Thanks for San Francisco!

I was in San Francisco on vacation the first week in June. I had a great, wonderful time, and I owe that to my friends and my mom. They are all wonderful people, and I want to reach out to each of them. So in alphabetical order:

Barbara http://djangrrl.com

I met her not long before pycon 2009 via the Pinax community. She is a very talented developer, Barbara has the 'luxury' of working in the music industry. She's got mad php, mysql, python, and of course, django skills.

For the trip she found us (me, Noah, Zain) tickets to Spamalot, got us (me, Noah, Zain) into the DNALounge for a Zombie Beach party, gave me a walking tour of San Francisco, introduced me to really @#$%ing great vegan food, and took me to Alcatraz. Her knowledge of how to get around San Francisco is unmatched. The last day as we parted ways she tried to get me to go to more places on my own, but I was wiped out from her boundless energy.

Thank you Barbara!

Dave B http://davidbrenneman.com/

Dave is like me, living in both the plone and django communities. He has done some really fascinating work in both areas. He is bright and smart.

I met Dave Friday night for dinner at a really good sushi place whose name I wish I could remember. We challenged the sushi chef to pick what we would eat since he would have to impress us. The result was a number of subtle but delicious selections. Afterwards we went to his place across the Golden Gate park panhandle and I got to meet his lovely wife. They are expecting their first this year!

Thank you Dave!

Dave S. and Cecille P.

A couple of my DC area friends, they both encouraged me to go on a vacation. They've been great to me this past couple of months. I'll always remember their kindness!

Thanks Dave and Cecille!

Daryl http://yacitus.blogspot.com

I met Daryl at pycon 2008. He's a Canadian but don't hold that against him. He works for vmware in Palo Alto. His python and django skills are crazy good.

Daryl was busy the whole time but put a lot of work into finding things for me to see and do around the bay, since most of the time I was solo. He did hang with me for a bit on Wednesday (June 3, 2009) night and we had dinner at Pluto's. That place is like Chipotle on steroids. Next time I hope to visit his house and let his kids hit me with sticks or something else fun.

Thanks Daryl!

Katie http://elephantangelchild.blogspot.com/

My co-worker and our group's technical lead. Multi-talented, besides herding us cats... err... developers... she can code in php, python, draw, and write.

Katie kept the home fires burning at work. Or rather, she kept the fires from raging out of control and consuming the universe.

Thanks Katie!

My Mom

She used to work for a very scary government agency with three letters and retired at the level of 'bigtime boss lady'. Now she does lots of volunteer work, gardening, and many exercise classes.

Mom made sure I got to San Francisco in ways only a parent can. She also encouraged me to take pictures with me in them, and has happily listened to many of my stories about the trip.

Thanks Mom!

Zain
Last but definately not least is Zain. I met Zain at pycon 2009 in the midst of the infamous Django/Pinax fued. Zain is one of the those annoyingly bright young guys with a wonderful personality. Amongst other things he is doing Google Summer of Code for django core, working to augment the Admin UI.

Zed literally hosted me at his house in San Jose. He fed me, clothed me, washed my clothes, and took a day off from work to go cycling with me around Angel Island. He drives through the hills like a maniac too.

I can't thank Zain enough!

Tomorrow I'm boarding a flight to go from Washington, DC to Chicago, IL to experience another Pycon. Pycon is the big Python Conference here in the USA.

You can thank the NASA Science Mission Directorate and Indyne Incorporated for sending me to Pycon 2009. I would like to toss out a hearty thank you to the following people for helping me get to this conference:

• Ruth Netting
  
• Jim Consalvi
  
• Corin Turner
• Kathryn Luke
• Malik Abdul Mahmad
• Candace Solomon
• Meredith Mengel
• Vicky Niblett

You can thank these people in person at Pycon:

• Katie Cunningham
• James Saint-Rossy
• Chris Shenton

I can't wait to meet old friends and make new ones. To again gawk at the feet of Guido van Rossum and other luminaries like a gushing schoolgirl over a boy band (All with the proper decorum of course).

While I'm there I guess I need to sheepishly admit to Bruce Eckels an apology. My idea was off. Lets just say that Pycon needs to keep corporate endorsements in the vendor area. It doesn't need help anywhere else. ;)

I am taking a whopping four tutorials, then attending the full conference, then working hard through four days of sprinting. I had thought of volunteering to help with a session or two but backed off since I am not paying my own way there. Instead I will stay focused on the task at hand, which is learning, networking, and contribution to various projects that NASA SMD is interested in supporting.

Look me up if you are there. I'll be playing with the other Python, Django, Plone, Pinax, and Zope kids.

My conference schedule:
webcal://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/ical/1c68d36a70bd61ea4d0de3a5d5d7e9b8g104/

For those of you who sent me resumes, you are not forgotten! We had hoped to get formal responses to everyone by Pycon but that was not in the cards. Feel free to chat if we bump into each other.

Recap of 2008

• I went to Chicago for the first time. The architecture was beautiful. The local food was quite good, nearly as good as the Neapolitan fare I had in 2007.

• Cycled through New York City and reconnected with old family relations.
  

• Kept up with the martial arts. Competed twice.
  

• Almost up to 5 years without a broken bone!!!
  

• Worked another year with Python and Plone. Started to work professionally with Django.

• Stayed with NASA. Managed to see my team evolve into a group that doesn't make me want to pull out my non-existent hair.

• Launched our big project at work (http://nasascience.nasa.gov)
  

• Got my son into physical fitness again.
  

• Shaved my head.

• Got our finances more in order.

• Helped shepherd my students forward for the most part. I'm so proud of them.
  

• Didn't lose anyone close to me.

Update:

• Worked with Alex Clark to launch Take Back the Tap.

• Helped support Food and Water Watch.

• Lasted another year (4 years) at NASA.

• Had a painful kidney ailment in the spring that was a combination of bruising and dehydration.
  

So what did I do on the website?

I've gotten a lot of emails asking for specifics on what I did with http://nasascience.nasa.gov. I'll try and address this on several different levels. First details about the project and effort:

The project had about 20 people on it, with three of us being full time developer/engineers. The rest were system administrators, graphic designers, content editors, and the odd rotating management. The project took over a year.

The project was created using mostly open source tools. Comparable purchasable tools would have cost $200k-$250K to get started, required as much per year in licensing costs, and would have required just as much work. Several large firms and agencies use the same toolset that we do for this precise reason, with examples being Novell, Lufthansa, and the CIA (yes, the CIA can't afford overpriced tools).

My Role
Though the project officially started in Spring 2007, my effort started in Fall 2006. That was when I did a product comparison (with presentation) between a number of purchasable (COTS) and open source (OS) remedies to the issue of content management. I had been an advocate of OS efforts for some time. Apparently I did a good job so for the NASA Science project, they choose one of my OS suggestions.

A quick list of things I did once the project began includes:

• Created over a hundred Plone views from the data. If you know how to view the source HTML, you can see thats my work. The CSS/Javascript/images were done by others. Because of code reuse techniques the amount of code generated is actually quite small.
  
• Added and modified lots of different content types and their relations with other content types. Content types include things like Missions, Programs, Big Questions, and areas of the site you can't see yet. ;)
  
• Wrote a script to map out the Zope 2 database architecture when our tool to handle that broke down. The database architecture is complex, arguably too complex and now that we are done with launch, we will be simplifying it (we hope).
  
• Modified an existing third party Plone package to support handling of incoming RSS feeds that followed no standard but their own.
• Created most of the Zope 3 feedback forms and their handlers on the site. I have to admit I really don't like the form api we used as the results are ugly and the library itself is annoying. You can read my thoughts on that subject here (warning - rather technical).
  
• Added and modified existing relationships between content areas.
  
• Created a Zope 3 captcha engine that eventually got shelved.
  
• Ensured that HTML rendered is section 508 compliant and meets international usability requirements. Which means the visually disabled can use it without issue. I wasn't the 508 overseer, and the one we had sucked. But I certainly adhered to the protocols.
  

There is much other stuff that I did that I'll try to address in future blog posts. If you want the technicalese, you can visit my technical blog at http://pydanny.blogspot.com/.

Some of the open source tools we used include:

• Python Programming Language
  
• Apache Http Server
  
• Plone Content Management System
  
• Zope 2 Application Server
  
• Linux Operating System

Note the lack of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, and Java? Thats because we believe in true open source and choosing the best tools.

Open source makes the world better

http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay

The OLPC in the wild. Making children in poverty better and brighter. The mix of Linux, Python, and other custom bits make the OLPC a real winner.

Yes the OLPC isn't just cheap, it does some incredible things. For example, get 10 OLPCs together and they combine their network power to increase their broadcasting range. These little machines do tons of awesome things, and are technological masterpieces.

Work things

I got asked to send out a request to go to Pycon in Chicago next month. Later on I found the reason why. Lets just say they want me there for a long time. ;)

Pycon is the big Python conference that is held every year. Google and Microsoft are big commercial sponsors. There are chances to learn awesome stuff and do tons of good networking.