Python

A week in! Woohoo! Python Exercised with dictionaries today. Today was the first time, I could not solve my assignment, no matter what I tried. Lessons learnt: Stick to a schedule and do hard stops, since Python is only a small part of what I want to learn Learn to quit sooner. I’m like a dog with a bone, when it comes to problems. This approach may have helped me in the past, but it hinders me a lot, when writing code. Urdu Did the ‘re’ group of letters Exercised with the ‘re’ and ‘daal’ groups I’m learning the alphabet, using the wonderful Aamozish website, in case you folks have been confused about what I was doing with the language. Webdev Watched Webhooks for Beginners Sooner or later, I want to customise my dinky little Huginn instance to do a lot more. This’ll come in handy then. Physical Fitness Today was the first day, gym felt a wee bit normal. Hope this positive phase continues … Thoughts I seem to have got into a good work rhythm. Next step seems to prioritise my work and do more of what is needed, to get me a devops job. Feedback on this post? Mail me at feedback@janusworx.com P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list! Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe! P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit. ...

Slightly distracted day, today compared to the rest of the week before. Well, c’est la vie. Python Read about functions, key functions, and asterisks Practiced list comprehensions and dictionary lookups Learnt and practised some, about decimals and rounding up Devops Devops-ish? Upgraded the BIOS of my desktop to the current the latest available version. I was on v1.5, when I had last done it in July ’21. Now I am on v1.9 from November last year. Fixes plenty of vulnerabilities. While I got to know of it last eve, I did not upgrade then, because I wanted my mind fresh and attentive while I did this. I have bricked enough PCs and handhelds in my misspent youth and I cannot risk killing my daily driver to tiredness. What do they call it now? UEFI firmware?1 Urdu Learnt the ‘daal’ group of letters Today was also the first day, I realised reading right to left is becoming intuitive. I read “Daataa”2 in Urdu and went to check if I was correct by trying to read the English, and was wondering why they nonsensically called it “aataad”, until my brain switched back to Latin and reading left to right 😂 Physical Activity I hope gym gets easier, because I am getting crankier about the pain by the day. The better half says I sustained much more pain with physio and bore it longer and more stoically when I broke my back in 2017. Well, that was my body doing it to me and I had no control over it. Right now, I am doing this to myself, ergo the crankiness. I know this is good for me in the long run. Does not stop me from hating the process and its repercussions right now. I’m getting old and grumpy. Feedback on this post? Mail me at feedback@janusworx.com P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list! Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe! P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit. ...

Long day today1. I thought I got nothing much done, until I wrote this post. So, more incentive to keep writing these. Python Learning about how to make keyword arguments stick. And how to think about structuring programs Devops Deep dive into how to add prow job listings to the dashboard and viceversa; how to go about looking for the job from the dashboard Urdu / French Lots of practice with vowels and the ‘jiim’ group of letters. Since I know Hindi, Urdu progress is much, much, much faster than French. I think that is because, I am forcing my English grammar / vocabulary on another Romance language that has Germanic influences. This is leading to a lot of cognitive dissonance and slow progress. Much of my Urdu vocabulary comes from Hindi, which I learnt as a kid, and I definitely did not go looking for the “right” way to speak it. Better to just do French similarly as well. While I cannot do immersion, I can do what I want to do with French. Begin reading what I want to. Whether I understand it or not. I realise this will take me a lot longer than Urdu or Hindi, but that’s ok. Émilie du Châtelet, Montaigne and Dumas are not going anywhere, and neither am I :) My frame of learning now, after doing these two languages, as well as the rest of the stuff I am doing, is to just begin doing2. And figure out / learn the rules, the grammar, the conventions as you go. Physical Activity They call it chest and arm day. I presume, the exercises are meant to strengthen them. Right now, it’s just a stiff, painful mess. I cannot wait for this phase to be over. Books / Reading Finished reading, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. It’s a hauntingly, beautiful book. A spiritual successor to the Little Prince and a Lindy book for sure. Feedback on this post? Mail me at feedback@janusworx.com P.S. Subscribe to my mailing list! Forward these posts and letters to your friends and get them to subscribe! P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit. ...

Did a full day. But is this sustainable? I’ll know in a week or so. Python Finally figured out what def __init__ (self): does in an class, in a way that makes sense to my mind. If I create an class and I want it (i.e. the objects created with it) to take in arguments, then I need to define an __init__ method to set it all up. For e.g. if the class definition is just class chantSomeName(): where do I reconcile the fact that I need to pass in a name that needs chanting? In its __init__ method class chantSomeName(): def __init__(self, name): self.name = name Python does a lot for me. My first approach going into any problem should henceforth be, Does Python already do this for me already, natively? I should think of Python less, as a forge where I make my own tools (which it undoubtedly is) and more as a librarian, where I can just ask it for something and it will return it to me. The more I study it, the more I realise just how much it keeps track of and how much it tries to make life easy for me Devops Learnt a bit about how Prow jobs work English Learnt a new (old) word viscid Vis"cid (?), a. [L. viscidus, fr. viscum the mistletoe, birdlime made from the berries of the mistletoe; akin to Gr. ?: cf. F. viscide.] Sticking or adhering, and having a ropy or glutinous consistency; viscous; glutinous; sticky; tenacious; clammy; as, turpentine, tar, gums, etc., are more or less viscid. ...

Been knocked down a little too much over the past few months. This is me, getting up from my knees. Doing some things daily to learn. To give myself grace To be kind to my self. Python Morsels Getting back into the swing of writing code. Today was basically just looking at a blank screen and wondering why nothing would come out. ...

Let’s get the important bits out of the way first. I have been both, busy and lazy. Mea culpa. But the new FOSS.training’s aka DGPLUG Summer Training cohort begins tomorrow, the 25th of July, 2022 (6.30pm IST). Come, join! Join the mailing list, here. Come join the #dgplug irc channel on Libera, because that’s where the training will be conducted. So, what is it? The summer training is short-ish, couple of months-ish long, series of meetups on irc.1 Mentors come. Students gather. A cohort forms. And we learn all about the free and open source world. If you’re a young person, looking to learn the culture and the tacit knowledge of how the free and open source or someone older or if you feel like someone who is on the outside looking in, all are welcome. ...