Jonas Beckman

The last swim of the year felt really good!

Me and Aila are taking it very easy tonight. She’ll make a delicious dinner - but right now she is out shopping and before dinner she’ll visit a friend. So I have a little time to spare and started a new Python project: moving mail from Outlook to Eudora.

Aila lives very close to Fjällgatan, one of the best views of Stockholm. But we only spent about 15 minutes outside, watching the fireworks - it was too cold. We both remembered walking alone through crowds on nights like this.

Happy blogday, Martin! OK, it was actually yesterday. But Editthispage was down again.

Maybe I should get my act together and start doing something with my new domain and all the cool hosting I have over at Imeme?

Update: I just installed Squishdot 1.4 in my Imeme Zope instance and started playing! Very smooth, so far…

Garret uses Feedreader to aid him in his fierce linking. Me, I’ll probably just read more good stuff I never get around to telling anyone about.

Python City is a great new collection of Python links.

When will any of these RAD GUI tools for Python be ready for use in a paying project? I’m an optimist: my guess is sometime next year.

Keep doing all that good work, Al! And don’t kick in on the job… even if you’re in the best place to do that.

Have a really nice holiday, Craig!

James Clark is worried because XML isn’t as simple as it started out to be. Unlike many others, he is also doing things about it. Here is a summary of his recent keynote speech from the XML 2001 conference. Well worth a read. Via Eclectic

XML Schema is many things - but not simple. However, there are several good alternative XML Schema langugages to choose from.

Also, many new products are coming out. The XML market is still young - we can still expect different and maybe simpler ways to do things.

David Brownell lists the top ten SAX2 tips. Useful even if you are not a beginner. BTW, SAX supposedly stands for Simple API for Xml.

Did nothing today… well, almost nothing. Aila has a cold, my brother is ill and I have a really sore throat. Well, it will pass.

Next year I’ll do some Delphi work again. The first thing will be a small Delphi seminar: me and another consultant will talk about unit tests and tools for UML modeling and refactoring - plus other goodies we plan on using in an upcoming military project. I’ll probably use these articles about writing unit-tests in Delphi.

BTW - Borland now has a free personal edition of Delphi 6! For GUI Windows application, Delphi is still my tool of choice. And yes, there is a Python for Delphi.

I browsed the best O’Reilly articles of 2001 - several good ones there.

Scott Hanson and Hal were talking about lutfisk.

Another great day with my ten-year old nephew Martin.

We spent a few hours building our own little computer game: discussed the story, added a new room, tweaked some pictures, surfed for new sounds etc. Martin was doing fine: he knows just what kind of game he wants and was full of good suggestions.

We used a small Python sample with game logic that was very easy to modify. But wasted a lot of time on graphics - none of us really know Photoshop and Aila was home with a cold. Anyway… it took us 4 hours to build a teleporter to a different little world, with matching sound effects.

After a walk and lots of Thai food we went to a gaming cafe for some online Counterstrike. Martin is a newbie and the local LAN crowd were wizards, so we just played random Internet servers.

But Martin is the king of Time Crisis II: one single run and the alltime high score was his. Oh yeah!

Bruce Eckel has posted a very promising first version of Thinking in Python. This is a complete revision of his old Java book about GOF patterns. Eckels says: “Python is my language of choice for virtually all my own programming projects”. Amen.

Everyone though Santa was unusually funny this year… but today he had a full stomach and a very tired head.
I went out to Hellasgården for the traditional cure: sauna and winter bathing.

A picture of the sauna from a mild winter. This year we had the usual hole in the ice.

Tomorrow my nephew Martin is coming over to continue our exploration of PyGame. I think he’ll build himself a nice little computer game - he is a very creative and visual thinker.
Martin didn’t have Photoshop on his computer. But after a little surfing I found an interesting replacement: Pixia is Japanese freeware, used by many anime artists. It’s apparently starting to get a cult following in the West.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The sun was shining today but Sweden is getting even colder. I took Tintin for another really long walk before lunch, then went swimming in the afternoon. Maybe Tintin would have liked the steam sauna, but I didn’t experiment.

As the sun went down, me and Aila drove Tintin to a dog hotel south of Stockholm, Stora Wädersjö hundpensionat. It seems like a very nice place to spend Christmas, if you are a dog. But I still felt a little sad and Aila actually cried.

Python 2.2 (final) is great - but where is the new version of win32all (the Windows extensions)?

It turns out Mark Hammond, the undisputed champion of Python Windows programming, is no longer employed by Activestate! Fortunately his excellent software has always been Open Source and the new version will be released soon. BTW, anyone hearing of suitable opportunities can contact Mark here.

Tintin is a beautiful but rather wild dog. His human parents went to Cuba on vacation, so Aila is looking after him. I took him for a three hour walk in the snow yesterday. We both like running and jumping and some other things - lots of fun!

Garret is feeling better. Take care!

Martin linked to this picure of Hal’s son Ian. Proud fathers, all - maybe there is hope for the next generation?

Maybe some of you missed Aila’s pictures of my blue summer-hair?

Me and Aila went out and had some great Thai-food. Then I took Tintin out for another multi-hour tour. We run at exactly the same pace, it feels like he can stay ahead of me without straining the leash forever.

The temperature was well below -10, but for some reason breathing felt just fine.

It’s early morning, I’ve taken the day off and will be in the pool 30 minutes from now.

Yesterday and the day before I was at the kick-off for a new project at the Swedish military HQ. During breaks I was on the phone, supporting a recent installation at the National Board of Police. Busy, busy… but now it’s Christmas’s time!

Python 2.2 final is out!

Hal feels uneasy about being fingerprinted. I know the feeling, the Swedish Security Police (SÄPO) will soon run a background check on me. Nobody has ever done that before - but the Swedish military checks all consultants.

Garret keeps providing several interesting things every day. On rare occasions he says he’s tired or ill and will link less… this is invariably followed by links, lots of links.