Brnzwngs - Tech blog

Technology has gotten the best of me, yet again. I’m returning to my intense running patterns on Nike+, assuming I can get everything to work. The Nike+ community concept has been around for a while now and I have been a member for about a year. It just provides a nice way to map out your speed, distance, and types of runs over the course of the month and week.

Winter track just started up and I’ve recovered from my illness and my week off from cross country is winding down. I’ll be whipping out the sensor very soon, once I can calibrate it again. I’m a mid-distance runner with a bad habit to run distance. I’m going to start racking up the miles and I’ll have the graphs to prove it. Hopefully my speed hasn’t gone since last year.

In preparation, I bought a new pair of training shoes. They are the bright macaroni Pearl Izumi Shines. I’ve never run in Pearl Izumi shoes, but they sound like they’re suitable for me. I also purchased the Marware Sensor+ pouch so I can use the Nike+ sensor without Nike shoes. I’ve gotten sick of Nike shoes, but I still race in them faithfully. Oh and I also will most likely be receiving a Nike Amp+ running band to go along with my kit for Christmas. Now I don’t have to fumble with my iPod and get to have a sweet band around my wrist.

I contemplated getting a GPS watch like the Garmin Forerunner 305, but I’m not willing to put $200 down right now. I’ll wait till closer to the summer and go crazy during the XC preseason.

That’s about it. I’m just excited to get running again. Roads, here I come!

Been looking to learn something new about computer such as a new programming language? Just don’t know where to start? Well, my recommendation is that you start by looking for free ebooks online. There are thousands of them available, and there’s nothing better than a free resource.

Take a visit to Free Tech Books and search for your topic of interest. They have thousands of books on tons of beginning and advanced topics involving computer science and programming languages. They’re divided by subject and title for your ease.

I’ve been learning a lot about Python using these books. If you’re interested in any topic, you’re almost guaranteed to find it immediately. This isn’t an advertisement or anything, I’m just trying to help out others who find it difficult to find a good place to get started.

Be sure to read the licensing information for each book before you download it or print it! Just a recommendation.

With Apple’s recent release of Leopard comes people attempting to mod the hell out of their desktop. The latest trend that has made its way onto social news sites like Digg and Reddit is changing your Leopard Dock. While I did tinker with various new themes, I found myself going back to the default because it just matches everything. For those of you who want to know, here are the instructions!

First off, you need to find a dock you want to have. Go and check out Leopard Docks to download one. Unzip all the images and follow these steps:

• Go to Macintosh HD/System/Library/Core Services/ in Finder
• Right click on the Dock application and select “Show Package Contents”
• Go to /Contents/Resources/
• Backup the files you are about to change (all the scurve-*.png files)
• Replace those files with your new ones
• You’ll probably have to type your password in
• Open Terminal and enter “killall Dock” no quotes
• Enjoy!

Customize your dock to your heart’s content! I quite like the Barber and Cheese docks. Random, but unique!

Now that I’ve finished the development of nwade.com, I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. I’ll still maintain the site, but I want to start a major project fairly soon. In all honesty, I still don’t know a ton about Django. The official book will be released in a couple of weeks, so I’ll read that too.

So anyways, my newest idea involves some lyric fetching. The major part of the site isn’t the lyrics section, so I don’t want to have my own database that is editable to outside sources, but I want to be able to control what’s added. In order to do so, I’ve begun looking towards various web APIs. With my luck, I can’t find a good one.

Why are there no web APIs for lyrics? The closest I’ve found to getting lyrics is the LyricWiki site. Their API isn’t very advanced right now, but maybe it’ll do. Is there nothing better on the web? For other artist-based pieces of information, I can used the Musicbrainz API.

A great site for API information is Programmable Web. It’s my main source of information when I’m looking at possible project ideas.

The United States Postal Service decided to get its act together and deliver my Leopard DVD to my house today. Thank you! With little school work to do, I set off on my installation adventures. Of course, with my luck, I ran into the blue screen problem after installation. After a brief panic, I regained my composure, booted into single user mode, and wrecked havoc in Terminal. It was up and running in no time.

So. Here are my first impressions. I like it. It isn’t as big of a change as I thought it would be, but it didn’t make things worse. Vista took XP’s suckiness to a whole new level while Leopard makes small steps beyond Tiger. When will Apple release 11.0 of their operating system? I don’t know, but I’ll be there to get it. They didn’t let me down.

Now, most of the updates in the new OS were eye candy related. Stacks in the Dock are nice, but I’m not sure how much I’ll use them. Spaces is also nice, those I may use. Time Machine I can’t use unless I’m perpetually hooked up to an external hard drive, so that isn’t much good. I’ll end up doing that anyways, but it’s annoying.

Another panic attack was induced when everything was taking hours to load. This was quickly attributed to Spotlight’s indexing of my entire laptop. No problems now. If you ask me, Leopard is actually faster than Tiger. I’ve noticed dramatic speed increases with Spotlight and Mail especially. Now I wish that Comcast wouldn’t be so crappy with my internet connection…

So in the end, Leopard is looking A-OK. Nothing huge to see here, but it’s certainly worth the upgrade. Check out my Flickr photos to see more screen shots!

Dear Media Temple,

Don’t you think that it’s about time to release the beta program for the Django Containers? I don’t mean to rush you, but I’m getting tired of relentlessly updating the forums and compulsively checking my inbox for that sole email.

I know that you guys are probably doing all that you can to put it in perfect condition, but beta is beta. I’m willing to help you work out the kinks. I see my site all ready on my desktop. I’m just itching to release it.

So let’s get the ball rolling!

No hard feelings,
Nick Wade.

Recently, I’ve been uploading a lot of Django related photos to Flickr. They help me keep track of development and help others see what I’m doing. One thing that disturbed me was the absence of a proper Django group! Every great piece of software deserves its own Flickr group. I mean seriously, Rails has one!

So I took matters into my own hands and created an official unofficial Django Framework group. Check it out here, at the Django Framework Flickr Group. I’m currently the only member, but hopefully that will change soon enough! Come on fellow Django-ers, upload, upload, upload!

I bit the curb today and purchased my copy of Apple’s newest operating system: OS X Leopard. It has been out for two days and the reviews have been rather upbeat so far. With Vista’s recent downfall, Apple has a huge chance to make up some ground on Microsoft in the computer industry. More people than ever are switching over to Macintosh computers. I switched about a year and a half ago, and haven’t looked back since!

I’m looking forward to updating my current Tiger installations on my Macbook Pro and iMac. I probably won’t have too much use for some of the new features, but there is something about the novelty of having a new shiny operating system. There are plenty of new features. Here are some of the ones that I’m excited about:

Great new features

• Stacks - a new way to unclutter
• 3D Dock - I love eye candy
• Cover Flow - now in finder
• Network Spotlight - stalking made easier
• Quick Look - see previews without opening
• iChat Backgrounds - this is going to be fun
• Objective C - Python, here I come
• Core Animation - lots of fun to be had
• Airport - new menus, finally
• Terminal tabs - no more multiple Terminal windows
• Ruby on Rails - now installed. Not that I use it.

I’ll be writing my little review sometime this week. It’ll take two days to arrive because I’m too lazy to go to an actual store. Expect a full blown commentary!

Yep, I’m still going strong with the Django Framework. Well, when I have time in life, of course. I’m still waiting for Media Temple to release their Django Container though. I’m essentially finished with nwade.com until them. I’ll just need to fill in the database when I get it up and running with posts, projects, photos, etc.

So I’ve already begun thinking about my next endeavors. In order to continue developing my skills as a web developer and programmer, I need to build experience and more sites. I’ve been thinking about what I want to create next, and have come up with some ideas. None of them are ground breaking, but they’ll get me the experience needed for the future.

Some possible ideas include:

Band Feed - A website laid out similar to a lyrics site. Every artist has a little page. On each page, it auto-updates from the artist’s website, last.fm page, Yahoo upcoming page, lyrics sites, etc. Every page has an RSS Feed for you to follow from outside. It’ll be a one stop place for artist information!

Poll Creator - A site that allows you to create your own HTML polls, customize the hell out of them, have them hosted, and give you the code to use. Nothing amazing, but it’s useful for everyone!

Those are all my ideas for now, but if I come up with more, I’ll keep writing! Please don’t steal them!

Ah and the Django marathon continues! I’ve gone through my third redesign of my future nwade.com site. I did some mega template modding to actually make the site look fairly decent! I find it quite aesthetically pleasing now. What do you think? I’m still learning Django each day, so that’s always good. I bet that I’m not using the most efficient methods in views and urls, but things like that will come with time.

Today, I felt ambitious and created a lifestream using django-lifestream. A lifestream, according to the lifestream blog, is:

What is a Lifestream? In it’s simplest form it’s a chronological aggregated view of your life activities both online and offline. It is only limited by the content and sources that you use to define it.

So what does this mean? It means that I took in a bunch of RSS feeds and put them into one place. It isn’t all that useful, but it’s fun to get working and to have. It’ll be up and running on nwade.com in the very near future. I will also be writing a tutorial on how to setup your own using the Django Framework and django-lifestream. Enjoy!

You can check out some photos of the lifestream in my Django Flickr section.