Orwell’s 1984

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face … forever. That, probably is the quotable line, I found. The book’s terrible, and I hated the story (too bleak, too dystopian). The only reason for its popularity is that events in real life, are proving Orwell right.

June 13, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

A Hundred Days of Code, Day 044

Continuing the Flask course. Learnt about seperation of concerns today. To me that means that I should try to keep related things together and disparate stuff apart. Case in point, we1 created a seperate file config.py to store the variables about the program in. And then to kind of secure it even more, instead of hardcoding the password in the file, it now looks for an environment variable, which I need to set before running the program. Another example was when we created a seperate file to process input (for our logins) and then put all the login, password etc. fields in there. This feels good. Feels like I am learning best practices and good habits already. ...

June 13, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

Butterick’s Practical Typography

In my youth, I came across the work of Robin Williams. No, not that one. She introduced me to the beauty of CRAP. And the fact that the PC is not a typewriter. But most of all, she introducted me to the beauty of type and design Fonts, and line spacing and kerning and everything else lovely, about the written word. And now if you want all that wisdom distilled, into a short, opinionated, beautiful web series, look no further than Matthew Butterick’s, Practical Typography. ...

June 12, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

A Hundred Days of Code, Day 043

Continuing with the Flask course. Today I learnt about how to loop, using Jinja loop blocks. The syntax is slowly becoming clear to me. Everything python related in enclosed is {% … %} blocks, except for variables which use their own {{ … }} syntax. What I am still confused on is the relationship between the various files, I am writing. There is html and then there are templates and there are python files themselves. Hopefully that will get clearer in the days to come. My naïve understanding, right now, is ...

June 12, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Word for word, the most epigramatic book I have read. Short, sweet and beautiful words and lines and dialogue. Here’s a few. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. ...

June 12, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza

A Hundred Days of Code, Day 042

Second day with the Flask course. Beginning to realise that Flask is not a monolithic thing, but consists of a lot of moving parts. Looking forward to learning what they are as I progress along. Today I learnt how to set my Flask variable, and create an environment, so that I can run Flask consistently without problems. Miguel also teaches a simple, yet effective way to combat yak shaving. You know, where all you want is one simple thing, but then that depends on that other thing, which reminds you that you need that third thing and the next thing you know, you’re at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you can wax your car. Just don’t do that other thing. Focus on what you are doing. If there is something you need, use a dummy. Mock something up. This is a very real, meta lesson, that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my days. ...

June 11, 2020 · Mario Jason Braganza