Week 344

Last week I finally finished working through Practical Django Projects, which took longer than expected due to all the bits of code in it that don’t work. At times it felt like typing in pages of BASIC from ZX Spectrum magazines and having to hunt through for the typos.

Otherwise, it’s a good book, and it does take you through building useful things. The Django Book is also good, and has the benefit of being online, so users can add the necessary corrections. Anyway, that’s enough reading about Django. I still feel a bit clueless as to how to do anything with it though. It’s been ten years since I learned anything like this from scratch (then, PHP and MySQL) and I’d forgotten quite how difficult it can be to attempt the simplest things. Practice required.

So yesterday I broke ground on what may be my next (personal) project, an experiment, something to do with online news. It requires some coding, which at this rate could take a while, but it’s technically a simple thing, so is a good thing to start with. Part of me wonders if I should be hiring someone to do this stuff so I can concentrate on other matters, but I enjoy coding for myself, and it can only get easier.

Today I’ve been doing some research for a meeting, but will continue with the currently codename-less project this week.

Otherwise, there’s a paying project pencilled in with new clients, which could take up a chunk of my time over the next few months. The start date is uncertain and until things are signed I always assume projects won’t happen, so we’ll see.

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19 Jan 2010 at Twitter

  • 12:44pm: @EnemyOfChaos You've gotta be quick in Phil's Trough Of No Value!
  • 12:18pm: @EnemyOfChaos The MegaDrive has been claimed I'm afraid.
  • 9:39am: Swim; breakfast; mail eBayed childhood belongings around Europe; coffee and LRB at Fix; now, to the office!