Thursday February 26 I attended a Python Users meeting in Arnhem. Just like a couple of months ago in Amsterdam we had a nice turnout and some interesting topics on the agenda.
First there was Christo Butcher telling us something about his open source speech recognition framework Dragonfly. He astounded us all by stating that he actually does all of his Python programming by speech, something I still find hard to visualize. Hopefully he will be able to give a short demo at a future meet-up.
Then it was my turn to tell something about my latest endeavor for my business software company SmartPR: Python web app deployment. A month or so ago I sent out an e-mail to the python-nl mailing list asking for some advice. Eventually I ended up going the zc.buildout route, which is a very elegant system that utilizes setuptools to streamline, automate and isolate deployments. zc.buildout’s biggest problem is its somewhat arcane nature, having its roots in the not-so-newcomer-friendly Zope world. The goal I had with my speech was to take away some of the fear that many people (including myself) have when considering the package. As there is not much introductory documentation available on the subject, it can be hard to find assurance that zc.buildout is the right tool for your job. After I had shared my experiences with the group we had a nice little discussion which ended in the conclusion that zc.buildout is a terrific tool that is in desperate need of some decent documentation. Some people expressed their willingness to do something about this problem, which is an initiative I will support as soon as it comes. In the meantime I intend to report some of my work with zc.buildout here on this blog, since there is really just a handful of tutorial-style articles available online. For now I will just point to the buildout configuration that I currently use for deploying SmartPR. That will probably already be a very useful resource for the truly interested.
Before I end this post, let me thank Erwin Elling and Salmon Tetelepta at Eight Media and David Hund at Valued Standards for hosting us in their great office building. And of course Floris van Manen for giving me a ride back home . As always Reinout van Rees put a nice summary of the night on his blog. The next PUN meet-up will be on May 28 at Seek You Too in Veenendaal. See you guys there!
UPDATE: Erwin posted a brief review on the Eight Media blog, including a gorgeous photo of my scribbly presentation sketches.
As far as marketing is concerned, authenticity is the new black. But what exactly is authenticity? Why are some people perceived as authentic, while others aren’t? Many of us would answer these questions with variations on “being true to oneself” or “not pretending to be someone else”. Seth Godin takes an interesting and slightly different approach:
Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not “being who you are”.
That’s because ‘being’ is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. Internal vision is always blurry. Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.
Ever since I made the switch from Windows to Linux I’ve been a big fan of the Debian project, both for desktop and server usage. Its preference of quality releases over quick releases suits the job of building an operating system (plus it fits my character ). Its strict policy is a blessing in disguise and makes you feel in control of your own system. If you are anal like me and you cannot stand not being able to find out what any particular file is doing on your system, why it got there or who put it there, Debian GNU/Linux is going to be your friend.
The headline? ‘Google to track mobile users‘. Big brother anxiety is what has stopped ‘mobile social networking’ success. Well sorry, privacy is dead, in the same way that newspapers are dying - and for similar reasons. For those who fail to understand why Stephen Fry should have gained a following of over 100,000 on Twitter, here is the news. Personal publicity and personal engagement lets you talk, lets you share ideas, makes you friends, and lets you influence people. Always been that way, just now the tools are different - radically so - it’s people power - always scary for the status quo.
Version 2 of PromoBee, my company’s press relation management tool is coming to a computer screen near you soon. We are very excited about the improved concept, which will enable any business to manage, mail and monitor its press relations quickly and easily. More details to come…
But we are not there yet. My plans for the upcoming weeks can be compressed into one single word: work.
Django, the Python web framework for perfectionists with deadlines, finally released its 1.0 yesterday. This is great news for several reasons. First of all, well, it was about time after about three years. Secondly, for everyone who ever made the naive mistake of building on trunk, the greatness of this news is obvious. (Hint for everyone else: try checking out the trunk, working with it for a couple of months and then upgrading it. All human emotions guaranteed!)
Thursday February 26 I attended a Python Users meeting in Arnhem. Just like a couple of months ago in Amsterdam we had a nice turnout and some interesting topics on the agenda.
. As always Reinout van Rees put a nice summary of the night on his blog. The next PUN meet-up will be on May 28 at Seek You Too in Veenendaal. See you guys there!
