LinkedIn photos are an odd feature


I'm puzzled by LinkedIn profile photographs. I'm certain mine is a minority opinion. LinkedIn added them because, they said, it was their most-requested feature. And the blogosphere's reaction was generally (uniformly?) positive. The CW was that LinkedIn was responding to Facebook market pressure. I may identify myself as antediluvian by writing this, but I think … Continue reading LinkedIn photos are an odd feature →

Interview whiteboard coding tests are worthless


Coding tests are a fact of life when you interview for a developer job.  They've been written about plenty, and the conventional wisdom is they're very useful.  For example, the venerable "Joel on Software" wrote about them in his "Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing," and Jeff Atwood wrote about them in "Getting the Interview Phone Screen … Continue reading Interview whiteboard coding tests are worthless →

A better way to switch Django versions


Regarding my Windows junctions method for switching between Django versions, Alistair Lattimore wrote about a better way to do it. He switches between Django versions using the site module's path configuration files.  This sounds better than junctions, because the junction file is a special directory entry that you manipulate with a downloaded command-line tool.  Although … Continue reading A better way to switch Django versions →

I closed my first Django ticket


It was a minor documentation problem, and I closed it with a worksforme.  But that's one less open ticket that someone else would have to look at.

Django blogs vs. WordPress.org. vs. WordPress.com


Going by what I read, there's lots of technical interest in writing Django blogging applications.  Django-users regularly gets questions about it, and it's easy to come across a related blog post. For example, Patrick Altman wrote I want to Move my Blog to Django, and James wrote Where is Django's blog application? This puzzles me, … Continue reading Django blogs vs. WordPress.org. vs. WordPress.com →

WSA Puget Sound technology company genealogy study


The WSA is doing a study to capture the genealogy/taxonomy of Puget Sound tech companies. If you founded a Puget Sound technology company, go here to answer the WSA questionnaire. (A tip of the hat to Bob Crimmins.)

Multiple Django development versions on Windows


Having multiple Django versions on your development box is easy if you're running a flavor of Unix.  You just use symlinks.  As Malcolm Trednick said on django-users: I do it all the time. I five or six different Django codebases that I use with some regularity and switching between them is pretty common (and fast). … Continue reading Multiple Django development versions on Windows →

PyCon 2008


I've registered for PyCon 2008.  I registered for three tutorials ("Introduction to SQLAlchemy" (Jonathan Ellis and Michael Bayer), "Generator Tricks for Systems Programmers" (David Beazley), and "Internet Programming with Python" (Wesley J. Chun), and am staying over to spend two or three days (depending on my return flight...) in a post-conference Django development sprint. I'm … Continue reading PyCon 2008 →

Is Ping-o-Matic broken?


I manually invoke Ping-o-Matic after I write a new post on TrenchMice's blog.  It's supposed to happen automatically, but doesn't — something's amiss with our WordPress installation, and it hasn't been important enough to debug. Great service, every blogger uses it, and it's worked fine for months.  But I started to get either session timeouts, … Continue reading Is Ping-o-Matic broken? →