I muddled my way through installing MoinMoin on my Slicehost server to create the GRPUG Wiki. I had to bounce around between three or four different install pages and tweak settings for about and hour on the MoinMoin site to get things right, but it seems to be working well now.
I haven’t given an update on George’s skills lately, so here it goes.
This morning in the car he got bored and started reciting the ABC’s on his own. He said “A B C bot”, and then filled in “O” and “Z” when I helped him out. He likes to say, “bot” when he doesn’t know a letter or doesn’t want to say the letter for some reason. He can pronounce pretty much every letter if he tries.
He is getting pretty good at playing the harmonica. I bought it for him about 6 months ago after he started playing the recorder. He can’t get the fingers right on the recorder, so I thought the harmonica would be easier. However, he kept trying to play the end of the harmonica like the recorder, so he didn’t get the hang of it until recently. I will try to get some video, it really is funny and impressive.
He is walking very well, and running some too. He loves to swing on the normal swings, and always dives down the slides head-first. He can put a few Megablocks together, and has scribbled a few crayon drawings.
I recently settled on Python as the programming language I will be investing my time towards. To help me learn and network with knowledgeable folks, I have started the Grand Rapids Python Users Group. The idea is to meet to talk about best practices in Python and programming in general, demonstrate various Python modules, and get to know some cool people with more programming experience than I have.
So far, I have done the following:
The group was inspired by the various Linux and Java groups I’ve been attending, and all the talk I’ve heard from the MichiPUG group located on the east side of Michigan. It seems like they do a lot of interesting things over there, and I think we can do almost as well over here.
I’m looking forward to getting this thing going, and if it sounds interesting to you, head on over to the GRPUG web page and sign up!
I attended my second meeting of the Grand Rapids Linux Users Group – the last meeting I attended was about a year ago. The meeting was held in Casey DuBois’ garage, which is a giant warehouse with offices, bathrooms, and even a kitchen. It’s quite an awesome place to have meetings.
Matt Michielsen gave a demo on Mercurial, an open source version control system written in Python. I don’t currently use any version control beyond keeping a copy of the last version, so I was interested in seeing some VC in action. Mercurial seemed easy to use, and had some nice GUI apps. I’ll probably look into a couple of other systems to see how they differ before I decide on one to use.
Michael Mol then gave us a tour of his Rosetta Code web site. It’s a wiki where people have demonstrated how to solve various programming problems in many (many) different languages. It seems like a good resource when learning a new language. You can compare how something was done in a language you know to how it is handled in a language you’re learning.
Michael also recorded the meeting and is hopefully going to distribute the video online. We tried to share it during the meeting, but it would’ve taken about 8 hours to download over the wireless network.
Ron Lauzon showed off a couple of cool gadgets before the meeting. He was using a System76 Starling Netbook running Ubuntu. It was a good looking netbook that can get around 7 hours of battery life. Wow! I didn’t get to play with it much, partly because I knew I’d want one too bad if I touched it. He also brought an e-Ink eBook reader (I forget which one). The clarity of the text on the screen is unbelievable until you see it. It really does look like printed text, and not pixely printed text like a newspaper.
I brought up the possibility of a Grand Rapids Python Users Group, and there were a few people that expressed an interest, so I think I’m going to go for it.
Waldorf Salad
INGREDIENTS (4 servings)
3 Fuji apples; cored and chopped
4 stalks of celery; thinly sliced
1 cup seedless grapes; sliced
1 cup walnuts; pieces
1/4 cup dried cranberries or cherries
6 tbsp mayo or yogurt
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the mayo, cider vinager, salt, and pepper. Mix in the apple, celery, grapes, cranberries, and walnuts. Serve on a bed of fresh lettuce.
For a sweeter salad, use yogurt instead of mayo, and dried cherries instead of cranberries.
