Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

📩 Email, Calendars, and the Chaos of Modern Workflows

I was feeling overloaded with emails this week, and then I remembered that my out-of-office auto-responder told people they should contact me after the first of the year if they needed me to reply.

Thankfully, I could select and archive all of my 2024 emails with this rule label:inbox after:2023/12/31 before:2025/01/01, which reconciled my old emails.

Calendars and shared Documents

With each Google organization, I’m a member with another Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Google Contacts to manage. That document someone wants feedback on sometimes feels like spinning a wheel, and I need to guess which inbox and account the message might land in.

The best solution that I have found for juggling meeting invites is Reclaim, which is terrific for merging multiple calendars into one calendar so I can at least keep on top of meeting invites and scheduling. Dropbox recently bought them, but I’m hoping that Dropbox will leave them alone.

Email and calendars have become more challenging since I switched to a Mac Studio at the office. While we were returning to work during a blizzard last week, I realized that my personal Mac Mini in my home office had no concept of my work calendar or the 4 or 7 Vivaldi profiles with syncing that I use to jump between orgs all day.

With 1Password, this is a straightforward process to set up and authorize, but it still takes time.

Tonight, I’m pretty sure I even locked myself out of one service because it’s probably not a typical usage pattern to jump between three Macs over two locations with a half dozen profiles to juggle.

Calendar Agent

Over the Thanksgiving break, I wrote my first Calendar Agent, who can read and write to my work calendar. It’s not fully baked yet, but it works well enough to tell me about my upcoming meetings and to create a meeting for me. Sometimes.

The biggest downside to using my Calendar Agent is that I have to run it from my terminal, which isn’t always the most convenient place.

Side note: I might rewrite my agent using PydanticAI as an excuse to learn about the Python agent framework, streamline tool-calling, and play with more local agents using Ollama.

The better email solution

The better email solution was a Django email app called Concorde, one of Adam Fast’s creations. It was Django querysets for managing email rules, which I modified and ran over the years. It quickly created better rules than Gmail supported, like deleting old messages in specific folders after x-days. When I kept my fork running and updated, the tool was invaluable. When I kept my Concorde up and running, my email life was healthier than when I was slower to fix it after an upgrade.

Conclusion

I’m annoyed that the best solutions for these problems are to either pay a company to make a Google Suite usable or you must be a developer to build tools to manage it all.

This stuff sucks.

Wednesday January 15, 2025
Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

django-templated-email-md notes aka if you want to format emails with Markdown, use it
I launched Django News Jobs two DjangoCon USs ago, and I somehow put off deploying emails until this week. So, every day or two, I check my Review Jobs queue to see if there’s anything new to approve or reject.

✅ Sending emails with Django is straightforward and not very painful.

🤔 Working with most email providers and troubleshooting issues is painful.

🤔 Starting with a blank page and styling emails is painful.

I tried a few third-party apps that I fought with before landing on Jack Linke’s django-templated-email-md (DTEM), which just worked. DTEM doesn’t re-invent the wheel, but it does let me write my email messages with Markdown, which turns out to be all I need.

To add email support, I followed the Usage Guide and then I added one send email function per email that I wanted to send. I’ll eventually refactor this, but it was good enough to get started.

jobs/models.py

For the curious, the code looks like:
```
# jobs/models.py

# a bunch of imports ... 

from templated_email import send_templated_mail

...

class Job(models.Model):	
    ...

    def send_job_new_email(self):
        send_templated_mail(
            template_name="job_new",
            from_email=settings.DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL,
            recipient_list=settings.ADMINS,
            context={
                "job": self,
            },
        )
```
send_templated_mail does the actual sending, and template_name will look for a template file called job_new.md, which will contain our Markdown message.

You can put anything you want in context, but I will include the job so we can include as many details from our job submission as possible.

To send a Job, I can call job.send_job_new_email() via a signal, cron job, or after someone submits a Job for approval.

templates/emails/job_new.md

My emails contain both a “subject” and “content” block, and DTEM figures out the rest for me.
```


{% block subject %}[{{ site_name }}] New Job Posting: {{ job.title }} at {{ job.employer_name }}{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
# New Job Listing Posted

A new job has been posted on the website:

- **Title:** {{ job.title }}
- **Company:** {{ job.employer_name }}
- **Location:** {{ job.location }}
- **Remote:** {{ job.get_remote_display }}

You can view the full job listing here: <a href="{{ job.get_absolute_url_with_domain }}">{{ job.get_absolute_url_with_domain }}</a>
{% endblock content %}
```
My get_absolute_url_with_domain calls in my templates are my workaround for Django’s existential crisis of not making it easy to include the domain name in my urls.

Bonus: Django-Q2

I paired DTEM with Django-Q2, my favorite Django task queue. It can work with just the Django ORM, which is good enough for projects like Django News Jobs, which are relatively low traffic but spiky traffic.

If my email-sending provider times out or I have an issue, like my credit card expiring, I never want a user to see it. So, I use a task queue to handle all potentially blocking processes, like sending emails.

Django-Q2 is painless to configure. Using it involves importing async_task and modifying our send_templated_mail method to be an argument to the async_task method.
```
# jobs/models.py

# a bunch of imports ... 

from django_q.tasks import async_task
from templated_email import send_templated_mail

...

class Job(models.Model):	
    ...

    def send_job_new_email(self):
        async_task(
            send_templated_mail,
            template_name="job_new",
            from_email=settings.DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL,
            recipient_list=settings.ADMINS,
            context={
                "job": self,
            },
        )
```
If a Job was sent successfully, I can now check the Django Admin to see if there were any failures.

Forward Email

Now that we have an email confirmed to send, my go-to provider for side projects is Forward Email. They allow outbound SMTP and even support webhooks, which I might write about some other time.

I like them over Mailchimp, Sendmail, and Gmail because they are cheap ($3 a month) and let me have unlimited domains and aliases. I have used them for a dozen side projects for several years now, and they just work. I gave up on Sendmail because I spent more time fighting with them to not turn off my account because the volume was too low. It’s worth $36 a year to have to fight this fight again.

Forward Email’s products and services are fully open-source if you care about such things.
Saturday January 11, 2025
Django
,
Python

🤔 Rethinking Django's Command-Line Tool: Why We Should Rename `django-admin`

Django has been a key tool for Python web developers for many years. But as new frameworks like FastAPI become prevalent, it’s important to ensure Django stays easy for new and experienced developers. Recently, a discussion thread received over 60 comments about changing Django’s main command from django-admin to something else, like django. The thread also explored other django-cmd possibilities, showcasing many ideas. While the conversation was broad, I want to focus on why renaming django-admin is a good idea.

Why Rename django-admin?

Keep It Simple and Pythonic

When I chaired DjangoCon US, a common question I asked attendees during our opening session was whether they learned Django first or Python first. It surprised me to see the majority of hands raised for “Django first,” which meant that learning Django taught them Python. This showed me how important Django is for teaching Python.

Because Django helps so many people learn Python, it should follow Python’s simple and clean style. Changing django-admin to django makes the command easier to remember and use. New developers won’t have to remember an extra non-off command, making their experience smoother.

Easy Transition for Everyone

One great thing about django-admin is that it has been the same for many years. If we rename it to django, we don’t have to remove django-admin. Instead, we can make django an alias for django-admin. This way, old projects can keep using django-admin, and new projects can use django. This change won’t disrupt anyone’s work.

Real-Life Benefits

This change is prompted by common problems in the Django community. For example, a forum post showed that some developers get confused when trying to run django-admin as a Python module. They saw errors like ModuleNotFound because it wasn’t obvious why python -m django-admin didn’t work.

Improving Compatibility with Tools Like UV

Another issue is that commands like uv tool run django don’t work as expected, but they could. Python’s best practices support using python -m django, which would work smoothly with tools like UV if Django updated its command structure. Instead, the “correct” answer is to run uv tool run --from django django-admin to bootstrap a Django project.

Renaming django-admin to django and aligning with Python’s module execution standards can make integrating Django with such tools just work. This change would help developers avoid errors and follow best practices, enhancing overall compatibility and workflow.

As it exists today, a new user has to learn to use django-admin to start a project, and then later, once they learn from seeing python -m pip used.

Balancing Old and New

Django has been around for a long time and has a strong history. It’s important to keep what makes Django great while also making improvements. Renaming django-admin to django respects Django’s past and helps it move forward. This change keeps Django reliable for long-time users while improving it for new developers.

Is this change zero work?

No, it requires a one-line config change and replacing every instance of django-admin in the docs. Any changes in Django’s docs will inevitably trigger translation changes, but these should be small and tightly scoped. As of today, there are 39-page instances to update.

Conclusion

Renaming django-admin to django improves Django’s developer experience. This new name makes the command more straightforward to remember and follows Python’s best practices. It also makes it simpler for new developers to start with modern tools like UV.

Although this change means updating some configuration files and documentation, the long-term benefits of having a clearer and more Python-like command are much greater than the initial work needed. Keeping django-admin as an alias also ensures that existing projects continue to work without problems.

Join the conversation here and share your ideas on making Django even better for everyone.

PS: This piece was written quickly and proofed even more quickly with Grammarly.

Wednesday January 8, 2025
Django
,
Python

🎊 Year in review (short version) - It was a good year

I love end-of-year posts and reading everyone’s posts. Every year, I draft one, and then I give up on publishing it around March or April after a comically long time. I’m going for shorter than longer this year because a lot happened this year, but most important is how I felt closing 2024 out. Overall, 2024 was a good year despite its many ups and downs.

Family

My kids grew a ton; we ended the year with a three and seven-year-old. Three-year-olds have big personalities, and my first-grader decided he could read anything after the first two weeks of school. We had several family trips, including a big family reunion in Chicago(ish) and a trip with my family to Colorado, so we got to see a lot of both families.

Each of our parents went through one hip surgery, and both are doing well. One of my parents had some more serious medical issues that we are hoping are behind everyone now. We buried two aunts in 2024, which brings me down to just one aunt and uncle (both by marriage).

Because time is so short, my new metric of a good year is measured by the health and well-being of our family and parents.

Writing

I published 230 posts this year on my Micro Blog, which ranged from short thoughts to longer posts. I have always wanted to blog, but 2024 is the year I finally made it a priority and figured out what worked for me to ease the publishing friction. I wrote about everything from Python to Django to UV to what I was watching, and I was surprised to see it inspire other blog posts and podcasts. So writing works, friends. Even if it’s just about what show you watched last night.

I’m also pleased with how my Now turned out. The page shows the latest movies, series, and games we are playing. It’s rapidly becoming a dashboard for me, which might be what my homepage turns into.

Conferences

I attended PyCon US in person for the first time since 2019 and DjangoCon US.

Volunteer/Community Work

2024 was a break for me after a decade of leadership roles in several non-profits. After five years on the Python Software Foundation board, 2024 was my first full year off. I stayed in one workgroup, but I stepped down on everything else.

After serving as President or Vice President, 2024 was my first full year as only a Django Events Foundation of North America (DEFNA) director and a DjangoCon US organizer. I had room to volunteer during DjangoCon US without my time being spoken for. It felt more or less like an emeritus role.

I mentored a small cohort for Djangonaut Space this year for the Django Packages project. It was a rewarding process, and I look forward to helping in a future session now that I know what to do. (If you were in my cohort, I promise to post that follow-up blog post soon.)

I joined the Django Software Foundation (DSF) in December, intending to hire an Executive Director. I was so happy to have my time back in 2024 that I decided to give the DSF one more year to do this on their own, but a small mob of friends asked me to run at DjangoCon US this year. So, I ran for the board, and now I have less than two years to hire someone so I can go back to normal life.

Office Hours

I hosted several Office Hours every month, letting them grow into what they needed to be. Some weeks were more structured than others, but watching this turn into a community on its own with lots of new and regular faces joining and sticking around. It’s fun and something I want to keep doing in 2025.

Side Quests

I enjoyed a ton of side quests this year, which I have already written about over the last year. From the newsletter to a job board to even a project to try to make Django talks more discoverable to a bunch of random AI projects. I had a lot of fun working on side projects and side quests.

Going forward

I left a ton of details out, but that’s alright. After 230 posts last year, it’s hard to summarize the journey, but I plan to keep removing the friction that keeps my drafts above 200 posts, which may never see the light of day.

Wednesday January 1, 2025
Weeknotes
,
Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

🎄 Weeknotes for Week 51: December 15 to December 21
I mostly finished my holiday shopping this week. I picked up a few gifts for my family throughout the year and then randomly stressed out last week, thinking I didn’t have enough. I picked up a few last-minute items, and everyone was in good shape outside of a few gift cards. Now, to wrap everything…

Meta

Lately, my weekly notes have been more like monthly notes. I draft them, forget to finish/publish them, and then the following Sunday morning, I start another week. So here we are again.

Family

December is LEGO advent calendar month in my household. Our recently turned three-year-old participates for the first time with the LEGO® ǀ Disney Advent Calendar 2024, and our seven-year-old picked the LEGO® Star Wars™ Advent Calendar 2024. Even if you are a grownup, these are fun, and you get some cool LEGO mini-figures.

House

If you ask our three-year-old what she wants for Christmas, she defaults to “Rainbow lights” because I didn’t put any lights up outside. Between our Thanksgiving trip to Chicago and two weeks of everyone in the house cycling through the crud, here we are, but at least the Christmas tree got put up.

Community Work

My community cups ran over a bit this week. This is due to my being new to the DSF Board and various end-of-year and before-holidays “things” that pop up.

Community work cut into some of my open-source projects, but I’d like to catch up over the holidays.

I also ended my week with my last Office Hours of 2024. This week was a little too non-profit and community-heavy, so I will balance that better. With the DSF having its own office hours, I want to keep solving those problems in the proper space.

Side projects
- Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #264.
- Django Packages, Django News Jobs, DjangoTV, and Upgrade Django all had minor updates over the last month. I need to do a better job aka write a tool to help me keep up since that’s mostly watching git commits or an activity feed for the more content-heavy websites.
Side Quests

Writing

2024-12-20: 🗓️ December 21, 2024, is Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day

2024-12-19: Default Apps 2024 - Here are my Default Apps 2024, which builds from my Default Apps 2023 post.

2024-12-17: 🤷 Why do the Django and Python communities use so many Google Forms?

2024-12-14: New project to shorten django-admin to django because we are not monsters - I didn’t realize this idea would kick a hornet’s nest, and yet somehow it did.

Entertainment

We picked up Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind and finished it last week. It was fun, and we like these retro games, but it’s not TMNT’s level of replayability. The game has three hours of gameplay. I’m hoping future updates address this.

I read mixed reviews on G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra, but my son was pretty excited about the new Power Rangers game, so we picked it up as a beat ‘em up game we could play over the weekend. It’s buggy in ways that make me wonder how this game has been out for a few months and still has this level of bugs. The controls are bad, but we somehow played through to the last stage before we both shrugged and decided to call it a night. I would give it a two out of five stars type of game. If it weren’t for the nostalgia from my youth, I’d give it one or one and a half stars.

New gear

My NanoKVMs arrived a few weeks ago. I quickly ran out of ports, so I ordered some short HDMI cables, Cat6 cables, more UBC-C cables, and a cheap 8-port switch.

I also lost my Home Assistant machine again, so I swapped out RPis and still ran into issues. As impressive as Home Assistant, running, maintaining, and keeping running is a pain. I have been debating switching to one of their yellow box hardware solutions to support them financially and hoping that I won’t lose my box once a year because it’s so hard to troubleshoot and fix.

I also picked up a 50-foot sewer cam (for looking in walls and vents), an under-desk walking treadmill, and a smart garage door opener to replace our smart Chamberlain garage door opener because they dropped their API.

Next week

This week is Christmas, which means a little bit of travel. Both kids are out of school and preschool, and we both are juggling jobs and deadlines.
Sunday December 22, 2024
Django
,
Python

🗓️ December 21, 2024, is Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day

December 21 is Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day, one of two days every year that allows you to build out your responsibility inventory and decide what you have time for.

Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day is about checking with yourself, and ending the commitments you need to end – maybe by taking a break, or by rotating it on to someone else, or by sunsetting a project.

It’s one of the best ideas in tech because it creates space to de-commit from projects we might not otherwise have time for, but we feel like we’d be letting people down by stepping back from. It’s a wonderful excuse to step back from projects that have been weighing on your mind.

What I’m stepping down from

This year, I decided it was time to step down from the Paramiko, Fabric, and Invoke Triage Teams because I had not been active there in years. I volunteered to help triage issues that were always a bit over my head.

I joined when Jeff Forcier needed some extra hands, and it might have helped get another maintainer signed up who could help out more. At PyCon US this year, I got to hang out with Jeff. I gave him a heads-up that I felt like I was excess baggage to the project because my good intentions were no longer turning into helping out the project. I have much respect for Jeff (#teamjeff) and all three of these projects.

If you have free cycles and can help with these projects, please check out the open issues and see if you can help. I use all three beneficial projects in one way or another every week.

What you can do

Suppose you are signing up for projects but are not fulfilling your commitment. In that case, I encourage you to use Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day as motivation to step down from whatever project or responsibility you may have.

I also want to call out some members of the Python and Django communities. If you are signing up to help with projects you know you won’t have time for, please step back and encourage someone else to help with those projects and roles. If you know that famous face you see plastered on every website and they are friends, please ask them if they know about Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day and share your list. That nudge may help them decide if they are taking on too much.

Friday December 20, 2024
Django
,
Python

🤷 Why do the Django and Python communities use so many Google Forms?

Last week, I wrote but didn’t publish some notes about why the Django and Python communities use so many Google Forms.

The simple answer is that Google Forms are quick and easy to set up, and data can be easily exported via Google Sheets or a CSV file.

Getting data in and out of Django isn’t hard, but why isn’t it as easy as using Google Forms?

I’d love to see a Django version of Google Forms that we can all use.

Has anyone solved this problem?

From a technical perspective, Django ships with a JSONField, which can store any form data we want without having to migrate databases. Turning a flat JSONField into CSV is already a solved problem.

Please note: I am not looking for a Django forms wrapper or your opinions about why Django should use your fancy Django forms tool.

Tuesday December 17, 2024
Django
,
Python

New project to shorten django-admin to django because we are not monsters
One of the biggest mysteries in Django is why I have to run django-admin from my terminal instead of just running django. Confusingly, django-admin has nothing to do with Django’s admin app.

If you have ever wondered why and wanted to type django from your terminal, my new project, django-cli-no-admin solves this problem for you.

I looked at several package names on PyPI, including django-cli, which I liked the best (someone is name squatting this package.)

I gave up and went with django-cli-no-admin for lack of a better name.
```
# new school
uv pip install django-cli-no-admin

# old school
pip install django-cli-no-admin

# to use it...
django --version 
```
This tool aliases Django’s django-admin script does but we shorted the name by 50%:
```
[project.scripts]
django = "django.core.management:execute_from_command_line"
```
Should Django adopt this?

Yes. But we can leave django-admin alone since we have ~20 years of history referencing it.

How long has this lived in your head?

Almost two decades.

Where is the code?

https://github.com/jefftriplett/django-cli-no-admin
Saturday December 14, 2024
Weeknotes
,
Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

📓 Weeknotes for Week 48: November 25 to December 1
Family

We drove up to Chicago to see family for five days. It’s a 7.25-hour drive if not stopping were an option, but we usually have to stop at least two or three times to re-fuel, eat, and have a few bathroom breaks. Both of my kids are pro-travelers. Give them an iPad with an offline cache of their favorite Disney and Netflix movies and series, plus some snacks, and they are good to go for 8 to 16 hours. On our last trip back from Omaha, they complained that it was too short because we didn’t stop on our 2.5-hour drive back.

We take turns driving, and through the magic of tethering, I’m surprised that I can comfortably use my laptop from the car for half the trip.

Seeing family was good. There are five kids, ranging from two to nine, but this year everyone is out of diapers, everyone can communicate their needs, and everyone plays together nicely.

We decided to avoid dinner prep drama for Thanksgiving and go out for Mexican food and margaritas. This was an excellent idea. The staff was super friendly, the food was excellent, the margaritas were the right amount of salty and sweet, and everyone got to pick something they enjoyed. There was no food prep or cleanup stress. Overall, our bill for 10 people plus a very generous tip, even after a service fee, was much less than it costs to try to feed 10 people a traditional spread.

Work

It was a short, two-day workweek for me. I helped a client with an inventory project running a week or two behind on their side. The timing wasn’t great because it all landed on my lap the day before I was heading out of town, and it took a few days to run. I hate k8s even more than before.

My main client is missing a tool or two to nail the pulse. I have thought about this because everything takes less time to complete but more time to work on the problem, so things are stretched out. The holiday break was the mental reset I needed to know how to manage this for the next month until our winter break.

Community Work

I skipped all Office Hours this week, but it was a busier few days for my DSF CoC WG card. We reset/rebooted the WG a month ago and have more members and communication. It’s taking more time to reset and settle into a healthy normal.

Side projects
- Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #260.
- Django News Jobs: More jobs.
- DjangoTV I fixed a bug where non-public videos were being counted in the video counts. I also made several small updates.
Side Quests

Calendar Agent

I spent some free time over the break working on an app that lets ChatGPT control my work calendar. I got the basics up quickly, and my Calendar Agent (Bot?) can look at what’s scheduled on my calendar and create new events for me. The hardest part was navigating Google permissions (I hate them) so that I could access my calendar through Python. Once I got that setup, I used Claude Projects to help me write most of the code.

I ran into an issue with tool calling because I wanted to let the Agent query the time for a day before creating the event. I shifted this logic into my create event function as a fix and realized I was way overthinking it. Now, I have an interesting agent. Still, I have yet to figure out how to run it outside my terminal, which isn’t helpful.

Entertainment

I mostly watched football and basketball this week, but I started a few shows from jefftriplett.com/now/

New gear

Since it was Black Friday, I did some shopping, but not as much as in previous years. I noticed Mastodon vibes are anti-Black Friday, whereas Blue Sky and X are more about saving money and getting a deal. More of my friends shared deals over Slack and Discord than in previous years.

I picked up a five-pack of 32 GB microSD drives for my NanoKVMs, which I hope will be delivered next week. I also bought the family an Air Fryer convection oven combo unit, which may replace our old toaster and be helpful.

Next week

We get to start our LEGO Advent Calendars. I started this tradition with my son when he was two or three. My daughter will be three in a few weeks, so she is now old enough to join in the tradition, too. She requested the Disney Princess calendar, and my son has the Star Wars set. We skipped the traditional set because one can only have so many Santa Clauses.
Sunday December 1, 2024
Weeknotes
,
Django

📓 Weeknotes for Week 47: November 18 to 24
It’s been months since I published my weeknotes even though I have been drafting them. This week is more about getting back into the habit.

Family

We have hosted family quite a bit over the last month. Our parents have also had two hip replacements (one last week and one three months ago) and a minor (it could have been much, much worse) wreck on their way to see us last weekend. Thankfully, everyone is safe and doing well.

My son is four games into recreation league basketball and had a breakout game this weekend. He was due for one and has been practicing a lot. He’s fun to watch, and sometimes it just clicks that he can take the ball away from someone or dribble in and score. He is also the best passer on his team and can dribble well.

The rest of our family is doing well, but we have been unexpectedly car shopping.

Community Work

2025 DSF Board Election Results—I was elected to the Django Software Foundation.

Side projects
- Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #260.
- Django News Jobs: Small incremental updates.
- DjangoTV Small bug fixes and updates. I created a repo for feedback and, eventually, a roadmap.
Side Quests

My friend Adam let me borrow one of his spare NanoKVM units, which has been a lot of fun. I tested it on my older Intel NUC and an iPad Mini, and both just worked, which surprised me. The device can run Tailscale, too, and serves as a remote hardware KVM that can boot or install a remote machine. I ordered a five-pack of NanoKVMs a few weeks ago because I had a few machines that needed to access that were stuck on boot or other “press any key” prompts before the machines would finish booting.

Entertainment

I will defer to my Now page, which tracks the series, movies, and games I’m watching or playing with my kids. It’s primarily data-driven and automated, and I’m happy with it. I plan to add gear and other data types as I go.

New gear

I got a desk treadmill to relieve stress—instead, it stressed me out. I picked up one of these desk treadmills for work, but I haven’t gotten a chance to try it out yet. I found an extra-long power cord for it, which will work with my standing desk. I was surprised by how short the cord came.

Next week

It’s Thanksgiving week, and we are out of town to see family.
Monday November 25, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
LLM

🤖 I released files-to-claude-xml and new development workflows

After months of using and sharing this tool via a private gist, I finally carved out some time to release files-to-claude-xml.

Despite my social media timeline declaring LLMs dead earlier today, I have used Claude Projects and Artifacts.

My workflow is to copy a few files into a Claude Project and then create a new chat thread where Claude will help me write tests or build out a few features.

My files-to-claude-xml script grew out of some research I did where I stumbled on their Essential tips for long context prompts which documents how to get around some file upload limits which encourages uploading one big file using Claude’s XML-like format.

With files-to-claude-xml, I build a list of files that I want to import into a Claude Project. Then, I run it to generate a _claude.xml file, which I drag into Claude. I create a new conversation thread per feature, then copy the finished artifacts out of Claude once my feature or thread is complete.

After the feature is complete, I delete the _claude.xml file from my project and replace it with an updated copy after I re-run files-to-claude-xml.

Features on the go

One bonus of using Claude Projects is that once everything is uploaded, I can use the Claude iOS app as a sort-of notes app and development tool. I can start parallel conversation threads and have it work on new ideas and features. Once I get back to my desktop, I can pull these chat conversations up, and if I like the direction of the feature, I might use them. If not, I have wasted no time or effort on them. This also serves as a nice ToDo list.

New workflows

I am working on side projects further using this methodology. Sometimes, I would like to work on something casually while watching Netflix, but my brain shuts off from coding during the day. Instead of feeling bad that I haven’t added share links to a website or some feature I meant to add last week, I can pair Claude to work on it with me.

I can also get more done with my lunch hours on projects like DjangoTV than I could have otherwise. Overall, I’m happy to have an on-demand assistant to pair with and work on new features and ideas.

It’s also quicker to try out new ideas and projects that I would have needed to make time for.

Alternatives

Simon Willison wrote files-to-prompt, which I think is also worth trying. I contributed to the discussion, feedback, and document structure for the --cxml feature.

I wrote files-to-claude-xml before Simon had cxml support and hoped to not release my version.

However, after trying it out on several projects, my ignore/exclude list grew more significant than the files that I wanted to include in my project to send to Claude. I found it easier to generate a list of files to pass to mine instead of maintaining a long list to exclude.

Saturday October 12, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
UV

⚙️ UV with GitHub Actions to run an RSS to README project
For my personal GitHub profile, I list my activities, affiliations, and the latest updates from some of my projects.

Historically, I have used JasonEtco/rss-to-readme GitHub Action to fetch a few RSS feeds or two and to update my README a few times a day.

Overall, I’m happy with this setup. I used it on the Django News GitHub Organization to pull in newsletter issues, jobs, and the latest videos from our various projects. When I tried to install rss-to-readme in our repo, I was getting node12 errors. (Have I mentioned how much I loathe node/npm?).

Instead of forking rss-to-readme and trying to figure out how to upgrade it, I used this as an excuse to “pair program” with Claude. We quickly built out a prototype using Python and the feedparser library.

I would share the chat log, but it’s mostly me trying out a few different ways to invoke it before I settle on the finished approach. See the source code over on GitHub if you are curious: https://github.com/django-news/.github/blob/main/fetch-rss.py

Once I had a working Python script that could fetch an RSS file and modify the README, I decided to run/deploy it using UV to see how minimal I could build out the GitHub Action.

GitHub Action

To run our fetch-rss.py script, we have four steps:
1. actions/checkout Get a git checkout of our project.
2. astral-sh/setup-uv Setup UV also installs Pythons for us. As a bonus, we enabled UV’s cache support, which will run much faster in the future unless we change something in our fetch-rss.py file.
3. Run uv run fetch-rss.py ... to fetch our RSS feeds and write them to disk. uv run installs any dependencies and caches them before our fetch-rss.py runs.
4. stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action If our README.md file has changed, save our changes and commit them back to git and into our README.
Our schedule.yml GitHub Action workflow runs twice daily or whenever we push a new change to our repo. We also set workflow_dispatch, which gives us a button to run the script manually.
```
# .github/workflows/schedule.yml
name: Update README

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
  schedule:
    # Once a day at 12 AM
    - cron: 0 12 * * *
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  update:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    permissions:
      contents: write

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Install uv
        uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v3
        with:
          enable-cache: true
          cache-dependency-glob: |
                        *.py

      - name: Fetch our Feeds
        run: |
          # Fetch latest Django News Newsletter entries
          uv run fetch-rss.py \
              --section=news \
              --readme-path=profile/README.md \
              https://django-news.com/issues.rss          

      - uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v5
        with:
          commit_message: ":pencil: Updates README"
```
Results

Overall, I’m pleased with this solution. If I wanted to spend more time on it or re-use this workflow, I might turn it into a GitHub Action workflow so that we can call: django-news/rss-to-readme to use in other projects. For now, this is fine.

I’m happy with the astral-sh/setup-uv and uv run steps because they save me from having to set up Python and then install our project dependencies as separate steps.

I normally shy away from running Python workflows like this in GitHub Actions because they involve a lot of slow steps. This entire workflow takes 16 to 20 seconds to run, which feels fast to me.
Saturday October 5, 2024
Django
,
Python

🎉 Announcing DjangoTV

Friends, I’m launching a half-finished website idea that I have been playing around with for a while. djangotv.com is focused on promoting and searching Django videos to make discovery easier.

I wanted to launch DjangoTV before I left DjangoCon US 2024, so I’m technically announcing it from the airport. Last year, I launched Django News Jobs during the Django sprints because I was annoyed by the state of the various Django job boards.

After a year of hearing people complain about Django and Python YouTube videos not getting enough views, I decided to address the problem by building out a website to help organize and promote them.

DjangoTV is not competing with pyvideo.org. PyVideo is a fantastic resource for the Python community, and one of my goals is to make it easier to get Django content on PyVideo, too.

DjangoTV is incomplete, and I have many ideas to improve it, including backfilling some of our older conferences, adding presenters, and adding some other metadata to make it a useful community resource.

I focused on DjangoCon videos to bootstrap the project, and we’ll slowly expand our archives. I have been extracting good quotes, adding transcriptions, and adding better summaries. Please expect this to change a lot. I even launched the website with DEBUG turned on for a few days before I turned it off.

Your feedback is crucial to us. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to share them.

Most importantly, names change, people change, and bodies change. It’s essential to me that we respect each other and handle this with care. If you have a concern or need us to pull a video, please don’t hesitate to reach out; we will take care of it.

Friday September 27, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

🧳 DjangoCon US, Black Python Devs Leadership Summit, and Django Girls Durham

I’m heading to Durham, NC, for seven days of DjangoCon US this Friday. This is my 10th year volunteering and the 9th year that DEFNA, the non-profit I co-founded, has run a DjangoCon US event. Here is an overview of the week.

Black Python Devs Leadership Summit (Saturday)

I’m attending and speaking on a discussion panel on Saturday at the Black Python Devs Leadership Summit. Tickets are free, and they will be streaming online in the afternoon. Donations are accepted and appreciated.

Django Girls Durham (Saturday)

Django Girls are hosting a Django workshop and teaching beginners a crash course on building their first website using Django.

DjangoCon US Tutorials (Sunday)

On Sunday morning, I’ll be volunteering and helping out at the tutorials. In the afternoon, we have a tradition of stuffing swag bags, which takes a big group and is a fun way to kick off the conference. You do not need a tutorial ticket or an organizer to help out. Ask at the registration desk, and they can direct you to when and where we are doing this.

Django Social meetup (Sunday)

My company REVSYS is sponsoring a DjangoSocial Raleigh/Durham Pre-DjangoCon Special meetup on Sunday evening before the conference kicks off. The meetup will be great for meeting other attendees the night before the conference.

DjangoCon US Talks (Monday through Wednesday)

The talks are great, but the busiest three days of the conference are also the busiest. There is always a lot going on, from sun up to sun down.

DjangoCon US Sprints (Thursday and Friday)

The sprints are one of my favorite parts of the conference. In past years, I have been so exhausted by the sprints that it’s hard to sit down and focus. It’s one of the best times to discuss Django and the Django ecosystem. If you have a project or want to find a project to help with, the sprints are great for getting your feet wet.

Outro

Tickets are still available if you live near Durham and want to attend. Both events have online and in-person options, so there is no pressure to make last-minute travel plans.

If you live around Durham and want to meet up, please reach out. Let’s see if we can meet for coffee.

Friday September 20, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
UV
,
Today I Learned

🤠 UV Roundup: Five good articles and a pre-commit tip
I have written quite a bit about UV on my micro blog, and I am happy to see more and more people adopt it. I have stumbled on so many good articles recently that I wanted to share them because every article points out something new or different about why UV works well for them.

If you are new to UV, it’s a new tool written by Astral, the creators of Ruff.

I like UV because it replaces, combines, or complements a bunch of Python tools into one tool and user developer experience without forcing a UV way of doing it. UV effectively solves the question, “Why do I need another Python tool?” to do everyday Python tasks.

Some reason I like UV after using it for months:
- It’s a faster pip and is really, really fast
- It can install and manage Python versions
- It can run and install Python scripts
- It can run single-file Python scripts along with their dependencies
- It can handle project lock files
While some people don’t care about UV being fast, it’s shaved minutes off my CI builds and container rebuilds, which means it has also saved me money and energy resources.

Overall thoughts on UV

Oliver Andrich’s UV — I am (somewhat) sold takes the approach of only using UV to set up a new Python environment. Oliver uses UV to install Python, aliases to call Python, and UV tool install to set up a few global utilities.

Using UV with Django

Anže Pečar’s UV with Django shows how to use UV to set up a new project with Django.

Switching from pyenv to UV

Will Guaraldi Kahn-Greene’s Switching from pyenv to uv was relatable for me because I also use pyenv, but I plan to slowly migrate to using only UV. I’m already halfway there, but I will have pyenv for my legacy projects for years because many aren’t worth porting yet.

Using UV and managing with Ansible

Adam Johnson’s Python: my new uv setup for development taught me to use uv cache prune to clean up unused cache entries and shows how he manages his UV setup using Ansible.

Some notes on UV

Simon Willison’s Notes on UV is an excellent summary of Oliver’s notes.

A parting UV tip

If you are a pre-commit fan hoping for a version that supports UV, the pre-commit-uv project does just that. I started updating my justfile recipes to bake just lint to the following uv run command, which speeds up running and installing pre-commit significantly.
```
$ uv run --with pre-commit-uv pre-commit run --all-files
pre-commit-uv
```
If you are attending DjangoCon US…

If you are attending DjangoCon US and want to talk UV, Django, Django News, Django Packages, hit me up while you are there.

I’ll be attending, volunteering, organizing, sponsoring, and sprinting around the venue in Durham, NC, for the next week starting this Friday.

We still have online and in-person tickets, but not much longer!
Thursday September 19, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
Office Hours

📅 Office Hours Fall Update
This Friday, I am hosting Office Hours before I travel to DjangoCon US (organizer) and the Black Python Devs Leadership Summit (speaker) in Durham, NC.

This Friday will be my last session before a two-week break, but I will resume Office Hours again on October 4th.
- Friday, September 13th, 2024, 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
- Friday, September 20th, 2024 - No office hours
- Friday, September 27th, 2024 - No office hours
- Friday, October 4th, 2024, 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
High-level details

ℹ️ Anyone can join office hours. Many join because they work remotely, miss seeing faces, and miss the random conversations when a small group hangs out.

ℹ️ Our office hours are a collaborative space where we can discuss our ongoing projects, catch up, and work together to wrap up our week on a productive note.

🙏 As always, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’re a regular attendee or joining for the first time. If you are curious, reach out.

✅ If you need any additional details, feel free to send me a message or check out the gist from our previous sessions, where you’ll always find the most recent Zoom link ⚠️
Thursday September 12, 2024
Django
,
Today I Learned

🚜 On Evolving Django's `auth.User` model

I need to re-read/re-listen to Carlton’s Evolving Django’s auth.User Stack Report before I have a firm opinion, but I saw his Mastodon post and I thought it was worth sharing some initial thoughts.

On my first read, I fell into the camp that wants django-unique-user-email and full name to be the defaults on Django’s built-in User. I have wanted this forever, and my clients do, too.

Django should still allow me to create a custom user, but the documentation could be better. Django’s documentation is a topic for another day, but I’m confused by it and find it less and less helpful. I notice the developers I work with get lost in them, too. Docs may be a good DjangoCon US topic if you want to discuss it in a few weeks.

I would love the default User to have a unique email address, full name, and a short name. Optionally, a username is an email address setting. Please don’t take away the ability to have a custom User model. (Update: Carlton is not making a case for removing a custom User model, but others have made that argument. No, thank you.)

Carlton’s “Action points” conclusion seems reasonable to me.

Tuesday September 10, 2024
Django
,
Python

🚫 Stop scheduling security updates and deprecating major features over holidays

I know people outside the US 🙄 at this, but please stop releasing major security updates and backward incompatible changes over major US, international, and religious holidays.

Given that major security updates are embargoed and scheduled weeks and months in advance, it’s essential to coordinate and avoid conflicts. A simple check of the calendar before scheduling announcements can prevent such issues.

Even if you give everyone two weeks' notice, aka what GitHub just did, wait to schedule them for release over a holiday weekend.

Historically, the Python and Django communities have also been guilty of this, so I’m not just finger-pointing at GitHub. We can all do better here.

Update: 100% unrelated to this: Django security releases issued: 5.1.1, 5.0.9, and 4.2.16. Thank you, Natalia (and Sarah) for scheduling this after the US is back from a major holiday.

Tuesday September 3, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
UV

🚜 Using Claude 3.5 Sonnet to refactor one of Brian Okken's Python projects
Brian Okken posted and published his Top pytest Plugins script and then a follow-up post, Finding the top pytest plugins, which was pretty cool.

I have written a few throw-away scripts, which William Vincent wrote about and updated a few times in the Top 10 Django Third-Party Packages (2024) and The 10 Most-Used Django Packages (2024).

These efforts are powered by Hugo van Kemenade’s excellent Top PyPI Packages.

This inspired me to fork Brian’s top-pytest-plugins project, which I updated to support passing in other package names like “django” to get a rough estimate of monthly package downloads.

The refactored project is jefftriplett/top-python-packages.

Please note: Looking at the package name doesn’t scale as well for projects that have their own Trove classifiers. For a project like pytest, it works well. Many of the top packages may not even have Django in their name for a project like Django. Some projects may even actively discourage a project from using their project in their package’s name for trademark reasons. So, YMMV applies here.

Prompts

I added uv run support, which I have written about a lot lately.

I also copied the top_pytest.py file into a Claude 3.5 Sonnet session, and I let it handle the whole refactor. It even handled adding the PEP 723 new package dependencies without me asking it to.

In case it’s useful to anyone, here are my prompts:
```
## Prompt:
Please update this script to use a rich table.


## Prompt:
Please update the table styles to be ascii so I can copy and paste it into a markdown doc


## Prompt:
Please remove the description column


## Prompt:
Please change all PyTest and pytest references to Django and django


## Prompt:
Please add back `if 'django' in project.lower() and 'django' != project.lower():`


## Prompt:
please remove the \*# Export to markdown section. I can just pipe the output \*


## Prompt:
Please add the typer library.


## Prompt:
Please remove days and limit


## Prompt:
Please refactor the script to allow me to pass the package name instead of django. You can default to django though.


This way I can pass pytest or flask or other projects.


## Prompt:
Please change the default Table box type to MARKDOWN
```
Outro

I don’t usually write about Claude or prompts, but the tool has been handy lately.

If you have had some similar successes, let me know. I have been exploring some rabbit holes, and it’s changing the way I approach solving problems.
Sunday August 25, 2024

Django

Python

UV

Today I Learned

📓 UV Run Django Notes

I wanted to know how hard it would be to turn one of my django-startproject projects into a uv run friendly project. As it turns out, it worked, and the steps were more than reasonable.

Before the PEP 723’ing…

I started with a fairly vanilla manage.py that Django will give you after running python -m manage startproject.

"""Django's command-line utility for administrative tasks."""

import os
import sys


def main():
    """Run administrative tasks."""
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "config.settings")
    try:
        from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
    except ImportError as exc:
        raise ImportError(
            "Couldn't import Django. Are you sure it's installed and "
            "available on your PYTHONPATH environment variable? Did you "
            "forget to activate a virtual environment?"
        ) from exc
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

shebang

Then we add #!/usr/bin/env -S uv run to the top of our manage.py file.

Next, we make our manage.py executable and try to run it.

$ chmod +x manage.py
$ ./manage.py
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'django'

Our script ran, but Python couldn’t find Django. To tell our script to install Django, we can use uv add—- script to add it.

$ uv add --script manage.py django
Updated `manage.py`
$ ./manage.py
...

Type 'manage.py help <subcommand>' for help on a specific subcommand.

Available subcommands:

[django]
    check
    compilemessages
    createcachetable
    dbshell
    diffsettings
    dumpdata
    flush
    inspectdb
    loaddata
    makemessages
    makemigrations
    migrate
    optimizemigration
    runserver
    sendtestemail
    shell
    showmigrations
    sqlflush
    sqlmigrate
    sqlsequencereset
    squashmigrations
    startapp
    startproject
    test
    testserver
Note that only Django core commands are listed as settings are not properly configured (error: No module named 'environs').

Django worked as expected this time, but Python could not find a few third-party libraries I like to include in my projects.

To add these, I passed the other four to uv add --script which will add them to the project.

$ uv add --script manage.py django-click "environs[django]" psycopg2-binary whitenoise
Updated `manage.py`
...
$ ./manage.py
...

Our Django app’s manage.py works when we run it.

After the PEP 723’ing…

After we installed our dependencies in our manage.py file, they were added to the top of the file between the /// blocks.

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.10"
# dependencies = [
#     "django",
#     "django-click",
#     "environs[django]",
#     "psycopg2-binary",
#     "whitenoise",
# ]
# ///
"""Django's command-line utility for administrative tasks."""

import os
import sys


def main():
    """Run administrative tasks."""
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "config.settings")
    try:
        from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
    except ImportError as exc:
        raise ImportError(
            "Couldn't import Django. Are you sure it's installed and "
            "available on your PYTHONPATH environment variable? Did you "
            "forget to activate a virtual environment?"
        ) from exc
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Friday August 23, 2024

Django
,
Python
,
Office Hours

💼 Office Hours this Friday, August 9th

I am hosting Office Hours this Friday, August 9th, 2024, from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm Central Time.

💼 I plan to upgrade some projects to work with Django 5.1 and possibly Python 3.13 as time permits. I have a few Django Packages tasks to finish too.

ℹ️ Anyone can join office hours.

ℹ️ Our office hours are a collaborative space where we can discuss our ongoing projects, catch up, and work together to wrap up our week on a productive note.

🙏 As always, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’re a regular attendee or joining for the first time.

✅ If you need any additional details, feel free to send me a message or check out the gist from our previous sessions, where you’ll find the Zoom link ⚠️

I look forward to seeing everyone.

Thursday August 8, 2024
Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

⬆️ Which Django and Python versions should I be using today?

Django 5.1 was released, and I was reminded of the article I wrote earlier this year about Choosing the Right Python and Django Versions for Your Projects.

While I encouraged you to wait until the second, third, or even fourth patch release of Django and Python before upgrading, I received a bit of pushback. One interesting perspective claimed that if everyone waits to upgrade, we don’t find critical bugs until the later versions. While that may be plausible, I don’t believe that the dozens of people who read my blog will be swayed by my recommendation to wait for a few patch releases.

I could have emphasized the potential risks of not testing early. Please start testing during the alpha and release candidate phase so that when Django 5.1 is released, your third-party applications will be ready and working on launch day, minimizing the risk of last-minute issues.

Today, I tried to upgrade Django Packages to run on Django 5.1 to see if our test suite would run on Django 5.1, and it very quickly failed in CI due to at least one package not supporting 5.1 yet. Even if it had passed, I’m 90% sure another package would have failed because that’s the nature of running a new major Django or Python release on day one. Even if the third-party package is ready, the packaging ecosystem needs time to catch up.

Which version of Django should I use today?

I’m sticking with Django 5.0 until Django 5.1’s ecosystem has caught up. I plan to update the third-party packages I help maintain to have Django 5.1 support. After a few patch releases of Django 5.1 have come out and the ecosystem has time to catch up, I will try to migrate again.

Which version of Python should I use today?

I’m starting new projects on Python 3.12, with a few legacy projects still being done on Python 3.11. While I am adding Django 5.1 support, I plan to add Python 3.13 support in my testing matrixes to prepare everything for Python 3.13’s release this fall.

Office hours

I plan to spend some of my Office Hours this week working on Django 5.1 and Python 3.13 readiness for projects I maintain. Please join me if you have a project to update or would like some light-hearted banter to end your week.

Wednesday August 7, 2024
Django
,
Office Hours

📅 Office Hours this Friday, July 26th

I am hosting Office Hours this Friday, July 26th, 2024, from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm Central Time.

I’ll probably be on a bit early depending on much of my client projects I get wrapped up this week.

ℹ️ Anyone can join office hours.

ℹ️ Our office hours are a collaborative space where we can discuss our ongoing projects, catch up, and work together to wrap up our week on a productive note.

💼 I will be working on Django Packages and possibly a new project.

🙏 As always, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’re a regular attendee or joining for the first time.

✅ If you need any additional details, feel free to send me a message or check out the gist from our previous sessions, where you’ll find the Zoom link ⚠️

I look forward to seeing everyone.

Thursday July 25, 2024
Weeknotes
,
Django
,
Python
,
Today I Learned

📓 Weeknotes for Week 28: July 8 to 14
I’m running a week behind on this.

This week was our first week back home without traveling in a month, and it felt good to be home. I had time to catch up on mowing the yard, and I treated the yard with an eco-safe mosquito repellent. Despite the hot weather, Sunday felt nice outside to be mosquito-free.

I rolled my above-ground sprinkler system A few years ago, and I still need to install and run it this year. I wanted to get it this weekend, and here we are.

Family

I converted my daughter’s crib to a daybed over the weekend, and we have been using it for two nights and two naps without any issues. My son took to the board game Risk in Chicago, so I installed the iPad version and walked him through it. It was a pizza and tacos weekend because it was a long week.

Work

Occasionally, a project feels like you signed up for a race, but the distance keeps changing whenever you are within sight of the finish line. A project we have been finishing up keeps growing.

Community Work
- Djangonaut Space: All three of our Djangonauts completed their first tasks, and we are moving on to our first big group project.
- Conference Chats meetup
Side projects
- Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #241.
- Django News Jobs: This week, we picked up more jobs that weren’t from one source. I need to write a tool to help maintain this, but it’s a manageable load.
- I bought a new domain name for a project this weekend. More on that soon.
Side Quests
- I dusted off my YouTube-to-Frontmatter tool and added the ability to pull playlists from a given username. I wrote the files out as JSON and used DuckDB to query them, which worked amazingly well.
- I wrote an Amazon product image downloader for a few blog posts. When the product API did not work, I punted and had ChatGPT write a playwright scraper. It was faster and much less frustrating. I need this for several projects.
- I cleaned up my sitemaps research tool.
- I tried out a screenshots-to-code project and ran some 00s-era websites through it that I wish still existed. If someone wants to give me a few years of funding, I think we can make the web not suck again.
Writing

2024-07-14: 🔥 Why I deleted Firefox from my machines this weekend I no longer trust or believe in Mozilla, so I deleted Firefox from my machines this weekend. ➜ brew …

2024-07-13: 🦆 DuckDB may be the tool you didn’t know you were missing 🤔 I haven’t fully figured out DuckDB yet, but it’s worth trying out if you are a Python …

2024-07-12: 🚜 macOS Bartender app to Ice app I upgraded my Macs to macOS Sonoma a few weeks ago. While everything has been uneventful, the …

2024-07-11: 🎮 8BitDo Golden/Silver Limited Edition controllers My favorite third-party video game hardware company, 8BitDo, announced its 11th-anniversary limited …

2024-07-10: 📅 Office Hours for July 12th Office Hours returns this Friday, July 12th, 2024, from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm Central Time. ℹ️ Anyone …

2024-07-09: 🔓 Sharing is Caring: How a Simple Sudo Question Led to Better Solutions One of the fun discoveries of blogging is finding your article in search results while trying to …

2024-07-08: 📓 Weeknotes for Week 27: July 1 to 7 The last week was a blur between the holiday, travel, and cramming a lot of work. My notes this week …

Entertainment

📺 Vikings: Valhalla

📺 The Marvels (2023) - This movie was better than people gave it credit for. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was fun to watch.

📺 Defending Jacob - I skipped to the end of this series.

📺 The Last Thing He Told Me - I skipped to the end of this series.

📺 Presumed Innocent - I surprised myself that I’m still keeping up with this series, but there are only a few weeks left.

📺 The Acolyte - We are ready for the last episode.

📺 Atlas (2024) - I didn’t go into this movie with any expectations, and I immensely enjoyed it.

Next week

I’m solo-parenting next weekend. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my kids and another weekend of being home.
Saturday July 20, 2024
Django
,
Office Hours
,
Today I Learned

📅 I am hosting Office Hours this Friday, July 19th

I am hosting Office Hours this Friday, July 19th, 2024, from 2:00 pm to 4:15 pm Central Time.

➡️ I have to leave earlier than normal to pick up my kids, but I plan to be around until 4:15 pm to 4:30 pm Central Time or as time permits.

ℹ️ Anyone can join office hours.

ℹ️ Our office hours are a collaborative space where we can discuss our ongoing projects, catch up, and work together to wrap up our week on a productive note.

💼 I will be working on a new Django project this week, sourcing data for it, and hopefully writing a bunch of views.

🙏 As always, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’re a regular attendee or joining for the first time.

✅ If you need any additional details, feel free to send me a message or check out the gist from our previous sessions, where you’ll find the Zoom link ⚠️

I look forward to seeing everyone.

Wednesday July 17, 2024

Django

Python

Today I Learned

Calendars and shared Documents

Calendar Agent

The better email solution

Conclusion

Django

Python

Today I Learned

jobs/models.py

templates/emails/job_new.md

Bonus: Django-Q2

Forward Email

Django

Python

Why Rename django-admin?

Keep It Simple and Pythonic

Easy Transition for Everyone

Real-Life Benefits

Improving Compatibility with Tools Like UV

Balancing Old and New

Is this change zero work?

Conclusion

Django

Python

Family

Writing

Conferences

Volunteer/Community Work

Office Hours

Side Quests

Going forward

Weeknotes

Django

Python

Today I Learned

Meta

Family

House

Community Work

Side projects

Side Quests

Writing

Entertainment

New gear

Next week

Django

Python

What I’m stepping down from

What you can do

Django

Python

Django

Python

Should Django adopt this?

How long has this lived in your head?

Where is the code?

Weeknotes

Django

Python

Today I Learned

Family

Work

Community Work

Side projects

Side Quests

Calendar Agent

Entertainment

New gear

Next week

Weeknotes

Django

Family

Community Work

Side projects

Side Quests

Entertainment

New gear

Next week

`jobs/models.py`

`templates/emails/job_new.md`

Why Rename `django-admin`?