Shelbybark Blog

Django 1.0

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

I just pushed out my updated site to run on Django 1.0. The Django Foundation rolled out 1.0 on Wednesday of this week -- just in time for DjangoCon 2008 this weekend. I've worked on the site a little the past few evenings to get it ready. For the most part, it was an easy move. A few more notes after the jump.

The one thing I would recommend anyone making the move do is to remove all .pyc files in your django directory. This was probably the biggest "gotcha" I encountered. Once I pushed out my changes, I was getting some odd errors on my blog entry pages. I recalled reading something about the .pyc files causing some weird errors, and, sure enough, removing them fixed it.

Below is the command that will easily remove all .pyc files starting in the directory you are currently in.

find . -name '*.pyc' -print0| xargs -0 rm

I've added it to my .bash_profile file as an alias, so that I can just run "rmpyc" and it will remove them from the directory I'm currently in (and all directories below).

Another thing I did in preparing for this move was to set up my development with git. This is also to prepare for a move we are making at Coptix over to git for version control.

I look forward to digging deeper into 1.0. I also can't wait to see video from DjangoCon.

Out with the old

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Well, this redesign has been brewing since the first of the year. I've been wanting to incorporate the "life stream" or "jellyroll" that I've been seeing so much of recently. Also, I wanted to remove the freelancer feel and turn it back to a more personal site.

I've used Blueprint again. I also had a chance to work with some APIs, which is always a treat, this time to pull in my Twitter posts. I'm sure there are still some rough edges. But, here it is.

Going to Coptix

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Wow. This year started off with a bang. Around the first of January I was contacted by Josiah Roe to find out if I would be interested in a job with Coptix Inc. in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I have accepted a position as a web developer with Coptix and will start to work with them on February 18.

So, this is going to be the start of quite a few big changes for me and my family. I plan on keeping shelbybark.com as my freelance/personal site, but I will be enthusiastically referring all major interest on up to Coptix.

I will be working in Tuscaloosa until we can sell our house and move to Chattanooga. So, if any of you out there know of anyone looking for a house in the Tuscaloosa area, let me know.

It's going to be a new adventure for us. My wife, Heather, has moved a few times before, but this will be my first time to move away from my extended family and hometown. We have spent quite a few vacations in Chattanooga over the last few years, and we love the area, so, we are looking forward to settling in there.

I can't promise that this will lead to more blogging on my part. However, you never know... I'll probably continue to tinker with shelbybark.com. I can never leave these things alone...

Thanks to everyone who's prayed and given advice over this decision. We're looking forward to the road ahead.

Feed me

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

I've had discussions recently about RSS feeds with a couple different people, and the thing I've realized is how useful they are, but, at the same time, how neglected they seem to be, at least by the masses. I think this will change with Outlook starting to include an RSS reader in Outlook 2007. So, I wanted to take the time to introduce RSS feeds to those readers who have never used them before.

As most of my readers know by now, I don't use very many Microsoft products. So, I won't be using the RSS reader in Outlook 2007. There are two readers I use, the Mac app NetNewsWire Lite and the online service Bloglines. I prefer NetNewsWire. Bloglines, is nice when I happen to be away from my laptop. The Bloglines site downsizes nicely to my Treo's browser. So, I can check my feeds even from my phone.

The beauty of an RSS feed reader is that you can check one spot for recent blog posts or news items or tour updates or new photos or, well you get the idea. To be honest I did not start using an RSS reader until I visited Lawrence and saw a few of the guys there using NetNewsWire. However, it really does save me a ton of time. I don't have to surf around to all of the sites I frequent just to see if there are any new posts. And, for checking bloggers who have a similar track record that I do for posting, that can save a lot of unnecessary site visits. I have around 55 feeds that I keep tabs on in NetNewsWire and this really does save me a bunch of time.

The other thing I want to push is having multiple RSS feeds per site. I currently have RSS feeds for blog posts, ma.gnolia mutterings, and recent comments on the site. I hope to soon have my recent media compiled into one feed, but that's going to take some python tricks that I haven't quite learned yet (though it's probably about as neat of a trick as tying my own shoe). Django has been really nice for setting up the regular RSS feeds for the different areas. I've even considered adding a feed for my recent iTunes tracks, but I figured that would just be excessive.

Anyway, if any of you have preferred readers, I'd love to hear about them. And if you've never used one, I recommend looking into it. It really has helped me.

It's Alive...

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

After many, many, many hours. I have finally arrived at a point where I think this thing is ready to go. The CMS has been completely overhauled to use Django instead of MovableType. I am strongly considering using Django for all future web development for Shelbybark Design.

I still have a few things left to clean up. For instance, I don't yet have a "contact us" form set up. And that's something I'm going to want to do very soon.

I am really getting into Django. I can't say that it's been the easiest to pick up. I'm a web designer, I'm not a programmer. So there have been many late nights, banging my head against the wall, trying to figure out how to get things working the way I know that they should.

So, please, look around, I'm sure you will find a few rough edges. Hopefully, I'll get those polished up nicely before long.

Update

It was late when I wrote this, so I forgot something very important. I especially want to thank Jeff Croft for releasing source code to lost-theories.com. This was very helpful for the development of this site. Also, special thanks to The Falling Bullets website for releasing their source code. This helped immensely on getting my Ma.gnolia feed working. And, based on some things they were doing, I was able to figure out to get my Flickr "date taken" to import to the database correctly.

Thanks, y'all.