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 …

As the #3 ranked contributor on http://programmers.stackexchange.com, I've provided my share of advice. 554 Answers to be factual about it. The moderators, however, have decided that I'm no longer welcome. It was simply shocking to be firmly (but politely) shown the door.

The issue was Python. Specifically …

Check this out: http://hyperpolyglot.org/scripting.

It's a side-by-side comparison of PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby. I'm not sure why, but it seems sort of cool.

Things like "offside rule" to describe indentation in Python are confusing at first. The "regions which define local scope" section on Python makes precious …