magpiebrain

Consultants, a definition

A cracking quote from a client:

A consultant is someone who in exchange for your watch will tell you the time

Being a consultant right now I’m not sure whether or not to be offended…

Formatting dates with Django

There seems to be two different ways to format your dates using Django. The first takes advantage of Python’s built-in strftime, so to format a date according to ISO8601:

mymodel.some_date_field.strftime("%Y%m%dT%H%m")

Giving you a date like 20050819T2031. Read the rest of this entry »

Django and Rails London Meetup, 5th of September

Just a little reminder – the meetup is still on for the 5th. It’s looking like a good turnout too – the following people have mentioned they may be coming along:

• Simon Brunning
• Tom Dyson
• Matt Biddulph
• Tom Dunham
• Matt Mower
• Sean O’Halpin
• Tom Ward
• James Adam
• xtian
• Simon Willison
• Scott Matthewman
• Will Macdonald
• Jon Ramsey
• Ben de Groot
• Rob M
• Peter Ferne
• Peter Cooper
• Jeremy Keith
• Tom Armitage
• Dan Webb
• Matthew Westcott
• Neal Todd
• Helen Bright
• Victoria Chan
• Andrew Whitehouse

…why can’t we all just, get along?

My post comparing Django and Rails has garnered good response, and has probably set a record for the number of comments left in a single day for this site. What most impressed me (beyond the fact that a few people seemed to like the piece in the first place) is that the comments left didn’t degenerate into a flame war about what was better. That has reinforced what I originally thought – that in the same way Ruby and Python are more similar than disimilar, Django and Rails are more alike than they are different. Read the rest of this entry »

Category specific feeds

I’ve created some full post category-specific feeds (thanks to a great tutorial) . In total there are now 13 category or top level feeds available in addition to feeds for each individual post so you can keep up with any comments or trackbacks that get left.

As always if you don’t see what you want then drop me a line.

A comparison of Django with Rails

Since lambasting someone for a less than fair Django and Rails comparison, I’d planned to do my own. To start with, my comparison is based on several days worth of Rails development and about a weekend’s worth of playing with Django, using the (currently four part) tutorial.

I�ve had this reviewed by both Rails and Django developers, but if you think I�ve misrepresented anything or left anything out then feel free to leave a comment and I�ll make sure to put it right. Read the rest of this entry »

OpenAdaptor, boiling lead and the angry kitten

It’s been a while since I’ve had to unleash the angry kitten, but it seems that the OpenAdaptor developers have rather inadvisably irked me, to the extent that I’ve withheld the kitten’s food for two days now, to make the ensuing carnage all the more…well, carnagy.

To start with, I like the concept and some of the architecure behind Open Adaptor. It’s a fine arhictecture – it’s no suprise that plenty of other APIs out there have come up with similar solutions to the same problems. The JBI spec obviously owes a lot to OpenAdaptor. That said its implementation frequently makes me want to have a few minutes with the developers, a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. Read the rest of this entry »

Hyperbole != fact

Please note, there are:

• Lies
• Damn Lies
• Statistics
• Bloggers
• Fox News

In decreasing levels of accuracy and balance. Of course this site is the exception that proves the rule…

That means the next time you hear some blogger raving about something, for the love of $Deity consider that you might not be suckling at the teat of truth, and perhaps instead the putrid orifice of lies.