Django

At this rate I might have to rename this segments to Monthnotes. So let’s at least talk about the last two weeks, shall we? Python, podcasting, media, oh my.

I’ve been toying with a small Django project that can be given a list of podcast feeds, and then regularly checks those feeds and updates some interesting metrics. Initially, I wanted to see how many comparable podcasts to my own made use of various RSS namespace elements, and also to pull some aggregate statistics around release frequency, episode length, etc…

Here’s the scenario you find yourself in: you’ve built and deployed a cool little Django app, and successfully deployed it on Heroku. You’ve followed all the great advice out there and are using django-environ to help manage all the various configuration variables you have to retrieve from your Heroku dynos.

Iteration is the thing. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. After all, tinkering is easy to do, especially when you are working with a platform as flexible as Jekyll. So as you would expect, I’ve made several changes to the site since the initial relaunch.

This site is now powered by Octopress. The tentacles compell you! It’s tentacly delicious ! The Search> The Search # As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been looking to try out a new CMS for this site.

After lots of hard work, some swearing, and lots of patience on the part of my wife, Version 3.0 of this site is now live. It’s been a long journey, but getting it done has been very satisfying.

Via Simon Willison: This is a really convenient way to add custom functions to model managers in Django. Way easier than defining custom managers each time you need extra functionality.

I have not been posting here much of late, which is partly due to the amount of stuff I’m working on, and partly due to the fact that I’ve been writing and posting stuff in other places around the web, since it is easier.

I have not had time to post here in a while. My new job has kept me very busy and most of the time when I get home I just want to relax and spend time with my girlfriend.

Via Simon Willison: This is a real cool Django app that creates an awesome interface to help internationalize your site. Allows the adminstrator, and an optional group of designated translators to read and write your site’s gettext files.

This is one of the more promising projects in progress on the Schema Migration front. Schema evolution can be a bit painful and projects like this for automatically migrating database structure based on the Python model code will be a necessity for long term projects.

Heh, I had a little fun this afternoon writing a little Django app for my site that will regularly import my public Pownce notes and allow me to display them in the sidebar.

Michael Trier points out a cool new feature in Django that is awesome for debugging. On Django error pages (with DEBUG turned on) there is now a button that will automatically post the contents to dpaste.

Ahoy, mateys! Today be the official Talk Like A Pirate Day and the Ministry o’ Intrigue will be celebrating by servin’ up all me text as pirate speak fer the duration.

I would like to take a moment to show you how easy it is to create feeds in Django, and the easiest way to do that is by example. For brevity’s sake, I’m going to use a simplified version of a Django-powered blog.

Well, it took a long time, but I finally finished! Welcome to the new Ministry of Intrigue. This site is now powered by Django, the marvelous Python framework many of you have heard me rave about again and again.

Adrian Holovaty, one of the creators of Django (which you will read my raves about again and again), has posted a wonderful meditation on how online newspapers need to change. He centers his thoughts on one central point:

So as I mentioned before I’ve been learning Python, and it has been a lot of fun. It says something that I can spend all day at work writing code, only getting up from the computer to scavenge the vending machines, but when the end of the day comes I find myself rushing home so that I can pick up where I left off in my Python lesson plan.