I’m now just over two months into my Django experiment and about halfway into my first client project. I’ll admit to anyone who even feigns an interest in listening that I’ve never had this much fun working on the web. The framework never fails to impress. Take for example the problem I was confronted with in building an online registration system for an after-school program at a local elementary school.
TNF
Hi. I'm Matt.
Wanna see something cool?
Dec. 21, 2008
Dec. 19, 2008
11:38 am
Stress comes from dissonance. When two things in your mind can’t be resolved and you start thinking you’re going to be stuck with the incongruity forever, you stress.
But, as much as our minds and our hearts encourage us to believe the fault goes to our will or our lack of industry – rather than our thinking and cognition – the true cure for stress is to cut the Gordian Knot. To change your mind about at least one thing you think you’re not allowed to change your mind about.
Merlin Mann, on relieving stress through the practice of total honesty. (#)
Dec. 16, 2008
Come on, people! 256kbps standard, no DRM, a downloader that auto-adds stuff to iTunes for you, daily deals on albums that are frequently set at 99¢ or $1.99. What more could you ask for? So start buying! (#)
Dec. 9, 2008
A nice little app that tacks on additional functionality to Spaces in OSX. The background-image-per-space thing could be handy, but by my estimation, the ability to add a new space via hotkey is the most useful feature. (#)
Dec. 6, 2008
After following James Bennett’s 2006 article on extending Django’s User model, I was surprised to find that the resulting profile fields didn’t automagically appear in the admin panel. I knew it had to be possible. The solution just took some sleuthing.
Nov. 21, 2008
1:26 pm
There’s no difference between a bug and a feature request from the user’s perspective.
Jeff Atwood, on the sometimes arbitrary distinction between software bugs and feature requests. (#)
Nov. 9, 2008
Nov. 6, 2008
Boston.com's Big Picture is hands down my favorite photo blog out there. Here they've assembled the best Obama photos taken in the past few months. I'm particularly enamored with this one. (#)
Nov. 1, 2008
4:06 pm
While luck may be more appealing than effort, you don’t get to choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is totally available, all the time.
Seth Godin. It's self-help Saturday, everyone! (#)
Oct. 30, 2008
I don't know much I'd enjoy listening to a whole album of Kaki King beating these melodies out of her guitar, but it sure is something to watch. (#)
Oct. 29, 2008
This variation of A-ha's video for "Take On Me," with crazy-making special effects translated into easy-to-follow lyrics, confirms a long held suspicion: music videos really are more interesting than the songs they represent. I wish all music videos were like this. (#)
Oct. 23, 2008
2:05 pm
He’s working now to represent more people, to be more broadly inclusive in his representation. He can’t really afford to think, “Who am I?” Now, it’s more like, “Who are we as a nation? Or who do we want to be? And how can I help facilitate a stronger, broader, unified identity?”
Maya Soetoro-Ng, on the evolution of her brother Barack's political focus. (#)
Oct. 17, 2008
I'd heard talk about the bang-up job Obama did of roasting McCain – and most of Washington – at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner. But seeing it was something else altogether. His performance did more to calm my nerves about this election than anything else ever could have. Truly remarkable stuff. (#)
Oct. 14, 2008
5:53 pm
Of course, building only one part creates its own set of challenges. When you have multiple parts that are fastened together, tolerances don’t need to be perfect. You have wiggle room, both literally and figuratively. But when one part is responsible for many functions, it’s critical to manufacture that part with absolute precision, down to the micron. Every time. Millions of times over. There was only one way to achieve this level of precision: mill the unibody from a solid block of aluminum using computer numerical control, or CNC, machines – the kind used by the aerospace industry to build mission-critical spacecraft components.
Apple's design page for the new MacBook. DO WANT. (#)
Oct. 12, 2008
Mozilla seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping the Firefox nightlies within striking distance of feature parity with Webkit. CSS Transforms are such a simple concept, it's hard to believe they're just becoming available. Apply various Photoshop-like transformations on HTML elements. By my estimation, rotate will be the most used option here. Also: the "translate" option sounds like an interesting alternative to CSS positioning. I'm excited for this feature to make it into Firefox proper. (Via FABW.) (#)
Oct. 10, 2008
4:27 pm
Describing a world in which wholesale money markets were now refusing to lend to banks, even overnight, the UK authorities warned that the world was on the edge of a collapse of the financial system.
Chris Giles, Financial Times editor, clearly trying to scare me outta my britches. (#)
2:31 pm
A “perfectionist” and a “purist” are not the same person. The perfectionist seeks to do everything to the best of their ability against standards that are often set higher than average. The purist, on the other hand, seeks to adhere to some set of rules that are written for conditions in a world wherein Tom Cruise is taller and a lot less creepy, and every morning the box of Trix is full and fresh without all those lame crumb particles at the bottom of the box … Clients, supervisors, vice presidents, and so forth—they don’t want the purist. Purists freak them out. While they might make for interesting subjects on the Discovery Channel, purists aren’t the best fit in the business world. Purity costs money and dedication to a path that often leads to even more unwanted or unnecessary expenditures.
Greg Storey, on lessons learned from a recent run-in he and Cederholm had with an asshat xhtml fundamentalist. (#)
Oct. 8, 2008
Me and a couple colleagues found ourselves in a pickle when Muxtape shut down. All those great playlists lost! We'd buy all the songs if only we could only remember their names. I was the only one in the group that never copied down any of those playlists for posterity. Lucky for me, Muxtape has made a frozen copy of the system available, just sans music. Amazon MP3 store, here I come. (#)
