Nearly a year ago, I read an article by Ben Collins-Sussman called A Mercurial “super client”. About a month or so prior to that, I had started playing with Bazaar and, in particular, bzr-svn. Since then, I have really wanted to write a similar article for Bazaar, but haven’t found the time. I’m happy to say, that both Bazaar and bzr-svn have come to a head, with Bazaar releasing 2.0 and bzr-svn releasing 1.0. So, it seems like the right time to get this done!

Continue reading Bazaar as a Subversion “super client”

Saw this over on the Unified Python Planet: http://plope.com/smartest_guy_in_the_room

Great rant.

So, I learned a few things this weekend when trying to get some pictures of a sunrise, that I thought I’d share.

Get up early

I knew this, but didn’t realize quite how early. The paper called for sunrise at 6:53, so I figured 6:15 would be fine. Wrong. Make sure you’re out at the location an hour before that. I missed some great, vibrant pictures by not being there earlier. Moreover, I really wanted to get that early sunrise shot with a long shutter speed… it didn’t happen. :-(

The sun moves fast

It really does move quickly, so you’ll need to be quick on your feet in moving around trying to get the shot that you want.

Scope out the area ahead of time

This is tough to do with two young kids who really want you to play… but if you have the chance, get out to the location and scout around a little. I was near a pier and I ended up taking some shots that I wouldn’t have wasted my time on, if I had scouted ahead of time. The flip side is that I probably missed a few good shots, because I wasted my time on the bad ones. :-(

Learn to use manual mode

I’m still an amateur, so these things aren’t hitting quite as quickly as I like, but looking back I should have switched the camera to manual mode. That would have given me more consistent exposures, and more control over just how much I wanted to blow the highlights to get the detail.

Bring all pieces to your tripod

In particular, the piece that mounts to the bottom of the camera. :-) I usually keep mine attached to the tripod, but didn’t this time and ended up leaving it at home.

Keep trying

Despite the hiccups, I kept shooting, trying different angles, playing with the exposure, and tone. I learned a lot about how much I do and don’t know. And it was good to get out and just shoot without any other interruptions. With that said, here are a couple pics that made the final cut:

I’ve been following isayx3 on Flickr for a while now, and every once in a while, he throws up an image like this:

It’s absolutely stunning. It looks like something out of a food magazine. So I decided to try it for myself. Let me tell ya: it’s much harder than it looks. There are so many factors at play: color, lighting, the relationship of the pictures, the direction of the subject, etc. So I took a number of photos over the weekend, trying to catch the boys at play, and contemplating their surroundings, etc. I’m pretty happy with what came out:

Thanks to isayx3 for all the inspiration. He’s an awesome photographer.

My friend—Tim—and I gave a presentation at PyOhio on unit testing frameworks for Python. I’ve had the the slides and source on my Presentations page since we gave the talk, but now the talk is available online too! It’s always amusing to see yourself talk. :-)

Check out other PyOhio 2009 talks as well!

At my workplace, we like to follow an Agile development methodology called Scrum. Turns out there is a bit of an issue… most issue trackers don’t allow us to organize tickets the way we need to. We’ve been using Trac for a long time (before we started using Scrum), and it’s one of the few tools that pretty much everyone likes. I’ve looked at other issue trackers (Bugzilla, Jira, Scarab, Roundup, etc), but they’re either costly, too heavyweight, or just plain don’t do what we need them to.

So, several weeks ago, I decided I’d make a dent in getting us closer to an ideal situation. I created a Trac plugin that allows you to prioritize your backlog using drag-and-drop in your browser. On top of that, it shows milestones on the side, and you can drag-and-drop tickets onto them to assign them into that milestone. It makes laying out your priorities and assigning them into sprints (milestones) a breeze.

For the little bit of actual code that comprises the plugin, it was a long road to get there. I cycled through 4 javascript toolkits before landing on Dojo. I learned quite a bit about Ajax—although I’m certain I have more to learn, and had to reacquaint myself with Genshi. In the end, it all works rather well and I’m fairly happy with the end result. I did learn that I’m terrible at web design, so it doesn’t look quite like the picture I have in my head, but it works. :-)

If you’re interested, I’ve released the plugin on Launchpad as trac-backlog.

A number of you who follow this blog also know that I’ve been using photography as a creative outlet, and a way to let my mind work on other things that don’t end up as source code on a computer. One of the guys I’ve been following for a while is Zack Arias. He’s well known for his OneLight Workshop, and has an amazing story about he came to be the photographer he is today.

He was asked to be a guest blogger for Scott Kelby’s blog a while back. Instead of writing an article, he put up a video called Transform. Often we all wear masks, and never show what’s happening behind them… but not Zack. He let us know about his personal struggle, and made a motivational video to encourage folks to keep trying.

That’s sparked an email, which led to a blog post called How Many Of You Are Standing On The Dock?. The outpouring of response has been phenomenal. Zack and B really struck a chord with folks, and the amount of positive energy it has created is almost overwhelming. Story after story after story… Amazing.

But it doesn’t end there. A convicted felon, Derrick, ended up knocking on Zack’s door, and it turned out, he had something to share… Dope, Soap, and Hope.

I think we all have a story like this. There’s a step we’d like to take, but it’s so far off course from where we’re at it seems impossible to get to our destination. Check out the links above, and prepare to be inspired! There are tons of amazing stories in there!

I’ve gathered the pertinent links here, for your browsing convenience:

• Transform
• How Many Of You Are Standing On The Dock?
• Dope, Soap, and Hope