Writing posts by Daniel Roy Greenfeld

Rainy Sunday in Buenos Aires

2014-11-02T17:24:00-08:00

Last night’s heavy rain had evolved into a constant, slow fall. The wind remained, pushing itself into faces, tossing trash recklessly across the boulevards.

The rain deepened the colors of the forest. Trees had greener leaves, browner trunks. The leaves hung heavier on their branches, as if about to give birth to new life on the next sunny day. The wind stirred the branches, wiping the moisture off the leaves. Thus removing the ability of the trees to provide cover from the rain. At the furthest tips of the highest branches, purple flower buds were just blossoming. Proof that this cold, rainy day was the beginning of spring.

Pavement tiles had little streams in the crevices. To an insect these were as raging torrents, sweeping victims to oblivion.

Overhangs gave protection, but only after walkers braved curtains of run-off.

If the sky was canvas, then God was spreading clouds across it like the first layer of paint. Lighter patches stood in contrast to the darker shades. In a minute the canvas had changed, the clouds rushing across the visible sky, the space between buildings.

Inside the cafe was warm, dry. Smelled of heated air and coffee. The glass window next to the table a welcome barrier, turning an unpleasant day into a warm, rich experience.

On the corner of Santa Fe and Carlos Pellegrini, Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 2, 2014

Into the Brambles is Published!

2015-03-28T13:15:00-07:00

After a year of writing and four months of thorough revision, I'm excited to announce that my first fiction book is now out!

As of today, it's available in Kindle format on Amazon. The name of the book is Into the Brambles. It's the first book of what will be a longer The Brambles fantasy epic.

The world was ancient, scarred from a thousand wars between gods, immortals, and heroes. Old grudges have faded but are not forgotten.

At the end of a so-called ‘age of peace’, two great nations of immortals march against each other, with humanity caught in the middle. In this world of conflict, three very different individuals are thrust into the face of danger.

Here a young man is marched off to war, a noble woman takes charge of her own destiny, and in the depths of the Haunted Lands a dark king is born. Their fates will shake the foundations of the universe.

***

In the book, I explore three primary characters. Like us, they are victims of circumstance. What they make of those circumstances affects not just themselves but the world around them. In other words, they make decisions and act on them. Unfortunately, good intentions and casual cruelty are both recipes for making bad decisions.

Even though I began putting pen to parchment (or keyboard to file) a year and a half ago, elements of the story have been brewing in my head for much longer. Writing the book involved a New Year's Resolution, the encouragement and editing of my wife, family, and friends, plus a lot of coffee.

If you would like to buy my book, you can do so on Amazon for the introductory price of $2.99, the same price as a cup of coffee. The book is also in the Kindle Unlimited program, at least for now.

2 comments captured from original post on Blogger

Annanda Sousa said on 2015-03-29

I already bought my copy . Eager to start reading. :)

pydanny said on 2015-03-29

Annanda, so good to hear from you again. I'm nervously awaiting your opinion about my book. :P

Siege: The First Chapter

2017-01-01T14:26:00.004000-08:00

The air was merely warm, which for most part was a nice relief from the heat of summer. Not for Vetch. He liked it warm, as hot as he could get it. Which was why he was the best at picking berries. Even on the most scorching days he didn't mind wearing all his gear while reaching through the brambles to gain access to the succulent morsels growing on the vine. Today though was merely warm, so his companions were doing as well as he normally did.

No matter, picking berries was a nice break from long hours of training for war or standing guard. Especially when Lina kept stealing glances from him. Each time she did that his heart raced. It was hard to not move next to her, but he was terrified she might think it unseemly of him. On the other hand, he was also terrified that one of his friends might steal her affections.

His pouch finally full of tart blackberries, he moved slowly out of the brambles, away from the fast flowing stream. You had to be careful, the sharp thorns were quite talented at finding hands or hair to catch on. He walked over to the baskets and dumped his load. After lunch the girls would take the berries, mix them with cream, and the lot of them would have them for dessert.

Vetch loved the afternoons of Seventh Day. After temple worship was free time. He and the other young squires would make their way out of the valley gates, to enjoy time away from the growing responsibilities they faced as they got older. Being a younger son his career had been chosen, he was to train as a man-at-arms. Not his first choice, but one took the lot that the gods assigned to you.

He heard sweet, feminine laughter. From the brambles Lina and Jia were looking his way and sharing a private joke. Vetch's heart wrenched, and blood rushed to his face.

"If you sit next to her she isn't going to mind." Gilder said as he walked up with his own load of berries. "If you talk to her, she's even going to talk back."

Vetch glared at his best friend, "I'm not afraid of her."

Gilder chuckled as he dumped his berries into the basket. "I'm not going to argue courage with you, but if you aren't afraid, why don't you talk to her?"

Vetch frowned as he tried to think of a retort. Before he could say anything, Gilder continued, "Listen, I'm not insulting you. I'm your friend so I'm encouraging you."

Vetch hung his head.

Before they could continue, they heard the sound of a horn. Both boys looked downslope towards the lower valley. There lay the town of Ravenna, and beyond that the final wall of the valley. As they gazed downwards, the horn sounded again. So did the Ravenna town bell.

"It's not on the hour. And there is no pattern in horn or bell..." Vetch said in a whisper.

"The town's under attack!" Gilder shouted.

From the bushes came their other friends and the other young ladies who had accompanied them.

"To horse! We'll go help them!" Dunn said. Besides Rok he was the tallest of the squires, naturally athletic, and the one that Vetch worried most about taking Lina out from under him. On the other hand, like the others he was also a close friend. At the previous mid-winter's festival Vetch and Dunn had promised to stand by each other's side in battle.

"No. We must get back, protect these young ladies, and attend our knights." Cauley said. He was the oldest and by custom the others had to defer to jim.

"I don't think so." Gilder said. He brushed past Cauley and vaulted onto his horse. "The town's in a panic. People need our help."

"I agree." Dunn said as he too vaulted on his horse.

"Duty dictates that we return to our masters." Lench said as he put his hand on the bridles of Gilder and Dunn's horses. No one was surprised. Normally an independent thinker, he nevertheless always deferred to Cauley.

"Let go of my horse." Gilder said with a snarl. "People could be dying."

"We're going to the castle." Cauley said as put his hand on his sword hilt.

The air became tense with the threat of violence.

To Vetch the world had turned surreal. For the first time in a hundred years the town was under serious duress. And here his friends were arguing and nearly to blows. He looked towards Lina. Her eyes were filled with emotion, she mouthed the words, "Do something."

Courage filled Vetch's heart. For once spoke up while his friends fought. He projected with the command voice all of them had been taught, "Stop fighting! Those who want to go up the mountain with Cauley can do so. The others who wish to help the town do so as they please."

Lench let go of the bridles. Dunn and Gilder wheeled their mounts and began their descent towards the town. The other young men and women began to mount up.

"If you go to the town you'll be reneging in your duty" Cauley shouted as he began the ride towards the upper valley. "To me and to our lieges!"

Some of the other squires followed Dunn and Gilder, but most of the others grouped around Cauley. Vetch caught Lina's eye and she smiled at him. He had done the right thing, had kept friends from blows.

Now it was time for yet more courage. Instead of following Cauley he went the other way. Away from duty and towards conflict.

Read the full story at https://www.wattpad.com/353748025-siege-1-beginnings.

Over Twenty Years of Blogging Tools

2025-09-24T00:45:00.884329+00:00

On my articles page, you can read near the top that I've been writing for the past 20 years (plus a little more). It's not all my online public writing, but it's a majority of it. The primary reason parts are missing is that over time, I've used a variety of tools to publish my thoughts. Some of those tools were hosted services, and material that was lost was because of services being shut down. Hence, why I prefer markdown files in a git repository over a database solution.

Here's the story of my writing tools over the years.

Geocities 1997-2010

In 1997, I first remember writing something for general publication on the web. Until then, my writings had been transmitted by printing paper, hand-copying onto disks, sending by email, or posting to usenet. I think it was in 1997 that I made my first essay-style writing on GeoCities site I put together. Geocities is gone, but periodically I've thought of digging through GeoCities archives to find my writing from that time between 1997 and 2004. Otherwise, those articles are gone.

Even though there's nothing from that time on this site, as Geocities overlaps with the first entry on this site, I've included it for the sake of posterity.

Livejournal 2004-2009

From 2004 to 2009, I used LiveJournal to put down my thoughts, and there I wrote on a regular basis about life, activities, fitness, coding, and general work stuff. When I revisit those posts, I see some fun things, some hard challenges, and between the lines a lot carefully hidden despair. The few articles that made it onto this site capture extended family memories.

Some of the articles from LiveJournal exist here.

Blogger 2007-2012

In 2007, blogs had taken off, and it was clear that professionally having my own blog was important. I decided to keep things simple and use Blogger to host my first professional blog. I opened a few other blogger sites for other purposes, but the main one was PyDanny.

This was my formative years of Python (and Django). Everything was bright and shiny and new. I met Audrey and fell in love with her.

A few years ago, I migrated that content here on this page.

Pelican 2012-2018

In 2012, I started writing content on a Pelican static site. I liked not having to set up a database for content. What I didn't like was having to work through the abstraction of Pelican to do anything.

Mountain 2018-2019

Frustrated with the lack of control of Pelican in 2018, I wrote my own Flask-powered blog engine, which I called Mountain. The challenge there was that I had some crazy ideas for a feature that caused too much complexity. The result was a very slow rendering of the static site. It was too much trouble to fix, so I stuck with it.

Uma was born in early 2019. I was too busy being a new father to do much writing, only getting in 5 articles for the whole of 2019.

Vuepress 2019-2021

By 2019, I was in the Jamstack world. I've since left it, but for a while my site was on Vuepress. The speed of compilation was nice compared to Mountain, and I could stick in special pages as needed. However, there were a few too many layers of abstraction, and that made extending it to work outside the default behaviors of Vuepress too difficult.

Next.js 2021-2024

In early 2021, for work, I needed to learn Next.js quickly. I used the official Next.js tutorial that existed at the time to learn the framework and React over a weekend. This was still the early days of Next.js, and I found it to be tons of fun. It reminded me of the best features of Flask combined with tons of frontend power.

Next.js has changed rapidly. I believe Next.js went in an uncomfortable direction in terms of complexity and decreasing quality of documentation for new or changed features. Bitrot happened frequently, and I felt like I was fighting version upgrades rather than working with the Framework.

FastHTML 2024-2025

I tried out FastHTML in the summer of 2024. Keeping the features spec in my head, tiny, I coded up the kernel of a cached markdown content site in 45 minutes. This was a vast improvement in terms of speed and complexity over the unnecessarily complex Mountain project of 2018. It was nice to return to Python, but it chafed to use a framework that wasn't PEP8 nor fully type-annotated.

Air 2025+

For a few years now, I've wanted to create my own web framework. This year I did so, launching AIR with my wife and coding partner Audrey. Air is a shallow layer over FastAPI, adding features to expedite authoring of dynamic HTML pages. One of the early projects I did with it was to convert this site to use Air. It was nice to return to a PEP8-formatted codebase that is fully type-annotated. I also like the smaller dependency tree.

The Future

Perhaps I'll grow restless again in a few years and try something new. Or perhaps I'll stick with Air for a long time. What I do know is that I enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts. So there will be posts going into the future.

TIL: Checkov's Gun

2026-03-09T03:12:43.043418+00:00

Chekhov's gun is a storytelling rule that says:

If you show something important early in a story, it should matter later.

I've used this technique for years but didn't know it had a name until today. It's similar to foreshadowing, and objectively just a synonym of that word. My personal interpretation is that it has to do with specific concrete objects or behaviors rather.

One of my favorite uses of Checkov's Gun is in early cinema as well as some Hong Kong action films where the camera will show a background object early in a dramatic scene. That background object will then be used in some way later in the action. Buster Keaton, Jackie Chan, and Sammo Hung are the grandmasters of this technique.

Enter Grimdaniel

2026-04-14T03:31:22.288365+00:00

TLDR

My new fiction-dedicated fiction writing site is here:

grimdaniel.com

Why?

About three months ago I received a head injury. Recovery wasn't quick, and I couldn't do a lot of things like look at traffic, do intense workouts, or spend more than a few minutes on code. Mostly I could only do passive things like reading or watching video. One active thing that I could do with impunity was write fiction. I hadn't done it in years, but now I found it was a rare active pursuit I could enjoy.

The result was my first book in about 8 years, a grimdark novella titled, "Everyone Dies". I listed it here on this site, but most of my readers are here for my technical writing, not fiction. Rather than combine the two categoris (non-fiction and fiction) I decided to build out a dedicated app for my fiction efforts.

As for a name, "Daniel" is the formal version of "Danny," which works better for an author of dark fantasy. In tech I try to be more positive than negative so "Danny" works better there. And so Grimdaniel was born.

Where?

The location of my new material is centered around the grimdaniel.com app. It's more than just a site, it is an engine for creating a new audience. Amongst other things there's a mailing list and mechanisms for granting access to in-progress works and advanced review copies. The newsletter signup starts at grimdaniel.com/list-signup.

How?

I built out grimdaniel.com used these tools:

Air to build out the website portion of the app. The GitHub repo for the project is at github.com/pydanny/grimdaniel.com
sendfox for managing of the email list
Story Origin App for growing of my fiction-focused community. While it looks simple on the surface, it is actually a sophisticated app designed to help authors grow their audience.

Soon I'll write about the tools I use to write books.

Word counter that ignores Markdown

2026-05-04T11:55:23.590783+00:00

I've been doing a lot of writing recently, and tracking my word count. I write in markdown. I could just render the text using a markdown library and then do a count on the generated output, but then I wouldn't have the fun of writing out a bunch of regular expressions. Yes, I know the cautionary meme by that says:

"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use regular expressions.’ Now they have two problems." -- Jamie Zawinski

I don't care.

I love working in regular expressions. It was the one thing I got out of my brief foray in Perl at the very start of my software development career. I carried it into my Java and ColdFusion days and periodically use it in Python. Yes, Python has lots of useful string tools, but playing with regular expressions until they are just right remains a fun puzzle for me.

So here you go, a Python-powered word counter powered by my desire to noodle with regular expressions:

"""
word_count.py — Count words in a Markdown file or a directory of markdown files.

Dependencies:
    typer
    rich

Usage:
    python word_count.py README.md
    python word_count.py README.md --no-strip-markdown
    python word_count.py README.md --verbose
    python word_count.py book/
"""

import re
from pathlib import Path

import typer
from rich.console import Console
from rich.panel import Panel
from rich.table import Table
from rich import box

app = typer.Typer(
    name="word-count",
    help="Count words in Markdown files.",
    add_completion=False,
)
console = Console()


MARKDOWN_PATTERNS = [
    r"```[\s\S]*?```",  # fenced code blocks
    r"`[^`]+`",  # inline code
    r"!\[.*?\]\(.*?\)",  # images
    r"\[.*?\]\(.*?\)",  # links => keep link text
    r"^#{1,6}\s+",  # ATX headings
    r"^\s*[-*+]\s+",  # unordered list markers
    r"^\s*\d+\.\s+",  # ordered list markers
    r"[*_]{1,2}([^*_]+)[*_]{1,2}",  # bold / italic => keep inner text
    r"~~([^~]+)~~",  # strikethrough => keep inner text
    r"^>+\s*",  # blockquote markers
    r"^\s*\|.*\|\s*$",  # table rows (kept as-is, words counted)
    r"^[-*_]{3,}\s*$",  # horizontal rules
    r"<!--[\s\S]*?-->",  # HTML comments
    r"<[^>]+>",  # remaining HTML tags
]

_STRIP_RE = re.compile("|".join(MARKDOWN_PATTERNS), re.MULTILINE)


def strip_markdown(text: str) -> str:
    """Remove Markdown syntax, keeping readable prose."""
    # Replace links/images with their label text
    text = re.sub(r"!\[.*?\]\(.*?\)", "", text)
    text = re.sub(r"\[(.*?)\]\(.*?\)", r"\1", text)
    # Remove fenced code blocks entirely
    text = re.sub(r"```[\s\S]*?```", "", text)
    # Remove inline code
    text = re.sub(r"`[^`]+`", "", text)
    # Unwrap bold / italic
    text = re.sub(r"[*_]{1,2}([^*_\n]+)[*_]{1,2}", r"\1", text)
    text = re.sub(r"~~([^~]+)~~", r"\1", text)
    # Remove HTML comments and tags
    text = re.sub(r"<!--[\s\S]*?-->", "", text)
    text = re.sub(r"<[^>]+>", "", text)
    # Strip leading syntax characters
    text = re.sub(r"^#{1,6}\s+", "", text, flags=re.MULTILINE)
    text = re.sub(r"^\s*[-*+]\s+", "", text, flags=re.MULTILINE)
    text = re.sub(r"^\s*\d+\.\s+", "", text, flags=re.MULTILINE)
    text = re.sub(r"^>+\s*", "", text, flags=re.MULTILINE)
    text = re.sub(r"^[-*_]{3,}\s*$", "", text, flags=re.MULTILINE)
    return text


def count_stats(text: str) -> dict:
    words = text.split()
    lines = text.splitlines()
    chars_no_space = len(re.sub(r"\s", "", text))
    sentences = len(re.findall(r"[.!?]+", text))
    return {
        "words": len(words),
        "lines": len(lines),
        "chars": len(text),
        "chars_no_space": chars_no_space,
        "sentences": max(sentences, 1),
        "avg_word_len": (
            round(sum(len(x) for x in words) / len(words), 1) if words else 0.0
        ),
        "reading_time_min": max(1, round(len(words) / 200)),  # ~200 wpm
    }


def _count_single_file(
    file: Path,
    strip: bool,
    verbose: bool,
    plain: bool,
) -> dict:
    """Count words for a single file, print output, and return stats."""
    raw = file.read_text(encoding="utf-8")
    text = strip_markdown(raw) if strip else raw
    stats = count_stats(text)

    if plain:
        typer.echo(f"{file.name}\t{stats['words']}")
        return stats

    if not verbose:
        console.print(
            Panel(
                f"[bold cyan]{stats['words']:,}[/bold cyan] words  ·  "
                f"[dim]{stats['reading_time_min']} min read[/dim]",
                title=f"[bold]{file.name}[/bold]",
                border_style="cyan",
            )
        )
        return stats

    # Verbose: full table
    table = Table(box=box.ROUNDED, show_header=True, header_style="bold magenta")
    table.add_column("Metric", style="bold")
    table.add_column("Value", justify="right")

    rows = [
        ("Words", f"{stats['words']:,}"),
        ("Lines", f"{stats['lines']:,}"),
        ("Characters (with spaces)", f"{stats['chars']:,}"),
        ("Characters (no spaces)", f"{stats['chars_no_space']:,}"),
        ("Sentences (approx.)", f"{stats['sentences']:,}"),
        ("Average word length", f"{stats['avg_word_len']} chars"),
        ("Estimated reading time", f"{stats['reading_time_min']} min"),
        ("Markdown stripped", "yes" if strip else "no"),
    ]
    for label, value in rows:
        table.add_row(label, value)

    console.print()
    console.print(f"  [bold]{file}[/bold]", style="dim")
    console.print(table)
    console.print()
    return stats


@app.command()
def count(
    path: Path = typer.Argument(
        ...,
        help="Path to a Markdown file or a directory with digit-prefixed .md files.",
        exists=True,
        file_okay=True,
        dir_okay=True,
        readable=True,
    ),
    strip: bool = typer.Option(
        True,
        "--strip-markdown/--no-strip-markdown",
        help="Strip Markdown syntax before counting (default: True).",
    ),
    verbose: bool = typer.Option(
        False,
        "--verbose",
        "-v",
        help="Show a full breakdown table.",
    ),
    plain: bool = typer.Option(
        False,
        "--plain",
        help="Print a bare number (word count only) — useful for scripting.",
    ),
):
    """Count words in a Markdown FILE or all digit-prefixed .md files in a directory."""
    if path.is_file():
        _count_single_file(path, strip, verbose, plain)
        return

    # Directory mode: find .md files starting with a digit
    files = sorted(x for x in path.glob("[0-9]*.md") if f.is_file())
    if not files:
        console.print(f"[red]No digit-prefixed .md files found in {path}[/red]")
        raise typer.Exit(code=1)

    total_words = 0
    for f in files:
        stats = _count_single_file(f, strip, verbose, plain)
        total_words += stats["words"]

    if plain:
        typer.echo(f"TOTAL\t{total_words}")
    else:
        console.print(
            Panel(
                f"[bold green]{total_words:,}[/bold green] words across "
                f"[bold]{len(files)}[/bold] files  ·  "
                f"[dim]{max(1, round(total_words / 200))} min read[/dim]",
                title=f"[bold]{path}[/bold] — Total",
                border_style="green",
            )
        )


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app()

Everyone Dies... is on Kindle Unlimited

2026-05-21T07:19:38.125587+00:00

Years ago, I co-wrote a book in which the protagonist died at the end. I liked the protagonist, as did my co-author and the readers. So, at the beginning of the sequel, we brought the character back to life.

While it was fun to write that resurrection, it meant his sacrifice was diminished. He had paid the ultimate price, but then got a refund.

Since then, I kept thinking about writing a new book (or series) where protagonists die with regularity. Sacrifice would have meaning. Characters would struggle with the death of those around them. I would promise that death is permanent.

The result is this story.

The release of this book is bittersweet. I admit that I don't want to let some of the characters go. And that's what makes this story so interesting for me, that I'll miss them in kind of the same way I miss friends and family who have passed away.

Read "Everyone Dies" on Amazon

Please write a review

Here's where I ask for reviews. Even the negative ones.

Positive reviews inspire me to write more. I run to the keyboard, and the words and story rush out. They energize me, and I love each and every one I get.

Negative reviews fuel the negative emotions that are useful for portraying the darkness in the stories I write. Also, they help me identify what I can improve.

Even neutral reviews are good. I feel neutral about them, but having them is better than no review!

Finally, if you feel like just putting in a star rating on Amazon (or Goodreads), with an absolute minimal review, that works too. No matter how many stars you choose, you help me by rating it.

Write a review!