Developing Upwards

I've gotten a number of requests lately to contribute only Python related material to the Planet Python feeds and to be honest these requests have both surprised and insulted me, but they've continued. I am pretty sure they've come from a very small number of people, but they have become consistent. This is probably because of my current habit of writing about NaNoWriMo every day and those who aren't interested not looking forward to having the rest of the month reading about my novel. Planet Python will be getting a feed of only relevant posts in the future, but I'm going to be honest: I am kind of upset about it. I don't care if anyone thinks it is unreasonable of me to be upset about it, because the truth is Planet Python means something to me. It was probably the first thing I did that I considered "being part of the community" when I submitted my meager RSS feed to be added some seven years ago. My blog and my name on the list of authors at Plan...

Along the side of my blog, for many years. I've had a section called "Top Articles". I don't remember when I put it there, but I know that it included all of the most popular posts I had written at the time and I wanted to make them more prominent. They were obviously popular topics people wanted to find. These were the things I was writing about that people found most interesting or useful. I haven't thought a lot about this list for a few years, until I just noticed it today. Top Articles  is a time capsule. This was a snapshot of my interests and knowledge from a previous version of myself. It doesn't reflect me as well today. I'm equally interested in the things that no longer worth keeping on that list as I am of the things that are still very important to me. I'll make a point to clean things up around here. What was on that list so long ago? Of no surprise, I had a number of posts about Python which still draw a lot of new readers t...

I am only posting this to create a sense of public commitment to me against my continual urge to write something completely meaningless about the iPad, just to join in with everyone else.

How I Create those Del.icio.us link posts - TechLifeBlogged I am doing this now, but I stopped at the email so I can review and edit, rather than let it post automatically. Particletree » Visualizing Fitts’s Law Great visual examples of how Fitt's Law works and why. Fitt's Law tells us that the difficulty of hitting a UI target is reliably predictable based on the distance and size of the target. Every designer or developer working with UIs should know this. Checklists Exactly what I was looking for. Upgrades a select widget into a series of checkboxes, where we want toggle selection to be the default, not single selection. jquery-asmselect - Project Hosting on Google Code Will likely use this, instead, because it seems to preserve the actual select, which toChecklist didn't do

The week has been giving me little time to write, with lots of things to run around and do. I'll be waiting on my auto work to get done tomorrow and have more free time going forward. This blog a day thing has been difficult to do with any value so far, but I'll make it all average out. Anyway, I'm cheating today with a preview. This is a list of things I will absolutely be writing in the coming weeks. How To Understand AppEngine Datastore Under the Hood - Part 3 (by request) At least one new "How To Test Django ..." post Per chapter reviews of the exciting new book, Expert Python Programm ing by  Tarek Ziadé . For now, please check out this free chapter ! Announcement of a new project many people are aware of to help guide both new and moderate Python developers See you 'round the tubes.

So,  the   recent   interest   in   National   Blog   Posting   Month  has made me shift gears from NaNoWriMo to, obviously, posting once a day every day this month. Obviously, I missed the first, because I was out of town. I could have managed it anyway, but the change in plans was late in the game and I was out late that night. This still gives me a chance to flex the writing muscles and I'm really happy to take part in it. Thanks to everyone who has inspired each other to keep this going this month. This is my semi-mandatory and semi-cheating meta-post about the month, where I get to say I posted for the day. Really, I'm just filling time by writing about the fact that I'm going to be writing. To give this emptiness a little meat, I'll say that I have something of a schedule. I have a few topics to be covered in some fun posts and even somethings to cover in a series of posts. It will be a fun month. Everyone, keep me honest. Yell at me if I miss a day.

So, this was going to be a post about the Python module, subprocess. I'm a big fan of subprocess and there are a lot of problems that are easier to solve by using it. We reduce thirteen distinct facilities into one class. We reduce a diverse ecosystem of interfaces into one, uniform interface. The subprocess module is good, both by itself and as a symbol for what Python stands for. I won't be writing my original post about subprocess. It isn't that subprocess isn't important, or that I don't think I can express myself properly, but that it brought up something else I should write about right now: What should I write about? Is this a blog about software development or is this a blog about Python development? Does it need to be only one? I'm looking for my direction here. I'm not going to stretch this out, because if I do, you won't read it . And truth be told, I want you to read it. I want you to enjoy reading what I write. At heart, I am a writer. I take...

I read two 101 Ways to Blog Better lists and found this nice article about mapping what your reader wants with a fun grid. I made my own via Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Do you fit my grid of you? Check the article if you blog. A Fool-Proof Method To Brainstorm Blogging Ideas Technorati Tags: blogging Powered by ScribeFire .

I've been toying with the idea of increasing how much I might get back from this little place. At times it gets down right exciting to watch my hits rise day after day, until I get writers block again and drop back to double digits for a month or so. I can't help but listen to the entrepenourial spirit in me that suggests a little more devotion and disipline on my part would push the pocket pennies to a threshold the likes of my ramen-eating self would just drool over. Hell, I could even buy two flavors of ramen. So, I played with a few things. I naively made an attempt to jury-rig my Google Adsense snippets into my actual posts, to test what would come up in my reader. Squat, that's what. I looked around for feed-specific advertising services, and I found nothing but closed betas. I was seriously surprised at the lack of services in this area. Anyone who gets there first is going to have a serious advantage. Now, many someone is there first, so let me rephrase it as ...

I've been really trying to keep up with the feeds I read better and I found a change in my usage pattern that has helped a good bit. I stopped sorting or looking for specific feeds. No longer do I jump to the latests posts from xkcd.com or thedailywtf.com . I save time from sorting and get a broader range of posts at any one time. There is less topic burnout, also. (Topic Burnout is when you just can't read another word of some specific topic because you've absorbed so much of it too recently. Kind of like when you eat ramen for too many days in a row.)