A lot of people create life goals and never complete them. Sometimes they feel the goals are too lofty and impossible to complete while other times the people are either lazy or just forget. After working on my procrastination by being more accountable I thought I’d try that with my life goals.
Hopefully by writing them down here and keeping track of their progress I’ll be more motivated to complete everything on the list.
Continue reading Life Goals
With the upcoming release of Django 1.5 one of the largest changes is that you can now specify your own User model. If you’re fine with Django’s current User model than you don’t have to change any code. If you want to take advantage of this new functionality then keep on reading as I’ll go through how to migrate your current application to the new configurable user model.
Continue reading Using Configurable User Models in Django 1.5
With the announcement of Django 1.5B1 and the final release of 1.5 around the corner I thought I’d go over some of the largest new features. For those that want to see the release notes you can do so here.
Last week I was talking with a group of friends about what their “perfect work day” would be. A number of scenarios were discussed when one person said “an entire day filled with meetings”. I began asking them questions about why they felt this way and what their meetings entailed to try to get an understanding of why they would want an entire day of meetings.
After a brief conversation I came to the conclusion that meetings are poisonous and should be removed from the social norm of the business world.
Continue reading Meetings are Poisonous
Here’s the presentation I gave about using Travis CI and Django. If you haven’t used TravisCI yet I strongly suggest doing so. If you don’t have any tests for your application to warrant such a program than why are you reading this? Go out and write tests!
Starting a blog is an exciting time. Ideas for potential themes, posts and frameworks running through your head. If you’re a technical user you’ll already have bought your domain name, forwarded it to your hosting provider and started creating your own theme. If you’re like most people though you probably don’t have the faintest idea on how to get started. Hopefully after reading this post you’ll have a better idea on how to create your first blog.
Continue reading Creating your first Blog
On Saturday April 14th, 2012, Terence and Myself participated in our third HackDays event, HackTO. While we didn’t do as well as previous events I still had a great time. Here’s a few thoughts on the event.
Continue reading HackTO Wrap-Up
Name: 2xIPA
Brewery: Southern Tier
Style: Double India Pale Ale
ABV: 8.2% (Varies from year to year)
Not quite an imperial, but certainly not a standard India pale ale. Southern Tier’s double IPA is a hop lovers dream. Citrusy and clean with an incredible finish. This was my first beer from Southern Tier and it’s what made me fall in love with their brewery.
Continue reading Southern Tier’s 2xIPA Review
I’m proud to announce my first ever open source framework, Jeeves. Jeeves helps you make new IRC bots in a single click. It handles all of the mundane things like connecting, joining and messaging and allows you to focus on creating the functionality you want from your bot.
The framework is built in Python, adding new commands is as simple as writing your own plugin (examples are included). You can pick up the framework from here and the README file should be everything you need to get started.
It all started when I was reading about a few different IRC bots made in Python and I thought to myself, “It should be easier to spin up new bots”. I wrote the first version of Jeeves in a week, modeling it’s usage after Django.
I’ll continue to post updates, changes and features on this blog. If you’d like to contribute plugins or improvements feel free to contact me here or through Github.
One of the best ways to continue learning is to take part in hackathons. You’re thrown into a group of developers and told to make something with a limited amount of time. Sometimes you’re provided with APIs or a specific instruction set on what to make and other times it’s up to you. I’ve always found that the stress of figuring something out over a short period of time helps me learn better.
HackTO is a hackathon in Toronto where developers are given 7 hours to make something built off of the provided APIs. The first HackTO was hosted at Tineye’s headquarters and my team, @ashchristopher, @terencelo and myself won it using YellowAPI. This time around I’m hoping to make something that’s both useful and creative.