Rhonabwy

There’s a thread kicking around today on the Django-user’s mailing list entitled Why I’m giving up on Django. It’s a good thread, with the expected sort of comments on it. I particularly liked Adrian’s immediate response - “Thanks, sorry it didn’t work for you.” Very professional.

The reason I mention the post is that the whole concept seemed to boil down to really just one point: “I wanted to use an opinionated framework, but it didn’t have the same opinions I did”. The author didn’t call suck, flames, or anything - just that it didn’t match him.

To a great extent, I think that when you decide to move into a Framework, YOU had better be willing to bend to it. That is, in fact, the whole reason for the framework - especially the ones that favor convention over configuration (Django, Rails, etc). But really, it’s any framework. I’ve seen the same thing with the Cocoa Objective-C API’s in Apple’s AppKit. You move with the waves, and you get some awesome surfing down. You move against them - and you’ll be swimming pretty darn hard.

I personally like the Django framework, even though there’s some places where I’d like to see things done differently. For the most part (the 95th percentile) it does or easily enables everything I need it to do. I also made a very specific effort when I learned the system to transform my habits into “their way of doing things”. It actually reminds me of learning math in elementary school - sure, there’s lots of ways to do the long division, but if you don’t do it the teacher’s way, you’re probably not going to get credit for it…

Making the framework easy to learn is really the key in my mind. Django does a decent job, Rails does (now) a wonderful job (mostly courtesy of the Pragmatic author’s) - other frameworks have better and worse ways of learning (I recommend Hillegass’ book for learning Cocoa, for example). But regardless of how easy or hard it is to learn, you should expect to learn, to bend, and to work with the framework.

I’m back from getting my warm blue water fix! Pictures forthcoming - we visited the Kenedy Space Center, Walt Disney World, the Bahama’s, Cozumel, and Costa Maya. Wow - nice. I’m really glad to be back in Seattle though - the cooler weather is really refreshing, although we had beautiful weather through-out our trip.

I’ve worked through the paper mail, any outstanding bills, etc. but have 1368 email messages to pour through as yet. I think it’ll be a bit before I’m caught back up.

Heh - and I still haven’t looked to see what Apple announced two weeks back as I was leaving.

It’s my 13th wedding anniversary.

This is the first year in four that we haven’t made a special effort to be far away from any media for the event. It’s been a good day, with some really lovely times and a few excellent events. The media has toned down its general level of sensalizationism, so at least its pretty bareable and ignorable now. Cause damnit, this is OUR day. For today - the rest of the world can just sod off.

I picked up a copy of Make #7 at Queen Anne Ave Books this evening (my local “news stand”) - it has something in there that I’m just going to have to build:

how to make a sterling engine

Oh yeah! I’ve been enthralled with the concept of an external combustion engine for quite some time. I’ve wanted my own sterling engine (like what would I actually DO with it…) for a while now, so here’s my chance!

How much you wanna bet that Google starts actively recruiting in Oregon… Not going for the “folks being laid off, but any sort of restructuring like that will inevitably take a serious toll on morale. Makes a lot of intel employees ripe for the pickin!

Well, for the blog anyway.

Actually, it was sort of spurred, in a strange way, by James recent post of walking through his front door for the first time in 30 days. For some people, that would mean that they’d be undergoing some form of (de)construction, and had been entering their abode through a window, back door, or some other interesting means. But not this time - he’s clearly been a mad-driven travelling road hound.

I read the entry aloud to Karen, and her response was “wow..” One the big events that James attended was Burning Man, something that Karen has been itching to head towards for the past couple of years. Heh, it wasn’t going to happen this year though. Not with the summer visitors and a deadline for the final show of a 2 year long design class looming.

My first reaction to all the experiences that James wrote about was unalloyed envy. Which, I’m quite sure, is completely not what I should be feeling. If that had been me in that situation, I’d be ready to dive under the bed and go completely introvert for nearly a week. Just shove pizza under the door, thank you very much. There is still the information junkie/experiential hedonist in me that is saying “Yeah, but it sounds fun.. doesn’t it sound cool? Think of all those great conversations you could have been having…”.

I’ve been heavily focused on a single project for the past months - well, nearly the past year. It’s the kind of thing that really has required a deep dive to really work it. That in and of itself is pretty darned unusual for me - but I’ve been focused on this critter for quite a while, and while the results aren’t available to see, it has been a very productive time.

The down side is that while I’ve made it to a few conferences (WWDC and OSCON 2006) earlier this summer, I have been living mostly in my head. Karen and I have our wedding anniversary coming up fairly soon, which will include a vacation that I expect will quite fully unplug me and drop me down into the physical again - at least for a few weeks. That upcoming vacation has led to getting some nice clothes for dinners - and in which I was sort of shell shocked (I really dislike shopping for clothes) by finding myself in this completely non-shorts/jeans and t-shirt look for the better part of the afternoon and last Friday evening.

So what do I do when I come home? I read James entry; it catalyzes the “time for a change…” meme that has been lurking around me; I pick the simplist possible thing in the world to change - the look of my blog. Yep, I just grabbed another template out of the pile and slapped it into place. Kind of like changing clothes, only a hell of a lot easier.