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The other reason why Fixed Rate Contracts suck
You have a prospective client and you are discussing the project. Often the client would like you to quote a fixed fee for the work, so maybe you think thats ok and come up with some number by using a fancy estimation tool or tossing chicken bones. It really doesn’t much matter, something is likely…
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Django Logging Setup
Post 1.3, Django has some nice integration with the python logging module. It can dictConf to specify the formatters, handlers, etc. This is all pretty well documented here. What wasn’t immediately obvious (to me anyway) was that you can use any of the handlers in django logging and pass the __init__ params to them in this config. So for…
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PySide + PyInstaller = Joy
I have a small project to make a pretty simple windows GUI executable. In the past I have always used wxpython + py2exe for this kind of thing but decided to try something new. After some poking around I settled on PySide which is the bindings for QT from Nokia. Its nice. Seems a little…
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Removing old iPhone/iPad Backups FTW
A few days ago I tweeted this: getting tired of having more free space on my phone than on my laptop Which got me thinking. How much space is being used up on my laptop just for backing up my phone? Some investigation yielding the following obvious result. Alot. But what’s worse is that there…
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Email only Signup
One of the things that bugs me about the web is having to create logins everywhere. There are lots of attempts to deal with this problem (OpenID, Facebook Connect, 1Password) etc. but they all seem to have problem or require me to do things like: Use only sites that implement them Copy and paste stuff…
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Buying Time
For the last several years I have been working essentially as a contractor/consultant rather than a full time employee. These engagements are of varying lengths and generally center around specific projects. This arrangement suits me well as I prefer to think of my job as working on a Project rather than for a Company and…
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Please Stop Giving Me The Business
As a programmer there is good and bad about working inside a company who’s core business is not directly the software you are writing. The Good: No one knows what you do You can get to learn about other businesses/fields The bad: No one knows what you do You can end up being treated like…
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Screening Programmers Via Email
There is lots of good articles out there on the web about how to interview programmers. Here’s one. Most of this understandably focuses on the interview process whether its a phone screen or and in person all day event. At some places the process essentially stretches out for a 90 day trial period. I don’t…
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Spokefest 2010
Pretty excited about SpokeFest tomorrow. I did it the first year with the little girl but didn’t make it after that. This year they added a 47 mile option which should be fun. With that and the ride to downtown it should be about 67 for me. This year I even have a T-shirt.
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Another Story About How Fred Brooks is Smarter than Me
Maybe I could do a whole book, but I guess he already has. Back when I was in gradual school Fred Brooks was the adviser for something called the building walk-through project. The idea was pretty crazy. You would model a building in a computer before it was built and “walk” around in it using…
“You know what truth is? It’s some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, “Yeah, yeah – ain’t it the truth?”