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.

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.

The last week was a blur between the holiday, travel, and cramming a lot of work. My notes this week are more glossed over than most

Family

We drove to Illinois (near Chicago) to see family this week. We had family from both coasts who we don’t see very often, and it was the first time much of the family met my youngest, Nora. It takes us 8 to 8.5 hours to drive there, and people are always amazed at how good my kids are at traveling these distances. They both love the extra screen time and are easy to travel with. We can hand each one an iPad, and they are set for hours, given enough snacks and a rest stop every few hours.

Work

It was a short two-day week, but I got a bonus third day of work between fitting a few hours in the car and half a day on Friday. This was nice because we are wrapping up an existing client project while ramping up on another project.

This has also made me realize that Django has many shopping cart projects, but they all seem to be outdated. We struggled to find a project we could use, which made me realize that the Django community is sorely missing a good shopping cart and checkout experience that works.

Community Work

Djangonaut Space: All three Djangonaut Space Team Neptune members have made meaningful contributions early in the process, and now I’m feeling the pressure to detail and share some more advanced projects so they can have tasks for the duration of the project.

Django Code of Conduct WG: We have prioritized keeping up as we get new members used to contributing. This week, was a busy week.

Side projects

Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #240.

Django News Jobs: We have had code to aggregate some other Django job boards, and this week, we started allowing those to come through.

Writing

This week, I was back on track, and I wrote and published something every day. It was my first day of giving myself a buffer so that I am always writing tomorrow’s post, which took the edge and pressure off. I am still writing every day, but with the holiday, it was nice knowing I didn’t have to fit it in on our last day in Chicago, which ended up being a really long, full day with family.

2024-07-07: 🧰 More fun with Django Extensions using shell_plus and graph_models Yesterday, I wrote about Django Extensions show_urls management command because it’s useful. I …

2024-07-06: Django Extensions is useful even if you only use show_urls Yes, Django Extensions package is worth installing, especially for its show_urls command, which can …

2024-07-05: 📅 No Office Hours on July 5th, but… No Office Hours this week (July 5th), but we will return next Friday, July 12th, 2024, 2:30 pm to …

2024-07-04: 🎆 🤖 Happy AIndependence Day To everyone in the United States, Happy Independence Day and Happy AIndependence Day to everyone …

2024-07-03: 🗳️ PSF Elections how I am voting This was written while driving to Chicago (technically from the passenger seat). Still, a few people …

2024-07-02: 💬 On the PSF Bylaw changes The Python Software Foundation has three bylaw changes up for a vote in this year’s election. …

2024-07-01: 📓 Weeknotes for Week 26: June 24 to 30 Family I took two days off for a funeral and some other family stuff. I saw cousins and other …

Entertainment

📺 Sweet Tooth - I really liked this series.

📺 Presumed Innocent - I watched the first five episodes, and it’s okay.

📺 The Last Thing He Told Me - I just started this series on Sunday night and am unsure if I’ll finish it.

Next week

It’s my first whole week back in a while. I’m looking forward to catching up and mowing my yard while listening to podcasts. I need to catch up on house stuff, including running my homemade above-ground sprinkler system. (Chill; we live near the Kansas River.)

Family

I took two days off for a funeral and some other family stuff. I saw cousins and other relatives who I only see at funerals, which is starting to feel like a habit.

Work

I was mentally blocked on a project, or at least the part I was putting off returning to. Something finally clicked over the weekend, and I worked through it. I hate working the weekends, which our company frowns upon. I didn’t expect to be out two days this week, and I’m out for the holiday most of the next week, so I tried to get caught up and ahead.

Community Work

Djangonaut Space: Week 2 kicked off, and I had to push our weekly standup back a week due to the funeral. No idea, but our Djangonauts are doing good work and working through their first issues.

Side projects

Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #239.

Django News Jobs: I had a weird issue that forced me to downgrade Python 3.12 to 3.11 to fix something internally that broke Pydantic. I’ll switch back in a few weeks, but I’m still annoyed by it.

Overall, I just treaded water this week.

Writing

I shifted my writing schedule around this weekend so that I am a day ahead. I want to get four or five days ahead so that I have a nice publishing schedule to work with. I still plan on writing daily, but I like having more wiggle room.

2024-06-30: 🐳 Using Just and Compose for interactive Django and Python debugging sessions When I wrote REST APIs, I spent weeks and months writing tests and debugging without looking at the …

2024-06-29: 🐘 Docker Postgres Autoupgrades Upgrading Postgres in Docker environments can be daunting, but keeping your database up-to-date is …

2024-06-28: 🐘 A Just recipe to backup and restore a Postgres database I have used this casey/just recipe to help backup and restore my Postgres databases from my Docker …

2024-06-27: 📅 Office Hours for June 28th It’s been a week, but I’m hosting Office Hours this Friday at 2:30 pm. I was on the …

2024-06-25: 🐳 Managing Docker Compose Profiles with Just: Switching Between Default and Celery Configurations For a recent client project, we wanted to toggle between various Docker Compose profiles to run the …

2024-06-24: 🚜 Mastodon Bookmark exporter to Markdown/Frontmatter I wrote a Mastodon Bookmark exporter tool over the weekend and decided to polish it up and release …

Entertainment

📺 Presumed Innocent

📺 Baby Reindeer

📺 Dark Matter

📺 The Acolyte - We got caught up, and OMG, it’s good.

📺 The Flash (2023) - I couldn’t care less for the Flash, but I really enjoyed seeing Michael Keaton’s Batman again.

Next week

We are spending our holiday in Illinois to see family. It’ll be the first time my youngest has met several family members flying in for the holiday.

What a week.

Family

My youngest was home most of the week with a virus, which changed everything about my week.

We had a rare night out to see Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at Liberty Hall

My family also had a birthday on Friday, my son’s friend’s birthday party on Saturday, and Mother’s Day today, so it was a busier than usual week for us and a sick kid all week.

Work

With my daughter sick, everything changed this week. I mostly worked on an e-commerce app on a rare Saturday to get my bearings.

Community

Conference Chats: We had our monthly Wednesday night meetup.

Office Hours: I hosted Friday Office Hours.

Side projects

Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #232.

Django Packages: I mostly worked on some notes and task ideas for Djangonaut Space.

Upgrade Django: We had four updates this week, which is rare.

Writing

I wrote and published every day. I started writing and publishing on my https://micro.webology.dev every day since February 1st, and this week marked my 100th day in a row of writing.

2024-05-11: 📭 On vacation autoresponders and deleting email

2024-05-10: 🐍 TIL build-and-inspect-python-package GitHub Action workflow plus some bonus Nox + Tox

2024-05-09: 📚 African tech book drive at PyCon US

2024-05-08: 👥 Office Hours on May 10th

2024-05-07: 🎸 Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at Liberty Hall

2024-05-06: 🌪️ Tornado Watch tonight

“Me” time

Early Saturday morning, I wrote a podcast downloader script to make downloading podcast episodes easier. I like to run some of my favorite podcast episodes through MacWhisper to generate a transcript to take better notes.

Saturday evening, I wired up Fabric to connect to my Macs to update them and run various Just recipes to keep everything updated. I ran into a few issues with my .bashrc file, but it was a good enough MVP.

Entertainment

📺 Space Jam: A New Legacy: My oldest has gotten into basketball and this was a fun family movie.

📺 Dead Boy Detectives: I didn’t have high expectations for this series, but watching two ghosts solve mysteries was fun.

🎮 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge: We hadn’t played this one in a while, so we primarily focused on leveling up the two new characters from the expansion.

Next week

I leave for PyCon US on Wednesday and have a small mountain of things to finish between now and then. I finished my laundry tonight, so I can leisurely pack over the next few days.

Family

This week was Spring Break for both of my kids. My son had all week off, while my daughter had Thursday and Friday off. My son was also sick and hanging out with me the first two days of the week instead of getting to go to day camp.

I worked on several house projects, including cleaning our smoker and outdoor griddle. I didn’t winterize our smoker nearly as well as I thought I had, so it took me much longer to clean than it should have.

Sunday was cold and windy, so I couldn’t do as much outside as I planned.

Work

I spent most of my week working on the green field project again.

I also hosted a rather minute(ish) Office Hours session again.

Community

I had two DjangoCon US meetings this week. One is to discuss our online experience, and the other is to kick off our new website and eventual new website framework.

Side projects

I spent most of my side project time on Django News, Django News Jobs, and Django Packages. I also upgraded several project configs to use some new uv options.

Django Packages: We updated our profiles to drop support for Google Code and add Bitbucket and GitLab profiles.

Trailhawks: My local running club’s website has been running on Django since 2009. I upgraded the project from Django 3.2 to 5.0 and to Python 3.1x, including upgrading two outdated third-party packages to Python 3.1x and Django 5. I also changed one of our race websites to Tailwind CSS, which has been in flight for a while.

Django Packages: We released an update to our profiles to drop support for Google Code and to add Bitbucket and GitLab profiles. I also broke the website with a wsgi change, which I quickly found a fixed.

**django-startproject: ** I updated django-startproject project to have better support for uv.

Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #223.

Writing

I wrote and published every day.

2024-03-17: 🍕 On tortilla pizza 

2024-03-16: 🏡 On Gardening 

2024-03-15: Five for Friyay 

2024-03-14: Python’s UV tool is even better 

2024-03-13: On environment variables and dotenv files 

2024-03-12: Completed, finished, or done 

2024-03-11: My Python Roots 

“Me” time

🏀 I watched Kansas get swept in the first round of the Big 12 tournament because our best two players were out with injuries. I set aside time on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons to watch some conference tournaments, but they were all blowouts.

Next week

🚸 My kids are back in school, and our schedules return to regular routines.

🪚 I have more rot repair, and I now have a compound miter saw to cut wood for framing and fixing things. I had to order a portable workbench to attach the miter saw in mid-week.

🏀 Next week also starts the NCAA tournament, a sign that the third basketball season has begun. I am taking two days off to enjoy the madness, and I suspect this will be most of my weekend, too.

👟 I should have to get the other half of the Trailhawks website out the door.

We were reminded that Winter is still here this week, starting with warmer weather and ending with colder.

Family

My oldest was out two days this week at parent-teacher conferences, and next week, he has off for Spring Break. He missed his last basketball practice and game because he’s had a bug for a few days with a runny nose and a low fever that keeps coming back.

My youngest child is firmly in the four to six-word sentence phase. We are up to our eyeballs in potty training, and my daughter’s new favorite phrase is, “No, not yet,” when you suggest we try again.

The kid’s grandfather drove down from Chicago to spend the weekend with us.

I picked up Oliver’s bug on Saturday and spent it more down than up, so my new compound miter saw sat in the box all weekend.

Work

We are a few weeks into a new client project, and that’s led to several refactors and working with newer tools, including Pydantic and Django Ninja for Model Schemas. I also expect to spend much time in Tailwind CSS land soon.

Community

We had our monthly DEFNA meeting, elected officers, and discussed upcoming announcements.

I had a PSF Code of Conduct WG meeting that conflicted with morning kid drop-offs, but I could join for the last 15 to 20 minutes to help them make a quorum so we could vote to pass a few things.

I only had time to join the first half of one Wiggle Work event this week over lunch.

This week, I hosted Office Hours.

Side projects

I spent most of my side project time on Django News, Django News Jobs, and Django Packages and upgraded several projects to the latest Django 5.0.x security release and Python 3.12 releases. I also moved several projects to use uv Python package manager, including Django Packages and Django News Jobs, which shaves minutes off of build times.

Django News Newsletter: We shipped issue #222.

I started on a Bootstrap to Tailwind CSS conversion tool after noticing that several popular tools last updated 3 to 6 years ago. I can brute force about 90% of it, but I have also meant to play around with cssutils for a while. With cssutils, I think it might be possible to read from the various Bootstrap CSS versions and match up to some Tailwind CSS classes by comparing them via their CSS output.

Writing

I wrote and published every day.

2024-03-09: Bootstrap to Tailwind CSS 

2024-03-08: 🎮 Dave the Diver 

2024-03-07: How to test with Django, parametrize, and lazy fixtures 

2024-03-06: Importing data with Django Ninja’s ModelSchema 

2024-03-05: Upgrading Python from 3.11 to 3.12 notes 

2024-03-04: On pip isolation 

2024-03-03: The Weekend Woodworker 🪚

“Me” time

🏀 I watched two Kansas Basketball games, a bunch of random men’s and primarily women’s games.

Next week

I have more rot repair, and I now have a compound miter saw to make cutting wood for framing much more manageable.

My oldest is off with spring break, so our morning routines start 10 minutes later and last about 40 minutes longer.

Next week also starts the Big 12 Men’s tournament, a sign that the second and third basketball seasons are beginning. I usually take a day off for the start of the Big 12 tournament, and I take a few days off for March Madness.