Myles Braithwaite

Last night at PyGTA we talked about our Personal Programming Mantras and came up with an interesting list, my personal favorites:

In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

Have a vision before you start coding.

Nothing is sacred.

No one owns any piece of code.

Keep it simple, smartarse.

Sometimes the solution really is simple.

You are wrong.

About optimization.
About planning.
About everything.

.2% of reusable code is reused.

DRY gone wild, wet-T-shirt edition.

I'm an idio-nius.

Constant self-doubt is good/bad.

Standard naming, but no naming Nazis.

Don't trust standards.
My standards are good.
Yours suck.

Prototype in the target language.

Power Builder Sucks

Be a programmer, not a DBA, dammit!

Leave sysadminning to the sysadmins.
Leave DBA-ing to the DBAs.
I like my bubble.
Limit your knowledge, avoid doing the dumb things.

Space-Nazi's suck.

It doesn't fucking matter about spaces... Please just leave me alone.

Also I am going to be doing the PyGTA presentation in January on CouchDB, the first 30 miniutes will be a quick overview of my GTALUG presentation and the rest will be looking at using CouchDB in Python.

I am going to be presenting CouchDB at the next GTALUG. Not much else to say still writing an introduction.

Room GB248, Galbraith Building, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8
University of Toronto

I released Django Basic Tumblelog 0.5 so you should definitely download it, the only really change is that I switched from the save() method in the model to the signals.

• Zip
• Tar.gz

Personal Site Redevelop

I have just started my new personal website which i am calling Comfy. It uses CouchDB for the document database store. I am hoping to lunch it in April of 2009. I am currently developing it in Django but there will be some other stuff mixed in there.

One large design flaw of this current site is the Tumblelog, where most of the work is being handled by one application instead of independent applications. An example of this is my Links are currently inside the Tumblelog application instead of an application called Links.

I also have an idea about Collections. Where I could store like information in a Categorical senses.

TLUG Board

At TLUG October meeting I was elected to the board.

Another thing.

It looks like the second Django Toronto meeting will be 4th November . So I am definitely going to be there.

And one last thing.

Just upgrade to Django 1.0.

*.arific.com was a project I started about a year ago to house some of really cool ideas I might have. Most of them haven’t really be published because doing the setup is to much work. Those in a effort to fix this I am moving everything (Email, Websites, Chat, and Project Management) to Google’s Cloud. Currently the only thing that is running on any of my servers is DNS and a redirect from `arific.com` to `www.arific.com`.

I have to take a couple days off work soon to do a video like this.

3 Days – 3,038 Photos from Robbie on Vimeo.

3 Weeks – 3,000 Photos (New York City) from Robbie on Vimeo.

Photo Motion Project #2 from Zach Boyce on Vimeo.

I have been play around with Google Chrome doing some of the more resource intensive things. Running three Gmail, MobileMe, RoundCube, and Zimbra all in the same browser window and I would have to say it is incredibly fast. Also the User Interface is awesome; I really like the spartan aspects of the design.

Another cool feature is the fact I can create web based applications (similar to Prism) with just a right click.

I went to bed this morning around 3 a.m., trying to fall asleep I was awaken to a large bang. At first I thought it was a bad dream and tried to fall back asleep. Then another louder bang and the sky turned yellow. So I new it wasn’t a dream, I started freaking out. Not knowing what happened I ran and turned on the television and started channel surfing to find something… there was nothing. I ran to my computer and pulled up a few news sites.. there was nothing. Then I pulled up Twitter Search and did a query for toronto and finally found some answers.

• UPDATE: photojunkie is reporting live.
• UPDATE: photojunkie has some photos
• The Canadian Press – Reports of explosions at propane depot in northwest Toronto
• UPDATE: It’s a five alarm fire #
• UPDATE: I think this is the area where the explosion is happening -#- #
• UPDATE: YouTube video of the explosion

I am still working on killing bugs to get Django Photo Gallery to a beta release around the end of the month. But I have a few notes I wanted to post about some features that will be included in the beta and some that will be in the future.

1. I am working on getting Amazon S3 support setup this will be optional but highly recommended.
2. Some type of mobile posting, probably though a external pop3 mailbox.
3. Support for Google App Engine.
4. Watermark support.
5. Flickr sync.

I am currently working on a web based login for an internal Monkey in your Soul project.

WordPress just announce 2.6 and it includes support for Google Gears. Nice work WordPress.

I got a MobileMe account Saturday morning and loving it! I am thinking of working with my iDisk making a mirror of this site, some crazy JSON to Ajax stuff. Really excited.

I am going to be on a plane tomorrow and the next day so I wanted to do some work on Django Photo Gallery but still wanted to commit changes to the repository while offline. So this is a quick overview on how I am going to do this.

First I need to checkout the repository:

git-svn init -s http://username@example.org/svn/project-name project-name --trunk=trunk --branches=branches --tags=tags

Lets cd into that directory and fetch the changes from the subversion repository:

git-svn fetch

If you have any branches or tags on the subversion repository you can see them with:

git-branch -a

If your subversion repository has a lot of commits then it would be a good idea to repack the repository which will make you git repository smaller and have a lot less files:

git-repack -d

Okay now lets make a new branch to make our changes; because I am going to be traveling I am going to call my branch air_plane_commits (a better name would be a ticket number or a feature):

git-checkout -b air_plane_commits

Now use Git as you would normally.

When you are back home you can commit you changes back to the subversion. Change to the master branch and merge your changes branch.

git-checkout master
git-merge air_plane_commits

You might need to fix some merge conflict, but probably not. Now we need to rebase our changes to the current subversion commit if there are other developers working on the same repository.

git-svn rebase

Now lets commit our changes to the subversion repository:

git-svn dcommit

I was hoping today to switch Django Basic Tumblelog to Lighthouse issue tracker and GitHub but it seems that they are both down. I must be a problem with Engine Yard.

Update

They are back up now.

• Lighthouse
• GitHub

I am going to be in Calgary on Thursday and Vancouver on Friday and coming home on the same day. So there is going to be a lot of terminal waiting these next two days, but with the power of Git you should see some work being done on ether Django Basic Tumblelog or Django Photo Gallery, on Monday.

Also I just got my first bill from Amazon’s S3 Service a total of three cents, so you might see some features in Django Photo Gallery to integrate into S3.

I released version 0.1 of Django Basic Tumblelog in zip and gzip tar, if you interested please download a copy today.

Open Salad

Unconferencing public policy

Creative Commons 101

Jane’s Walk

Intro to Ubuntu

linuxcaffe

I am currently working on a new project called Django Photo Gallery which is a port of Stopdesgin Movable Type Photo Gallery Templates to the Django python framework. I am working on it about an hour everyday to try and get it to a releasable state by the end of June.

If you are interested in contribution to the project please email me at me[at]mylesbraithwaite.com and I will add you to the subversion repository. If you don’t have any programming or design skills add a feature request.

P.S. I am trying to blog at-least five times a week now.

So I have been watching about five hours of Open Everything footage and my hard drive is almost full, I am going to have to move it to an external hard drive. Hopefully (and thats a big hopefully) I will get editing tomorrow before and maybe after TLUG and then on Wednesday before the Open Everything followup.

I attended the Open Everything conference at the Centre for Social Innovation and it was amazing, really while done. I am still extremely excited about open ideas and really wished there was more time.

I am still recovering for my Speedgeek so I am going to kept this post short.

splitbrain.org picked up a questionnaire and made it free to grab for everyone else. If you like to answer me 63 silly questions, read on.

1. The phone rings. Who do you want it to be?
   Google saying I have been excepted for a position.
2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart?
   Yes. But I rarely get a cart.
3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener?
   Usually it's dependent on how comfortable I am with the crowd and how many drinks I had.
4. Do you take compliments well?
   No, I tend to freak out.
5. Do you play Sudoku?
   I did back when I read the Metro but not any more.
If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive?
Yes.
6. Do you like horse-riding?
   Yes I like horse back riding but I haven't been in a long time.
7. Did you ever go camping as a kid?
   Yes I went to Camp Ahmek on Canoe Lake in Algonquin National Park.
8. What was your favorite game as a kid?
   I would have to say build with LEGO
9. If a good looking person was courting you, but you knew that he/she was married – would you play along?
   Hmm this raise many ethical questions but luckily being 21 I don't have to come up with an answer right now.
10. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you?
    I don't have a religion so it wouldn't be a problem.
11. Do any songs make you cry?
    Yes but you will have to buy me a few before I tell you them. :-)
12. Are you continuing your education?
    Yes but not in the go to school kind of way. I believe that there is always room for education.
13. Do you know how to shoot a gun?
    No and I never want to learn.
14. If your house was on fire, what would be the first thing you'd grab?
    Camera's!
15. How often do you read books?
    Daily.
16. Do you think more about the past, present or future?
    Future!
17. What is your favorite children's book?
    Green Eggs and Ham and Curious George
18. What color are your eyes?
    Brown
19. How tall are you?
    Six something, I stop measuring myself when I turned 17.
20. Where is your dream house located?
    On the beach in Spain.
21. Do you have a secret fetish?
    Fruit.
22. Have you ever tried sushi?
    Yes best food ever!
23. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth?
    No. But I would like to.
24. When was the last time you were in an olive grove?
    I have never been in an olive grove.
25. When was the last time you were at church?
    Five years ago in a ghost town in lower Quebec.
26. Where was the furthest place you traveled today?
    From my office at Sheppard and Victoria Park to the linuxcaffe
27. What was the job you loved most?
    Anything that is working on websites!
28. Do you like mustard?
    I don't love mustard but I don't hate it.
29. Do you prefer to sleep or eat?
    Sleep!
30. Do you look like your mom or dad?
    People on my Mother side say I look like her but people on my Fathers side say I look like him, so I am thinking I look like me.
31. How long do you take to shower?
    I like a long shower.
32. Can you do the splits?
    Fuck no.
33. What movie do you want to see right now?
    Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight
34. Would you fast-forward your life if you could?
    No.
35. What did you do for New Year's?
    Fell asleep on the couch.
36. Do you think The Grudge was scary?
    If thats the one with the hand coming out the back of the skull than no.
38. Can you identify with one of the characters from "Mean Girls"?
    Not really.
39. Do you own a camera phone?
    Yes my iPhone.
40. Do you have an "ex box" with pictures or letters of your former partners?
    I cannot deny that I do have an "ex box".
41. Was your mom a cheerleader?
    Don't know, I am going to have to ask her, but I think she was a hippy so no.
42. What's the last letter of your middle name?
    N
43. Do you like your middle name?
    Ya it make me sound snobby when I use it: Myles Alden Braithwaite.
44. How many hours of sleep do you get at night?
    Five to Four hours a night.
45. Do you like care bears?
    No. Children should be learning about the real world not some world in the clouds.
46. What do you buy at the movies?
    Popcorn
47. Do you know how to play poker?
    Yes. But I don't play.
48. Do you wear your seatbelt?
    No I am to forgetful.
49. What do you wear to sleep?
    A T-Shirt and Pyjamas
50. Anything big ever happen in your hometown?
    Not really it was kind of slow in Richmond Hill.
51. How many meals do you eat a day?
    Two.
52. Do you have a tongue piercing?
    No.
53. Do you like funny or serious people better?
    Funny, what so important about life that people have to be serious about.
54. Ever been to L.A.?
    No
55. Did you eat a cookie today?
    No.
56. Do you steal or pay for your music downloads?
    I pay for my music.
57. Do you hate chocolate?
    Yes.
58. What do you and your parents fight about the most?
    That I haven't done anything with my life in there eyes.
59. Are you a gullible person?
    No.
60. When was the last time you cried?
    Not sure.
61. If you could have any job you like, what would it be?
    Working a Google developing some kick ass websites.
62. Are you easy to get along with?
    Not sure.
63. What is your favorite time of day?
    Nights and Sunday Morning!

Okay now your tern please write your responses to the questions on your blog and post the URL in the comment below.

Linux Journal’s recent Readers’ Choice Awards showed some interesting results, at least to me. First in the distribution it seems that Mandriva (13.9%) has taken over Fedora (11.1%) for second place with Ubuntu (37.4%) getting a massive lead. GNOME (45.7%) and KDE (42.5%) are about 50/50 in the desktop environment. A suppressing result in the instant messenger category with Skype (17.8%) out performing Kopete (12.8%) but with my personal favorite Pidgin (42%) getting the award. VMWare won best Virtualization Solution.

Also in the developers category it seems that graphic based editors are starting to be at the level as CLI gedit (15%) the default text editor for GNOME did surprisingly while. MySQL won a major victory in the database category but it will be interesting if they can maintain there success. Python (28.9%) won Favorite Scripting Language with PHP (21.7%), bash (19.8%), and Perl (17%) trailing, it is interesting to see that Ruby did get on the board.

My Nokia N800 (43.9%) won Favorite Linux Handheld Device while OpenMoko Neo (23.7%) in second which is interesting because they don’t have a working prototype yet.

Over on CIO.com there is an interesting article about ditching your Mac for a PC and a rebuttal, I believe both of these authors are wrong.

I have been using a Mac for about six years, Linux for about eight, and Windows since 3.11. Currently I have an Apple Laptop (which I consider my main computer), an Apple Desktop (at home), a Windows Laptop (for developing in .NET), a Windows Desktop (at work), and my OLPC which I take on the road (also five Linux and one FreeBSD servers). If I go onto anyone of these computer I have my Email, Tasks, and Calendar but because of this mess (which is my life) I have had to learn:

1. Never run Virtual Machines: I have great respect for VMware but I don’t really like running virtual machines on my desktop for more than a hour.
2. Never Commit to a Software that cannot Play While With Others: iCal and Sunbird are great examples of good standards compatibility while Outlook on the other hand sucks.
3. Use Open Standards: CalDAV and IMAP are great examples.
4. Switch to Web based Products: I recently built an Address Book for a client to solve this issue. It took a hour in Django.

Today I was looking at the statistics for my Flickr Account and noticed that I get all lot more traffic there then on my website.

Flickr is Blue and my Website is Green

I guess it some what okay people seem to like my photos better than my blog. So I should not be upset, I actually wish that all the social networking sites I am on did this.

Sean Hurley spent the better part of a month trying to fix his website on 1and1. I spent the morning and came up with this solution:
Just add this: AddType x-mapp-php5 .php to you .htaccess file. Insert rant about how much I hate shared hosts.
If you ever get pissed off at a shared host again I would suggest getting a Linode.

Have you ever asked yourself “What day of week is it?” while wonder no more.

Just finished my new project, What Day of the Week (if that link doesn’t work check out my sandbox). It is Web 2.0, iPhone and Mobile device compatible, free, and open source. Thanks go to Kottke for the idea.

In the last two month three comment spam has gotten past Akismet on this blog.
Over at Coding Horror there is a good article about CAPTCHA’s and how Yahoo, Hotmail, and Goolge CAPTCHA have broken. I am not really suppressed I never really thought they would work. But I am thinking of adding CAPTCHA to this blog because I think most of the people who are spamming blogs are not the same as ones who are spamming emails. Why? While I am not sure, but most of the comment spam that has gotten though Akismet has not been formated using BBCode and not HTML; obviously it is a Forum spam bot which isn’t really intelligent and I would highly doubt that it would be able to fool a CAPTCHA.
Even if CAPTCHA one day become obsolete he has some other ideas:

Beyond diversification, the deeper question remains: how do we tell automated bots from people– without alienating our users in the process? How can we build a next generation CAPTCHA that’s less vulnerable to attack?

Here’s some food for thought:

1. Distinguish pictures of dogs from cats


2. Choose a word that relates to all the images


3. ASCII art


4. Solve failed OCR inputs


5. Trivia questions


6. Math and word problems

At some point, unfortunately, CAPTCHA devolves from a simple human reading test into an intelligence test or an acuity test. Depending on how invasive you want to be, you’ll eventually be forced to move to two-factor authentication, like sending a text message to someone’s cell phone with a temporary key.