All set to go to Portland, Oregon!

I'm off to the Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland, Oregon for DjangoCon. I'll be presenting a tutorial with James Tauber and participating in two panels. This sort of event is always a lot of work, study, and networking. I won't have much time to go sightseeing because this is a working trip, but I'm sure to squeeze in a little bit.

Portland is a very green city, has great food, and is famous for cycling. I'm sure I can find something to do!

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in me getting there or is holding down the fort back home. The quick list would be in alphabetical order:

• Chris Adams
• Corin Turner
• Dave Sanchez
• Jim Consalvi
  
• Katie Cunningham
• Katie Wilcox
  
• Mom
• Robert Lofthouse
• Ron Boykin
• Ruth Netting

Thanks everyone!

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.

Quick update

For those who care, here is what is in the Danny news:

• Bought the kid a nice bike as an early birthday present. Money came from his grandparents and us for the bike, and its much better than what I have. Now he easily outpaces me. I am very jealous!
• Jen is off to Calgary over Halloween.
• Saturday I compete in forms for the first time. I'll be doing Koryo, and if I can land the side kicks then I'm certain to win.
• Shaved my head. So far at work for 90 minutes no one has noticed.

End of the conference

Today is Wednesday. The last day of the conference ended for me at about 4:30 pm on Sunday. I spent a week of training, networking, presenting, and coding with a great group of very smart people. I also got to eat three times in Ethiopian fare, which is nice after a 14 year break from that notable cuisine.

Doing this sort of thing in your own town is interesting. Except for one night with insomnia, I got enough sleep. On the other hand, the sense of excitement you get by going far away was missing. On the plus side, I managed to get some gym time in. On the other hand, home things were a constant distraction.

Anyway, here is to hoping for the next conference being in a fun country far away!

Nixed Technorati link off this blog

Why?

I added Technorati back in October 2007 because someone had the bright idea of connecting all Plone Conference 2007 with Technorati links. Seemed like a great idea! Since we already had a flickr tag for the event, why not Technorati?

Well, its been rather pointless.

If I search in Technorati for ploneconf2007 I get one post by the excellent Lennert Regebro. Where are the other posts? Where are my blog posts listed?

Other people question Technorati's design for this and similiar issues. Having done some work with social bookmarking recently for NASA, I can say that tying your blog to Technorati is a pain unless you use their special bloated size in-line HTML scripts.

So why waste my screen real estate on a system that doesn't care about me? At least with the google ads I can, in theory, make money. Not that it has happened yet...

Coming up on my week off!

Training this week has been interesting. I know about 80% of the material

What sucks of course is a last minute work problem that is about 50-75% my own fault which might force me to work over this weekend.

Anyway, the fatigue issue is cured. More body minerals like sodium, calcium, and potassium have been helping. So has this week where I've not been working out so much, about 25% of normal. My body feels rather recovered now.

I cook for a gathering tomorrow night at a friend's house. I'm thinking fried rice with grilled chinese sausage. We'll see.

Monday I lead my first bike ride! I'm going from my gym to the Smithsonian metro. Its going to be a small group, but future rides will be bigger since they'll be scheduled for the weekend.

July should be fun

I love summer. Nothing like cycling next to a river across DC for miles to and from work to make you happy. Each day is different. Just last week during a rain shower I saw a rainbow there that was unlike anything I've ever seen.

So July should be fun.

I love Independence Day. Fireworks, grilling, and flags. Whats not to love?

From the 14th to the 18th I've be in NASA funded training learning stuff I want to learn in order to help support NASA more. How fun is that?

From the 21st to the 25th I'll be on vacation. Nothing serious planned, just being at home with my son while the wife is away. We'll cycle, eat junk food, hit the museums, and goof off like only two guys can do. Might see my mom as well, if not my dad.

Good times.

Phoenix is down safely!

Don't forget, I work for the people who made this happen!

http://nasascience.nasa.gov/missions/phoenix
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080525m.html

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.

321 LiftOff!!!

http://nasascience.nasa.gov/

Over a year of work by yours truly and other people to boot. And its live! Live I say!

First side consulting project hits the world!

http://tbtt.fwwatch.org

I didn't work on this as much as I would have liked, since February was really busy at work. Nevertheless, I did play a part, and it got my CSS skills back from the side of the pit and into active practice.

Thank Alex!

Pycon/Chicago ho!

All things are prepaid or reserved now. I have to pack and make sure I've got my shifts at the gym covered. And maybe ask people for advice on what to do with my little bit of free time there.

I'm wondering if my hotel, the DoubleTree near O'Hare airport has a laundry facility. That would make life so very much easier.

Pycon

• Got my plane tickets purchased.

• Hotel reservations complete. I'll be at a DoubleTree Inn. I wonder if they have laundry I can use?

• Conference registration delayed. Can't pay cause no option to pay is listed! Submitted a ticket but have yet to receive a response!

Pycon

I'm going to Pycon 2008! Hooray! Chicago here I come!

More as things develop.

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.