I found new friends through EuroPython this summer. Currently, my main gig is for KMM (Knowledge Management in Museums), a Nordic/European cultural heritage project. Lots of interesting infrastructure work and almost all Python: Django, xmpppy… and I have just added rdflib to the mix. Haven’t had this much fun for a long time. Last week was hectic though, as we prepared the public sites for a re-launch. I will write more soon!

Some of the others are going to Amsterdam to meet the European Digital Library people. But me, I’m going to Chicago. I’ll bring my Mac and see what happens – see you there!

Right now I’m trying to translate PyPy from sources on Windows. In other words, I’m just fooling around. Python 2.4 or 2.5? Can I get by with Visual Studio 2005 or do I really have to reinstall some old VS 2003 compiler? Maybe MinGW again? We’ll see…

Python developers are fascinating. I’ve been lurking around some of these mailing lists and weblogs for years, but there is always more to learn.

Hal also provides some scientific support for the thesis that some of us are born nightowls. Dave Rogers didn’t have to be told, though.

James Robertson just invited me to a nice new GMail account. His weblog is a great place to start if Smalltalk intrigues you. Thanks a lot!

I was a fan of Dare Obasanjaro even before I started using RSS Bandit. He is often very clear and outspoken about difficult subjects. But here he takes his time to speculate about the future of programming languages.

Darrel Norton is learning Python this year. It’s a good thing to do! I’ve been lucky enough to use Python in real projects… and it’s so much easier to write readable code.

Dag König is a fellow Swedish developer with a nice weblog. He is active in the Sweden .Net User Group, which I recently joined. And you did notice the new Windows Mobile Application Development Toolkit, right?

Except for some geeky stuff that suddenly feel overwhelmingly urgent: things like uploading my many RSS feeds from RSS Bandit to Bloglines so I can use them on the road. Or trying to get my Qtek 8010 smartphone (also sold as Audiovox SMT 5600) to moblog. Flickr is the main alternative so far, but maybe Danish Albino Gorilla is easier? (found via Christian Dalager). And should I start sharing the music I listen using audioscrobbler? (found via Peter Lindberg)

Before coming to grips with del.icio.us there are hundreds and hundreds of old bookmarks to sort and wade through. Maybe not tonight, though.

Hmm… I am beginning to think I have done too much serious work lately. Fortunately I no longer use a Nokia phone, otherwise the release of Python for Nokia series 60 might have caused another online/mobile hack attack.

Well, I always found it hard to sleep before going on journeys. Especially those where I plan to rest and learn things about myself. Not only do I overpack, suddenly it feels as if the only thing that matters is to stay online and write. So I stay up all night and usually feel pretty bad when it’s time to leave.

Mind hacks are fun. But I recently stopped taking caffeine when it made me irritable and stupid. And lack of sleep will disturb those feedback loops, too. Let’s call it a night then, shall we?

So, it’s now late morning and I’m off to eat vegetables and rest.

Meanwhile, Joi Ito is off to the 21st Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. He hopes they’ll play nice with his laptop even though he hasn’t gone through the entire survival guide.

BookFilter discusses books, magazines, authors, publishers and ponies. It is one of several community sites built using FreeFilter.

Some articles make complex technical subjects sound easy: The Power of XmlElement Parameters in ASP.NET Web Methods.
Via Drew’s blog

A Primer on Python Metaclass Programming.
Maybe this one won’t seem easy without some prior knowledge.

In summary: the world is so unpredictable that young Americans will become conformists prepared to rule the world, Germans just conformists and Swedes subcultural has-beens. We’ll see about that, I guess… I’m just an aging gen-X:er, so what do I know?

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On my way home from a long stormy walk (it’s winter here again!), I saw two very small, very brave little kids street-dancing by themselves, mixing "Thank you for letting me be myself" and new stuff on their box. The cold didn’t seem to bother them and they were good!

I was already in a happy mood but that clinched it: this spring will be great!

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Hal is linking to a common favorite today. Matt Rossi has found a new home and an awesome URL for his demented meanderings: onceinoticediwasonfireidecidedtorelaxandenjoythefall.

BTW – Hal, I really appreciated your kind words a little while ago.

Exactitudes is "[...] an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity"
Via Neablog

API Changes between versions of the .NET Framework.
Via ScottW’s ASP.NET WebLog. I may not join the Borg anytime soon… but I work a lot with C# right now, so I am really glad there are plenty of DotNet webloggers around.

My old HyperCard hero Dan Shafer and Robert Scoble disagree on Open Source

Kevin Altis: Python is an Agile programming language!

Do people tell their diaries the truth? I always do, of course . Via mymarkup.net

Here is another nice little essay that talks about the same American realpolitik.

The first Swedish weblogger dinner took place this evening: Real bloggers eat sushi.

Erik (mymarkup.net) and Klipspringer

Gustaf Holmberg (Det perfekta tomrummet)

Fredrik Appelberg (Mulli.nu!) and Henrik Torstensson

Not long afterwards, updates began to show up on blogs.unmade.com. Klocklös i tiden kept track of the blogger dinner links and Emmanuel posted another dinner picture.

Python legend Fredrik Lundh couldn’t make it, but noticed that others were having fun.

I just haven’t had it in me to go bonkers posting war links…

War kills people… news channels have no room for this one truth. And to me that makes the whole medium feel like a lie.

Journalist Scott Rosenberg about the denial of death.

I am making software again and like it that way. Monday we make the first release to our current customer. We actually feel pretty relaxed about it: just another thing done one small step at a time.

Our tools are VS Studio 2003 Final Beta, TortoiseCVS for version control and NUnit for unit testing.

C# Refactory is a nice refactoring add-in for VS Studio. I bought it and like it a lot – but unfortunately it doesn’t work with VS Studio 2003 yet.

C# may not be Smalltalk – I have shipped real projects in both Smalltalk and Python and hate type casts and stupid compile time stuff as much as anyone. But for what we do right now it works out. Reflection is our twisted friend.

As usual I began Friday with two hours of Lomi-Lomi massage. I do this on a regular basis – it’s fun, helps me stay sane and feels really good.

Massage is a language you learn by listening and by doing. Right now, I do intense listening. Eventually I’ll speak it myself – I began training shiatsu a few years ago and plan to be licensed some day.

Well, I’ll definitely write more later… but now I’m off to do my swimming, before the pool gets crowded.

Ben Hammersley has collected background info on the Kurds in Iraq. My personal expectation is for USA to sell the Kurds short in a clumsy and bloody fashion – but I do hope to be wrong.

You’re on Windows, so the standard way to do things is to hack until you get the behaviour you want…

Eric Brunel, Quote of the Week on the DDJ Python-URL

mainframe n. An obsolete device still used by thousands of obsolete companies serving billions of obsolete customers and making huge obsolete profits for their obsolete shareholders. And this year’s run twice as fast as last year’s.

from The Devil’s IT Dictionary

Why PC:s crash and mainframes don’t From Byte back in 1998. I googled for it and found it via my own link to it two years ago.

If you’ve done any Web or UI design, or even thought about it much, you should say, “Oh, right, I know what that is” to most of these patterns. But a few of them might be new to you, and some of the familiar ones may not be part of your usual design repertoire.

UI Patterns and Techniques

Jörg notes that Mark Pilgrim has written a Python library for XFML. Don’t worry – Mark explains what XFML is, too.