Two years ago today

The PyCon tutorial on Django in Depth was ending. I had been sitting next to my friend Barbara and we got up to go when I heard a feminine voice ask: "Are you bshaurette?" I turned and it was like I got punched in the gut.

It was the first time I met Audrey. I remember every detail of how she looked at that moment. The clothes she was wearing, the part in her hair, that her eyes met mine, and that they didn't turn away. I was immediately captivating, but fortunately remembered to act like a gentleman. I tossed in a casual invitation to her to join us for lunch, which I pulled off even though my heart was pounding. Thankfully she accepted.

Life has been pretty much awesome ever since.

That was the day I met the love of my life.

Reposted from Two years ago today.

Resolutions for 2012

• Go to a Python related conference in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
• Attend at least one JavaScript related conference or event.
• Upload all my outstanding pictures to Flickr!
• Make Consumer Notebook profitable.
• Find more ways to make Audrey Roy happy.
• Pull off an Aú sem Mão during a Capoeira Roda.
• Attend my first Capoeira Batizado.
• See a place in the USA I've never been.
• Work out at least three times a week.
• Drop to a 32 waist
• Visit friends and family back east. Been over a year since I've seen my sister!
• Blog once a week. That is at least 52 blog entries!
• Visit a Theme park.
• Learn how to surf or snowboard.
• Implement something in node.js, backbone.js, and handlebars.js
• Take a high level Python class from the likes of Raymond Hettiger or David Beazly.
• Teach some Python or Django.
• Have a beer with Thomas, Andy, Andy, Tony, Garrick, Bernd, and the rest of Ye Aulde Gange.
• See my old DC area friends such as Eric, Chris, Steve, Beth, Sarah, Daye, Renee, Kenneth, Leslie, Whitney, Dave, and many others.
• Visit my Son.

Resolutions for 2011

• Travel to Europe again.
• Travel to Asia or Africa.
• Visit a Disney park.
• See a place in the USA I've never been.
• Drop the waist size 2 inches and not break any bones.
• Go to Pycon and present or teach.
• Go to DjangoCon and present or teach.
• Present at LA Django
• Continue my Muay Thai and Capoeira studies, get back into Eskrima, learn some more BJJ, and practice the forms I know.
• Work out at least three times a week.
• Go back east and teach martial arts for a day.
• Finish some outstanding legal proceedings.
• Launch a site that does cool stuff and somehow brings in money.
• Get to the point with LISP where I can do cool stuff in it without needing a textbook.
• Blog once a week. That is at least 52 blog entries!
• Explain why I wrote Diversity Rocks.

Resolutions for 2010

Since I start my decades at zero, that means we have just 4.5 hours left in this first 10% of the 21st century. And with just 4.5 hours left, I post my New Year's Resolutions.

• Sell the house, pay off the remainders of my debts, and get my own place to stay. And get a car too.

• Travel to another country.

• Take my son to another country.

• Drop the waist size 2 inches and not break any bones.

• Go to an amusement park, visit the beach, and also see a part of the USA I've never been.

• Do more educational work for Python related technologies, and that includes getting the Django Education Foundation really rolling forwards.

• Throw away at least half my current stuff. I don't have much stuff now, and I want even less. Also, If I don't use or interact with any one of my non-book remaining possessions by 2011, I'm throwing it away.

• Move my blog to my own system and blog at least once a week.

• Get a mountain bike and have reasons to use it.

• Get back into Eskrima, focus more on BJJ, get into Capoeira.

• Hire a maid. I'm not messy, but I want someone to do the fine tuning of my place.

• Go to Pycon, DjangoCon, and a new conference.

• Have a beer with Thomas, Andy, Andy, Tony, Garrick, Bernd, and the rest of Ye Aulde Gange.

New Year's Python meme

Tarek Ziade blogged this first. I'm just following the herd cause thats what a lone wolf does...

1. What's the coolest Python application, framework, or library you have discovered in 2009?

Django and Pinax. Technically I discovered those in 2006 and 2008 respectively, but it wasn't until 2009 that I got to really dig in. Django was really a blast from the outset of 2009, but it was about five lines of code that made me realize this was the framework to follow. Pinax is like a magical function decorator for Django, what more can I say?

Sphinx rocks too. I don't use it enough!

2. What new programming technique did you learn in 2009?

Thanks to James Tauber I really got into JQuery. Thanks to Brian Rosner I really got into Git as a DVCS. Yeah, I know YUI and HG are part of things too, but my dark secret is that part of why I really dig JQuery and Git so much is the guys who got me started on those tools.

3. What's the name of the open source project you contributed the most in 2009? What did you do?

Its a toss-up between Django Uni-Form and Pinax.

Django Uni-Form is my first successful open source project and about 75% of the code is mine, plus all the documentation and most of the marketing. Speaking of which, every NASA Django project (except for one) uses Django Uni-Form. Its in use by Discovery Channel, PBS, Washington Post, Washington Times, Richmond Times, and more. Of course, it wouldn't be anywhere near the success it is without the contributions of nearly a dozen people.

For Pinax I haven't done as much of the code as I wanted in 2009. Personal life issues swallowed up a lot of my time and energy, but I certainly evangelized and documented and taught it nearly every day. Pinax is not just me, its James Tauber, Brian Rosner, Jannis Leidal, and the rest of the Pinax and Django communities.

4. What was the Python blog or website you read the most in 2009?

Twitter. Certainly there are blogs I really enjoy following, but twitter is where it was at in 2009 for me. I read every blog it seems on Planet Python and Django, but my favorites include (in alphabetical order) Alex Gaynor, Chris McDonough, Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Jesse Noller, and Tarek Ziade.

5. What are the top three things you want to learn in 2010?

Driving cars.

How to cook again.

Much more Capoeira.

Something really nifty in Python I don't know yet.

How to count to three.

2009 resolution summary

Items that are crossed out are completed.

• Compete in tournaments and/or races

• Refinance the house

• Go to yet another country

• Get more people hired at NASA (Welcome Chris Adams!)

• Learn Django, JQuery, and get better at zc.buildout and CSS

• Stay with NASA another year

• Test for my 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do

• Not break any bones

• Fix up more rooms in the basement

• Take down that one tree in the backyard

• Enjoy my family more (Things are better with my parents, siblings, and perhaps my son).

• Go to PyCon, Plone Conference 2009, and DjangoCon

• Become much more active in the open source community

Best DjangoCon 2009 Day Ever!

This might sound a bit familiar, but yesterday was a day I don't think I will ever be able to top again. It was one of the pinnacles of my geeky existence, and I fear that the rest of my life will be a dull effort to recapture the glory that was yesterday. Why do I think this is so?

• Fresh Oregon state blueberry pancakes for breakfast with James Tauber, Brian Rosner, and Jannis Leidel. If you know me well, you'll understand why the pancakes were so important.
• Great keynote speech by Ian Bicking.
  
• I gave my first Django and Pinax related talk in a single combined event. Me and James Tauber gave a Pinax Tutorial that besides a demo gaff at the end went very well.
• Saw a really good talk by my new Public Broadcasting System (PBS) friends! Those guys are really smart and I'm delighted they are in my home area.
  
• I participated in my first conference panel ever! We (me, Katie Cunningham, Gary Wilson, Shawn Rider, and our host Brian Luft) told our story with getting Django (and python) into our shops. Lots of great questions at the end.
• Finding out that my 508 form project django-uni-form isn't just used by NASA and Pinax, but also by PBS!
• Chocolate peanut butter filled cookies for afternoon snack.
• Got a chance to tell Chris Wanstrath not only how much I appreciated that github kept me from having to learn all the git functions besides the basic ones, but also fended off the inevitable person accosting him about github performance issues (I fully recognize that scaling complex dynamic sites can be hard).
  
• The weather was amazing with a nice second trip to Powells. We should move the conference outside.
• Fondue for dinner that was so good it shut down James Bennett for 2 minutes!
• I witnessed my fellow NASA Dangonaut from Ames Research Center, Mark Friedenbach (NAI, NLSI) get married to his lovely fiance, Ariel Lee. Pictures to follow soon!
  

Best. DjangoCon. Day. Ever.

I'll say right now that yesterday tied my 'Best Pycon 2009 Day'. I'm delighted I got something just as good as that wonderful day in the same year.

By the way, watching Mark and Ariel get married was much, much better than Zed Shaw kicking me in the nuts.

Help me make a new Avatar!

A couple years back I went to Naples, Italy for the 2007 Plone Conference. It was my first trip across an Ocean. My first trip to Europe. In Heathrow airport I met Rocky Burt and he took the picture that became my avatar.

Well, I want a new avatar. That means I have to do another cartwheel some place I've never been. Some place exciting. And that is where you come in.

Basically, I'm looking for suggestions of places to go or invitations to go visit you wherever you might be. My budget isn't large, but my enthusiasm is without bounds. I love the heat so if your idea or invite is cheaper in summer time that is even better. The costs involved determine the duration of the event. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of places like:

• Africa
  
• Asia
  
• Brazil
  
• England
• France
  
• Germany
• India
• Italy (even Naples again!)
  
• San Francisco

Screw it. Lets go the whole way:

• Anywhere a thousand miles away from Washington, DC.

This becomes feasible for me after May 22.

Changing over to .NET

After a lot of thought and meditation I have decided that it is time for a change. This change has been in the works for a long time. I want to belong to something monolithic and proprietary, and I think that .NET on Windows is the way to go.

The .NET platform empowers me with the ability to choose from a host of languages like C#, asp.NET, vb.NET, Boo, IronPython, IronRuby, and many more. And after long and careful consideration I have decided that my next language of choice will be C#.

C# is under the stalwart auspices of Microsoft itself, instead of some guy from Denmark. It has static typing and thanks to compilation most bugs are caught quickly. The curly braces clearly delineate code blocks, and the semi-colons show me when a statement ends. Partial classes will let me spread my object code across many files, and lambda expressions will let me compress complicated functionality into generic functions. Documentation is done via XML rather than the RestructuredText used across the Python community.

Of course, Visual Studio has a lot of visual elements. I am not sure what that means, but being Visual is obviously superior to the TextMates and EMACS I have used in the past. I can't afford Visual Studio yet, but if I don't buy any groceries for myself, wife, and son, I should be able to pay for my copy in only 2-4 months!

In summary this year looks very exciting.

Update: This was an April Fool's joke.

Best Pycon 2009 Day Ever!

Yesterday was a day I don't think I will ever be able to top again. I think it was the pinnacle of my geeky existence, and I fear that the rest of my life will be a dull effort to recapture the glory that was yesterday. Why do I think this is so?

• My project, NASA SMD Spacebook got mention during Katie Cunningham's lightning talk.
• I lost one of the Django BFDL's dongle And everyone in the worldwide Python community saw it happen live.
• Guido van Rossum talked about twitter in his keynote. He referred to a twit post which was Barbara Shaurrette helping me get a chance to gush at him like a screaming fan boy. So yes, Guido is aware that I exist!
• NASA SMD Spacebook got multiple mentions in the Pinax talk by James Tauber.
• In Ian Bicking's infamous pycon 2009 talk I managed to misspell Whiskey/Whisky twice! Once the Old Country way and once the New World way.
• I got a 3 minute opportunity to gush like a raving fan boy to Guido before he managed to escape.
• Zed Shaw kicked me in the nuts!

Best. Pycon. 2009. Day. Ever.

That said, in the hopes that I can top this magnificent effort, I am calling this post the 'Best Pycon 2009 Conference Day'. My hope is that maybe I can beat it in the future. I doubt it. Sob.

Update: I beat this day the next year when I met Audrey Roy.

I got a job at McDonalds!

I'm going to be a food champion. Which means preparing delicious culinary treats at the grill. Life is good!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for:

• My wife and son
• My students
• Everyone who helped out when my bike got stolen
• Only two minor injuries this year
• My friends
• My family
• My crazy coworkers
• The trip to Italy
• My NASA customer
• Python
• The Plone and Zope communities
• Good training partners
• Good teachers