Thinkhole Labs

metis# cd /usr/local/django/django_src
metis# svn update
And with those two lines, I somehow broke my Django installation on my Linux box.

Before breaking everything, I had worked through most of the tutorial and was actually starting to get the hang of the framework. Now I’m getting list index out of range errors. Very odd.

I’m so new to both Python and Django that I think my best bet might be to delete everything and start over. It might actually be a good thing to run through the first half of the tutorial a second time.

Some of the Linux geeks at Duke put together what appears to be rather cool IRC bot implementation in Python:

Kibot is a python-based IRC bot written to be cleanly and robustly modular, powerful and flexible. It has a rich permissions framework, and writing modules/commands for it is ridiculously simple.

In the past I’ve looked at python-irclib and wasn’t impressed, mostly due to the lack of real documentation. I’m sure Twisted would be a great way to go, but for someone who is new to Python like me it seems a little… involved.

Perhaps Kibot will be a good intro to IRC programming. Any description that includes the words “ridiculously simple” sounds good to me.

I’ve been reading about Sudoku and it sounds like an interesting puzzle. I’ll let Wikipedia explain how it works:

The aim of the canonical puzzle is to enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called “regions”), starting with various digits given in some cells (the “givens”). Each row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral.

Before this year I had never even heard of Sudoku, now it seems to be everywhere I look… the New York Times, Amazon, and even Freshmeat.

Funny how random things become popular so quickly.

Update: Well, I just completed my first Sudoku. I finished an easy one at Web Sudoku (highly recommended) in exactly 15 minutes. Not a bad little puzzle.

Update 2: Be sure to check out Python Sudoku.

At the risk of repeating everything already posted at the Django Weblog, I think it’s worth noting that Simon Willison has made his Introduction to Django presentaion slides available online (pdf) .

Also, as someone who gives the occasional talk at my local LUG, Simon’s public speaking tips are definitely worth reading. Specifically, his advice to “Show, don’t tell.” (i.e. use demos) is good advice indeed. I’ll try to implement some of his suggestions next time I give a presentation.

Davy Mitchell is asking for feedback on a comp.lang.python podcast demo that he recently created. When I first read his post, I was pretty excited about another Python podcast being added to the mix (Python411 being the other one). But after a quick listen, I discovered it was put together with text-to-speech… ugh!

Perhaps others will disagree, but I think it is absolutely unlistenable. I think I’d rather listen to somone stuttering through lines and popping their P’s on a cheap mic than have to endure a fake female voice saying “aich tee tee pee colon slash slash double you double you double you dot….”

Great idea and interesting hack, but I’d have to give this one a thumbs down.

Update: Davy bought a USB mic and might try doing a real Python podcast. I’d imagine there are quite a few Pythonistas who’d love to listen in.