Once in a great while, you see someone engaging in Obstinate Idiocy.

Here's my recent example.

They're solving some kind of differential equation. Not sure why.

Symptom 1 of Obstinate Idiocy is No Rational Justification. The explanation is often "that's not relevant, what's relevant is this other thing I want …

Step 1. Look at the original HamCalc. Even if you aren't interested in Ham radio, it's an epic, evolving achievement in a specialized kind of engineering support. It's a repository of mountains of mathematical models, some published by the ARRL, others scattered around the internet.

Step 2. Look closely at …

After spending a couple of years (really) working with a publisher, the deal has gone south.

The problem was—likely—all mine. The book wasn't really what the publisher wanted. Perhaps it was close and they thought they could edit it into shape. And perhaps I wasn't responsive enough to …

http://madexpo.us/ June 27 - 29 Hampton, VA

I hope to see you there.

I suddenly realized that QR Codes are everywhere. Except my business cards. http://pypi.python.org/pypi/qrcode/2.0 That should allow me to solve that problem and move on.

Okay. This is seriously cool.

The Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) provides a controlled vocabulary that should be used to seed a project's data model.

See http://www.udef.com/

See http://www.opengroup.org//udef/

We're looking at applying UDEF retroactively to an existing schema.

What a pain in …

Just updated the Stingray Reader. There was an egregious error (and a missing test case). I fixed the error, but didn't add a test case to cover the problem. It's simple laziness. TDD is quite clear on how to tackle this kind of thing. Write the missing test case (which …

I'm looking forward to this. I'll be talking about Python.

• A Python 3.2 tutorial. I did a dry run with the help of the 757 Python group. Made a bunch of changes based on their input.
• A more in-depth presentation on a good architecture of Database Schema Migration scripts …

See this: http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201204/python_iteration_presentation.html Nicely done, very thorough presentation on some Python fundamentals. The nature of iteration and generator functions is easily overlooked.

As part of coming to grips with CouchDB (and a particularly odious graph-theory problem) I've been looking around for design guidelines, hints and tips.

This MongoDB Schema Design document is quite helpful. The Link vs. Embed section clarifies the essential tradeoff here. In SQL world, link is the only tool …