Notes to self when using genRSS.py
genRSS is a Python 2 app.
Make sure you switch your environment.
python genrss.py --help
will give you everything else you need.
genRSS is a Python 2 app.
Make sure you switch your environment.
python genrss.py --help
will give you everything else you need.
Or how do you actually go do anything else you committed to do for yourself?
I always got confused on what to do when the going got tough and life happened and my goals then got waylaid.
Other than feeling lost and giving up on projects and promising to do better tomorrow, or next time?
(which took a looooooong time to come)
What could I do?
James Clear offers a lovely heuristic, that I have been applying to my writing since the year began.
(along with Seth’s advice to queue things up)
3. Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.
I've written previously about the importance of holding yourself to a schedule and not a deadline.
There might be occasions when deadlines make sense, but I'm convinced that when it comes to doing important work over the long–term, following a schedule is much more effective.When it comes to the day-to-day grind, however, following a schedule is easier said than done.
Ask anyone who plans to workout every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they can tell you how hard it is to actually stick to their schedule every time without fail.To counteract the unplanned distractions that occur and overcome the tendency to be pulled off track, I've made a small shift in how I approach my schedule.
My goal is to put the schedule first and not the scope, which is the opposite of how we usually approach our goals.
For example, let's say you woke up today with the intention of running 3 miles this afternoon.
During the day, your schedule got crazy and time started to get away from you.
Now you only have 20 minutes to workout.At this point, you have two options.
The first is to say, “I don't have enough time to workout today,” and spend the little time you have left working on something else.
This is what I would usually have done in the past.The second option is to reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule. Instead of running 3 miles, you run 1 mile or do five sprints or 30 jumping jacks.
But you stick to the schedule and get a workout in no matter what.
I have found far more long-term success using the this approach than the first.On a daily basis, the impact of doing five sprints isn't that significant, especially when you had planned to run 3 miles.
But the cumulative impact of always staying on schedule is huge. No matter what the circumstance and no matter how small the workout, you know you're going to finish today's task.
That's how little goals become lifetime habits.Finish something today, even if the scope is smaller than you anticipated.
If you like this tip the whole post is even more awesome.
Go find out Time Management Tips That Actually Work on his blog.
P.S. You should subscribe to the mailing list, you know. :)
P.P.S I haven’t missed a single week since I started doing this!
Back at it after a short personal break. Lots of stuff to catch up on!
i can go back and forth, between lists and strings, converting one to the other and vice versa
i can sort and reverse sort the items in them.
i can nest lists. have lists of lists!
you’ll get confused and make mistakes. it’s ok.
do i still remember functions?
this inceptive programming, using function as arguments to others and combining them with other elements like lists (or inside lists to do shady shit on other lists)? it’s fancily called higher order programming.
and all this stuff generalised and abstracted are called higher order procedures
python provides something like this, called map
very simply put, map
len
for example or abs
) iterable
(think of it as the elements of the list, coming out one by one, but you get your grubby paws on them, before they go into some defined data structure like a list.) if i assume seq
is any of these data structures, i can,
seq[i]
- get the ith element in that list or string or range or tuple len(seq)
- get its length seq1 + seq2
- concatenate two of them (not range) n*seq
- repeat them (not range) seq[start:end]
- slice and dice them e in seq
- will return true if e
exists in the sequence e not in seq
- will return true if it’s not for e in seq
- will iterate over each element in that sequence Why? They save me time!
Instead of indexing on numbers, like I do with the 1st element or the 0th element of a list, i can just index on things, I define myself
In python you create dictionaries using braces. and store data using key value pairs. here’s a few
dictionary_of_names = {}
creates an empty dictionary. dictionary_of_ages = {'Jason':40, 'Tess':48; 'Leo':76}
creates a dictionary of names (keys) with their related ages (values) and now I can just ask for Tess’s age with a dictionary_of_ages['Tess']
without having to lookup where and at what location Tess is in the dictionary
dictionaries are mutable
dictionary_of_ages['Puppy'] = 4
will add the age of my stray doggo to the dictionary) 'Leo' in dictionary_of_ages
) del
dictionary_of_ages.keys()
) and similarly I can get at the values with a dictionary_name.values()
So because of their flexibility on what they can store and index on, dictionaries are much more capable than other data types
It’s like soup!
You’re making soup and there are bugs falling in, from the ceiling.
So how do you get good soup?
You could,
Defensive programming is,
Testing code, basically boils down to checking inputs and outputs.
Debugging
Yikes! I have a bug!
How do I kill it? What do I want to do to fix this?
Set yourself up, for easy testing and debugging
When you test you can,
Testing Approaches
Bugs
Covert
Be Patient. this will take time to get good at
print
statements liberally Work with small things.
Work in increments.
Test and debug it.
Use backups.
Have versions.
Test and compare across versions.
Feel free to work up and down the version tree
Professor Grimson is awesome, and teaches me the way, I imagined some one teaching me CS basics. So many aha moments!
I can understand bits and pieces in spoken speech now. At it!
’Twas a good month for reading :)
June
The Song of the Bird, Anthony de Mello
(absolutely read. buy and give people copies.
this book for me, goes beyond a quake book.
it has shaped my life, and thoughts, since boyhood, subconsciously then and with intent now.)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot #1), Agatha Christie
(re-reading my way through the Poirot canon.
these books take me to the age I think I belong to, the late 1800s, early 1900s
absolutely delightful)
Epigrams on Men, Women and Love, Honoré de Balzac
(beautiful set of quotes)
Mother American Night, John Perry Barlow
(a man who lived life. founder of the EFF and the FSF.
and more importantly (to me), lyricist for the Grateful Dead)
Word by Word, Anne Lamott
(must listen (it’s an old audiobook.)
excellent companion to Bird by Bird.
imagine Anne teaching you how to write using BbB as a text book.
she’s awesome.
the book’s awesome.)
Indian Love Poems, Peter Pauper Press
(absolutely loved it)
Love Poems and Love Letters for All the Year, Peter Pauper Press
Flower Thoughts, Peter Pauper Press
Thoughts for a Good Life, Peter Pauper Press
Epigrams by Oscar Wilde, Peter Pauper Press
Murder on the Links (Poirot #2), Agatha Christie
(need i say, you ought to read it :))
More lists of books to read? Subscribe!