Dgplug

Like I mentioned the other day, Django is driving me batty! Ok, I cannot completely blame Django. A dental procedure has left me in quite a bit of pain and unable to focus. So I was wondering what else I could do, instead of Django and decided I’d learn PostgreSQL. I was tickled pink when I read that Postgres is actually Post Ingres. I am old enough to remember Ingres databases that ran on computers I supported as a junior hardware engineer in the late 90s. I was warned not to ever touch the database machine unless I was supervised :P I also attended seminars for another ‘Post Ingres’ database called NonstopSQL in the early oughts when I worked with Compaq as a support engineer for their laptops. Engineers would have open sessions. But what did a boy servicing laptops have to do with Tandem machines? How did they let me attend? That I will never know. Just that I found them fascinating :) ...

Wasn’t quite well today, so took it slow. The Problem The only thing I managed to learn was what a Cross Site Request Forgery(CSRF) is, and how Django helps protect against it. The Wikipedia page describes it in painstaking detail, and if you want it described a bit more simply, then Jesse Ruderman does an admirable job. Computerphile does an even better job. I am using this analogy in my head. ...

I miss writing about what I learn. So I am going to try and begin again. I was too focussed on trying to learn all the stuff as quickly as possible, so I can go job hunt. But I realise, I need to strike some sort of balance between learning slow enough, so that I can learn and document and enjoy vs going full tilt to finish up the blocks that I need. ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on May 2nd, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Snow clouds rolling down a mountain peak, near Se La. Click to embiggen I don’t know the name of this bird, I only imagine his glittering beak tucked in a white wing while the clouds— which he has summoned from the north— which he has taught to be mild, and silent— thicken, and begin to fall into the world below like stars, or the feathers of some unimaginable bird ...

When a book keeps popping up in your radar, from a wide variety of sources, over months, then you just have to go read it. via the amazing Ricardo Siri. click the image to see full size. ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on May 21st, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Welcome to another edition of the work letter :) Let’s just dive into it. Click the headers to wander off to the original articles. OS X Reviewed Sometime earlier this year, the operating system known as Mac OS X aka OS X aka macOS, stepped into its 21st year of existence, marking two decades of steady iterative movement. That its underpinnings are older, by at least another decade, is story for some other time. I put this in here, not for the OS itself but for the reviews of the OS, by John Siracusa. From it’s fledgling days, through the first ten releases upto 10.10, John covered it all. In painstaking detail. Other folks wrote reviews. John wrote introductory books to each new OS. Every other line was linked someplace I could learn more. It meant that everytime, I sat to read and learn from a John Siracusa review, I would have to set aside a couple of days to finish it. ...