Shelbybark Blog

Django 1.0

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

I just pushed out my updated site to run on Django 1.0. The Django Foundation rolled out 1.0 on Wednesday of this week -- just in time for DjangoCon 2008 this weekend. I've worked on the site a little the past few evenings to get it ready. For the most part, it was an easy move. A few more notes after the jump.

The one thing I would recommend anyone making the move do is to remove all .pyc files in your django directory. This was probably the biggest "gotcha" I encountered. Once I pushed out my changes, I was getting some odd errors on my blog entry pages. I recalled reading something about the .pyc files causing some weird errors, and, sure enough, removing them fixed it.

Below is the command that will easily remove all .pyc files starting in the directory you are currently in.

find . -name '*.pyc' -print0|xargs -0 rm

I've added it to my .bash_profile file as an alias, so that I can just run "rmpyc" and it will remove them from the directory I'm currently in (and all directories below).

Another thing I did in preparing for this move was to set up my development with git. This is also to prepare for a move we are making at Coptix over to git for version control.

I look forward to digging deeper into 1.0. I also can't wait to see video from DjangoCon.

Out with the old

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Well, this redesign has been brewing since the first of the year. I've been wanting to incorporate the "life stream" or "jellyroll" that I've been seeing so much of recently. Also, I wanted to remove the freelancer feel and turn it back to a more personal site.

I've used Blueprint again. I also had a chance to work with some APIs, which is always a treat, this time to pull in my Twitter posts. I'm sure there are still some rough edges. But, here it is.

Going to Coptix

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Wow. This year started off with a bang. Around the first of January I was contacted by Josiah Roe to find out if I would be interested in a job with Coptix Inc. in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I have accepted a position as a web developer with Coptix and will start to work with them on February 18.

So, this is going to be the start of quite a few big changes for me and my family. I plan on keeping shelbybark.com as my freelance/personal site, but I will be enthusiastically referring all major interest on up to Coptix.

I will be working in Tuscaloosa until we can sell our house and move to Chattanooga. So, if any of you out there know of anyone looking for a house in the Tuscaloosa area, let me know.

It's going to be a new adventure for us. My wife, Heather, has moved a few times before, but this will be my first time to move away from my extended family and hometown. We have spent quite a few vacations in Chattanooga over the last few years, and we love the area, so, we are looking forward to settling in there.

I can't promise that this will lead to more blogging on my part. However, you never know... I'll probably continue to tinker with shelbybark.com. I can never leave these things alone...

Thanks to everyone who's prayed and given advice over this decision. We're looking forward to the road ahead.

Feed me

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

I've had discussions recently about RSS feeds with a couple different people, and the thing I've realized is how useful they are, but, at the same time, how neglected they seem to be, at least by the masses. I think this will change with Outlook starting to include an RSS reader in Outlook 2007. So, I wanted to take the time to introduce RSS feeds to those readers who have never used them before.

As most of my readers know by now, I don't use very many Microsoft products. So, I won't be using the RSS reader in Outlook 2007. There are two readers I use, the Mac app NetNewsWire Lite and the online service Bloglines. I prefer NetNewsWire. Bloglines, is nice when I happen to be away from my laptop. The Bloglines site downsizes nicely to my Treo's browser. So, I can check my feeds even from my phone.

The beauty of an RSS feed reader is that you can check one spot for recent blog posts or news items or tour updates or new photos or, well you get the idea. To be honest I did not start using an RSS reader until I visited Lawrence and saw a few of the guys there using NetNewsWire. However, it really does save me a ton of time. I don't have to surf around to all of the sites I frequent just to see if there are any new posts. And, for checking bloggers who have a similar track record that I do for posting, that can save a lot of unnecessary site visits. I have around 55 feeds that I keep tabs on in NetNewsWire and this really does save me a bunch of time.

The other thing I want to push is having multiple RSS feeds per site. I currently have RSS feeds for blog posts, ma.gnolia mutterings, and recent comments on the site. I hope to soon have my recent media compiled into one feed, but that's going to take some python tricks that I haven't quite learned yet (though it's probably about as neat of a trick as tying my own shoe). Django has been really nice for setting up the regular RSS feeds for the different areas. I've even considered adding a feed for my recent iTunes tracks, but I figured that would just be excessive.

Anyway, if any of you have preferred readers, I'd love to hear about them. And if you've never used one, I recommend looking into it. It really has helped me.

It's Alive...

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

After many, many, many hours. I have finally arrived at a point where I think this thing is ready to go. The CMS has been completely overhauled to use Django instead of MovableType. I am strongly considering using Django for all future web development for Shelbybark Design.

I still have a few things left to clean up. For instance, I don't yet have a "contact us" form set up. And that's something I'm going to want to do very soon.

I am really getting into Django. I can't say that it's been the easiest to pick up. I'm a web designer, I'm not a programmer. So there have been many late nights, banging my head against the wall, trying to figure out how to get things working the way I know that they should.

So, please, look around, I'm sure you will find a few rough edges. Hopefully, I'll get those polished up nicely before long.

Update

It was late when I wrote this, so I forgot something very important. I especially want to thank Jeff Croft for releasing source code to lost-theories.com. This was very helpful for the development of this site. Also, special thanks to The Falling Bullets website for releasing their source code. This helped immensely on getting my Ma.gnolia feed working. And, based on some things they were doing, I was able to figure out to get my Flickr "date taken" to import to the database correctly.

Thanks, y'all.

Small updates

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

OK, so I don't really have anything important to update. Just a few thoughts.

First, I don't know what's going on with my Flickr sidebar. I really didn't post that many photos of the IKEA catalog. Anyway, no time to look into what it's doing now.

Next, I've finally got Django running on my site (not here). So, I'm hoping to possibly get a blog running off it soon. Along those lines, I've been considering combining this blog and the Shelbybark Design blog into one blog off the main site. I realize that I'm really bad at updating either one, but maybe with just one, I could get it updated more often. Anyway, maybe something there by the first of the year. If you have an opinion on the matter feel free to share it.

Speaking of Django, my trip to Lawrence last month was fantastic. Lawrence is a very cool place. Everything was within walking distance from the newspaper, so we walked everywhere. I wish Tuscaloosa had such a nice downtown. If Kansas was within 300 miles of here, I'd be very tempted to try to convince them to hire me.

BarCamp Birmingham

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Woo hoo, I’m posting again. I’m not going to make any promises to any continued productivity in this area. My jobs have been keeping be very busy recently. However, I was able to take time this past Saturday to go to the first ever BarCamp for Birmingham.

The first question most people have is “BarCamp?!?!?” no, it’s not where I’ve learned to improve my abilities in making a Blue Cosmopolitan. The name actually comes from the terms “foo” and “bar” which are common placeholder names in computer programming. BarCamp was started last August in Palo Alto, California, as an alternate to FooCamp which O’Reily organized and was invitation only, which I won’t go into here.

BarCamp is an “unconference.” It’s a conference without a schedule, at least without one until everyone shows up. Everyone is expected to participate in some way. Whether by presenting or by asking questions. This is the most difficult part for me, as I’m a fairly introspective individual. I did try to make some points in one of the smaller talks, so, hopefully, I’m covered.

Due to being up until the wee hours of the morning with an email server install the night before, I arrived in Birmingham about an hour into the proceedings. Which just meant that I missed the organizing of the two tracks of 30 minute talks. The highlights for me were the Ruby on Rails Q&A, Typographical Style for web development, and beautiful javascript.

Between being dead tired and my usual shyness I didn’t introduce myself to very many people, but I did meet Bill Abel from The Slaughter Group. In fact, when he told me where he worked I think I had a blank look on my face, I thought he said he worked for the Sauder Group, and I told him I’d never heard of that. Once I thought back on it, I realized what he’d said. Bill, yes, I’ve heard of the Slaughter Group. I had a tour of Slaughter-Hanson back in the early nineties, while I was in college. That was one of the places, along with every issue of Communication Arts, that really put a fire in me for design.

I had hoped to meet Jeremy Flint since he’s how I found out about BarCamp by stumbling across his website recently. However, Jeremy had to be out of town that day, but he was able to video back in with iChat for the closing.

Be sure to check out the photo group at Flickr. And specifically this one that shows my less-than-better-side.

I hope to make it to the next one too. I think I heard that they will try to organize the next one this spring. Thanks to all those who worked so hard to bring BarCamp Birmingham together. I think it was a success.

New Riverwood Website

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Whew, I just wrapped up the development of the new Riverwood Presbyterian Church website. It went live late Sunday evening. I have to say, this is the most fun I've had so far developing a website. I had a lot of free rein to set it up the way I thought would work best. We have a calendar that is fed from Google Calendar, a Photo Gallery, online audio with podcasting, a blog, plus a few other things. Check it out and let me know what you think...

...and many thanks to Tim, Melissa, Prathima and Jimmy for all the help getting content up and running so quickly.

Whoops!

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

I was working with my CSS file tonight with spotty wireless and lost half of my CSS file (without a backup). So, I decided to go ahead and implement an idea I had tried working with a few months ago. There might still be some broken parts, but I'll try to get those worked out.

Speaking of new, I've also recently updated Shelbybark Design's site. Let me know what you think...

Wilcox concert June 2006

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

DSC_0815
Originally uploaded by shelbybark.

Here are some photos from the David Wilcox concert last night. Be sure to check out Wes's photo with Dave. The entire set can be viewed by going to the set

Self Portrait rearview mirror

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Self Portrait rearview mirror
Originally uploaded by shelbybark.

I've still been extremely busy. However, Shelbybark Design bought it's first toy. So, you'll probably see a good bit of the results here. You can watch the Flickr list over in the sidebar for new photos.

The Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

With apologies to all my dispensationalist-envangelical friends and family, this is hilarious:

The Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism

The wrong St Matthews

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Well, I've been extremely busy lately. Although I've had a few ideas floating around for posting. Maybe I'll get to those later. However, we saw a small piece on one of the Birmingham TV stations last night about a mail scam about a prayer rug. The scam -- apparently a nation-wide scam -- happens to say it's from "St. Matthews Church" and that caused a few calls to St. Matthews Anglican up in Birmingham. The reporter interviewed Roger, so enjoy.

The wrong St. Matthews - Very slow link. Be patient.

Django on the move

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Well the Django project has had an exciting week this week. Two of the designers for Lawrence.com, Wilson Miner and Jeff Croft, have updated their personal websites to use Django. They both look very sharp. Also, it was announced this week that Django will be participating in the Google Summer of Code project. So, hopefully, that will get the word out about Django as well. Also, related to Google, Google released a tech talk this week over at Google Video of Jacob Kaplan-Moss (one of the developers of Django) explaining Django to a bunch of programmers.

Ah, for those unfamiliar with Django, you can read more about it over at the Django Project web site.

Steve Jobs speech at Stanford

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Last week I listened to a very cool commencement speech (requires iTunes, or read the transcript) for Stanford given by Steve Jobs from June 2005. It is worth the time to listen. I never knew that he was adopted. He talks a little about that and he also talks about his dealing with cancer. Very motivational for a freelancer.

Early Spring Photos

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it here, but I put some new photos up over at the photo gallery.

Sony BRAVIA ad

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Even though we have cable now, we don't watch a lot of TV. So this ad might have been around a while, but I just ran across it today. You have to check this one out. First, watch the commercial. Then, go back and watch the 7 minute "making of." It's incredible. Not at all how I would have imagined they would have created it. Enjoy.

Commercial

Hi-bandwidth (H.264)
Lo-bandwidth

The Making of

Hi-bandwidth (H.264)
Lo-bandwidth

Photo Gallery - Fall 2005

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

I put up some new (old) photos over at the photo gallery. So, there you go Mom.

I hope to get more up there soon...

Serviceable Coffee

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

As some of you know, I am somewhat picky when it comes to coffee. For example, I cannot find any coffee shops in Tuscaloosa that make good coffee. If only Chattanooga were closer, I think I would go broke visiting Greyfriar's. Anyway, I have been looking for a serviceable, cheap and easy coffee option to brew at home for a while. I think I might have found one. I've tried about 5 bags of Seattle's Best Blend (SBB) made by Seattle's Best Coffee. I don't usually like the blends. I much prefer a nice varietal coffee. However, I've been very pleased with the SBB.

Oh, and I cannot vouch for the Cinnabon store in the mall that carries Seattle's Best coffee. However, I'd bet I wouldn't like it.

Visitor in the yard

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Heather called a few minutes ago to let me know that they had this visitor in the front yard today. She said he was trying to jump the fence to the backyard. I don't think he would like it very much back there. Especially if Shelby and Lucy were around.

I have no idea where this thing could have come from.

Update: I have added some other photos to our photo gallery

CG on <i>The Sound of Music</i>

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

We watched *The Sound of Music* with CG last weekend. I think she enjoyed it, but she thought it was a little long. At some point during the movie she looked at me and said, "She's got a song for everything!" I couldn't argue with that.

The Bishop as Benchmark

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

This article from Roger Salter+ was in one of St. Matthews' recent bulletins. I could not get a hold of the original digital copy, so I handled it the old-fashioned way, I retyped it. Any typos are most likely mine. I thought it was fantastic.

For many of us who are Anglicans both by conviction and through careful comparison with other equally valid Christian traditions there is the heartfelt yearning that Anglicanism should once again be a powerful force for witness and mission in the modern world and in the future. Beyond the present turmoil and discouragements we hope to see a well defined reconstituted Anglicanism firmly founded in Holy Scripture and loyal to the guidelines of Reformational theology which is the truest and purest presentation of catholic belief and piety. Anglicanism is the product of the selection and refinement of the best thought and insights culled from the Christian centuries and compiled in the Book of Common Prayer 1662. The minds of our founders were drenched with Holy Scripture. They were well researched in the history, belief, and conduct of the early church and subsequent eras. They wholeheartedly embraced the Reformation and they have bequeathed to Christians of every generation since a solid foundation for doctrine, discipleship, and devotion. Anglicanism is neither perfect nor suited to everyone, but is a version of Christian conviction and life that is satisfying to many, and eager to co-operate with all who love the gospel and long for the universal recognition of the supremacy of Christ. It holds forth a heritage and an approach to pastoral care in preaching, teaching, worship, and fellowship that is enormously reassuring and enabling for countless souls, and within the Anglican framework there is a content, ambience, and balance in the thins of God that displays a wisdom conducive to the spiritual well-being of all those who place themselves within the ambit of Anglican care. Head, heart, and human need may be well ministered to through the resources of historic Anglicanism. It is a communion of believers that exists to the glory of God and for the good of humankind. Therefore its service is twofold -- worship and witness. Anglicanism would worship God worthily as its main occupation and preach Christ fervently as its chief act of compassion toward fellow men. To bring mankind to the knowledge of God in this life, and to put them in possession of eternal life is the mission of Anglicanism expressed frequently and liturgically in the Prayer of St Chrysostom.

Flower in the Park

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

View image

Riverwood Classical School

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Well, I just finished up one of my web projects. It's for Riverwood Classical School. Heather and I have been heavily involved recently in the start up of the school, and, Lord willing, the school will open this fall. Please keep the school in your prayers.

I'm really excited about the web site too.

Covenant Worldwide

steven@shelbybark.com (Steven Crawford)

Well I found this over at Prydain's blog. It appears that Covenant Seminary is posting free (non-credit) classes in MP3 and PDF online. Some of the topics are as follows:

Ancient & Medieval Church History
Biblical Theology, Calvin's Institutes
Francis A. Schaeffer: The Early Years
Francis A. Schaeffer: The Later Years
Hebrews to Revelation
Humanity, Christ & Redemption
New Testament History
Old Testament History

I'm salivating just thinking about it. Looks like I'm reloading the iPod.