprint’s coming up fast now, and I’m finding myself a bit overwhelmed with everything I need to do before I go. What it amounts to, unfortunately, is that I won’t be able to have my own, Django-powered blog up and running before I leave for Kansas tomorrow. It’s definitely unfortunate, given how close I am, but I just can’t spare enough time to finish it off.

I’ve spent the last couple days splitting …

Upcoming Sprint published on Nov 27, 2007

I’m finally able to make a sprint this time. I missed the last one (though I did have my own shortly beforehand), but I’m all set to make this one, live and in Lawrence. I’m incredibly excited to be meeting everybody in person, I expect it’ll be a great time. It’s especially great that I’m one of those weird people who love nothing more than coding in my spare time.

I’ve posted about …

Making friends and influencing people published on Nov 26, 2007

I don’t have any links to back this up, but I remember reading a few different articles suggesting that the “power” or influence of a blog is primarily based on its readership. This certainly seems to fit with the many reader-stats tools that are available these days, but I’ve never really subscribed to that view. While I do agree that a blog is nothing without its readers, I don’t believe readership alone is a good indicator of …

Month-to-date published on Nov 25, 2007

Most of you should know that I’m participating in National Blog Posting Month, with the goal of posting at least once every day for the entire month of November. So far, I’ve held up much better than I thought I would, but it’s taken its toll on me.

My articles haven’t exactly been up to the level I’d like them to be, but it’s good to get the information out there. I also haven …