Alt project, Python 3.3, PyCon, Books, GUI Bloopers 2.0, Git, Privacy, DHCP issues

Post date: Mar 11, 2012 5:15:44 PM

• I've been busy working with our housing company's re-piping & re-wiring project. There's quite much to do, because I'm currently chairman. Many meetings, decidions and lots of paper work are required. Even with all this work, it's still quite impossible to get shareholders happy due conficting interests. Value of this project is going to be roughly one million euros.
• Python 3.3 is out! What's new! Unfortunately latest pyodbc doesn't seem to be working with it, so I can't use it with my work projects yet.
• Watched PyCon US 2012 videos.
• Finished two new books. First one about IT startups in EU region. Seond one about practical SaaS HTML5 application development.
• I also refreshed my memory by reading GUI Bloopers 2.0 book again. It's just annoyingly common to see very badly designed user interfaces with horrible usability. Yes, book and site are bit out dated, but you can still learn a lot from historical mistakes.
• Git branches are really nice. If I would have started creating python 2.7 compatible version of 9ox.net for App Engine without using Git. I would already have version management issues. Because I keep fixing old and original master slave datastore branch. Today I added simple string.strip() function to strip prefix and postfix spaces from user provided input url form content. I personally found lack of strip annoying. When I copy paste urls, it's quite common to get extra space at end or beginning of that snippet. When I pasted that string to 9oxnet, it said it's invalid url. I didn't like it, especially because it ruined user experience, although error was completely user caused. With Git it's so nice to merge fixed code to lastest HRD version, which is still in testing. I don't need to worry about accidentially deploying version which might not work or could be incompatible. Without Git my version management would propably fail at this point.
• I also have followed Google and Facebook privacy discussions very closely. Maybe everyone should just completely opt out from these services?
• Enjoyed PXE Boot, pxelinux, Ubuntu, Debian, Clonezilla, TFTPD32 / Serva32, DHCP issue trouble shooting. I got tons of data, including full network packet capture logs. Issue is also easily repeatable, but it seems that I don't have enough experience in this field to easily pinpoint the problem without several hours of straddling. I'm sure I could do it, but it would require more (time) resources than I'm willing to dedicate for issue that can be trivially circumvented. - Using Clonezilla USB flash boot and setting cache to memory option.