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Gerbi CMS (nee django-page-cms) is a multilingual content management system written in Python and based on the Django web framework. It's currently my favourite CMS software and use it for a number of web sites I administer.
I'll be giving a talk about Gerbi CMS at the next OCLUG meeting resembling this article.
In the last couple of weeks, I have heard from three people facing layoffs in the federal government. Two are employees. One is in a department that is going to lay off about 8 of 25 workers in the new fiscal year, because their budget went down that much. The second is in a smaller department with fewer layoffs. Apparently there are people calling from other departments because they are in the same boat, looking for a new department. None have official notice yet, as far as I know, but I expect that will arrive at the end of March.
Granted, the larger department might have lost some positions even if the new budget was not cutting jobs, but the message is clear: lots of departments are losing payroll next year.
My other caller was a contractor with a contract renewal at the end of February, expecting to renew until June or July, but the contract is “slow” coming back. Given the employee news, are the contractors likely to be renewed? Some would say yes, but I am not optimistic. I think the contractors will be hitting the streets real soon now, looking for private sector work.
The employees apparently have contracts that allow them some period of months looking for a job in another department before their pay ends. Some of these people will not look to the private sector for some time, so the flood of former government employees may not hit for months, may in fact be a trickle over a year or more. Yeah, that would be great!
Good luck to all those affected, including you and me.
Yesterday, I donated blood again.
They have been asking you questions on the computer for the last year or so.
Example: “Have you eaten any pogo sticks in the last 30 days (since 09/01/2012)?”
The accompanying voice asks without telling you what the date was a month ago, fortunately. It was enough of a distraction that they used a different reader or a different room when they added new questions; a computer generated voice would have been actually irritating.
So there was the date, to me it meant Sept 1, and my fast read of it ignored the year which would have made that a future date. The fact that I can’t read is hardly relevant here. 
The real point is that they used numeric dates, which are always ambiguous.
Take this home and tell your friends:
Complain when computers don’t display or print dates with a 4 digit year and a text month that is at least 3 letters long. Maybe we can get a culture going that actually communicates clearly.
And please take any managers you know from Canadian Blood Services to CapCHI meetings on the third Tuesday of the month at The Code Factory. then buy them a beer afterwards at whatever pub we go to.
Have you ever filled out a date field in DYM or MYD order? Shame on you!
I decided to look at what blog tools are available in Linux. I want to use them with my WordPress.com blog, of course, so that is how I tested them.
I have only checked out a couple of tools, but I find them mostly not working very well with WordPress.com. The only one that has worked at all is QTM, so far.
This is the recommended tool for Linux, according to the WordPress site. It won’t install in Oneiric. I expect I could make it work if I fiddled with some settings for apt-get, maybe. But the author is not working on it, so no real desire to try.
Broken. Intended for Gnome 2. One of the libraries is not compatible with Gnome 3: “python-gnomeapplet”. Maybe there is no concept of applet in Gnome 3?
I tried it. Editing a new post worked. There were error messages connecting to WordPress.com. I was not able to post the blog because it could not get permission to write.
This one was able to post a message, but left the message in the “draft” state on WordPress.com. That may be my fault – there is a “draft/publish” drop down on the app.
Because it was “posted”, it put the file into some sort of archive state, so that the next time I went to edit, I had to fiddle around to be able to see it. Finished editing the post on WordPress.com.
There is at least one plugin for FireFox for editing blogs. But I was looking for tools for Gnome so I can try out Gnome 3, so I haven’t tried it yet.
Sorry to anyone I talked to about working at Wind River.
We were hiring, now we are laying off.
We have all seen that before…
High tech. Gotta love it!
I am still working at Wind River, in the same position.
Today I soldered wires onto a new plug for my computer speakers.
It Worked! – on the second try.
The first try was on a plug that was too small. What are 3/32″ plugs for anyway?
Python is a wonderful language, but some parts should really have bright WARNING signs all over them. There are features that just can't be used safely and others are that are useful but people tend to use in the wrong ways.
This is a rough transcript of the talk I gave at my local Python group on November 15, with some of the audience feed back mixed in. Most of this came from hanging around the Python IRC channel, something I highly recommend.
[update 2011-12-19: improved "array" critique, add "python -i" suggestion to "reload" critique, add html targets to sections]
[update 2011-12-20: include additional links from agentultra and ffrinch]
[update 2012-01-06: added hasattr and find]
[update 2012-04-09: some links and syntax highlighting]
Hi
It’s game day, and Software Freedom Day, for OCLUG tomorrow, Sat Sep 17.
11 am to probably 3pm.
Room T117 at Algonquin College on Woodroffe – that’s in building T.
BZ Flag server v2.0.x will be provided on the local LAN.
There will be some other games for kids, and mine will be there.
There will be some software demos, at least one for ‘R’.
I've said many times that Malaysian food should be as widely available as Chinese or Indian. It's wonderful stuff: Coconut milk, chili peppers, curries, fish sauce, noodles, pastries and so on. Influences from China, India and Indonesia.
And now there is a new Malaysian restaurant in Ottawa. Please go out and support them. I hope RoC(k)r & Junkii are wrong about Ottawa diners being too timid.
The third iteration the Arevco Lighting web site is now up.
The old site was simple HTML and images generated from a script, which I quite liked but wasn't the easiest thing for other people to update. The new site has been professionally skinned and is now running a Django CMS with some custom index code for product pages. I used the following:
I've used Gerbi now for a few public web sites. It's a well designed and usable CMS that is quite easy to extend. It also has good multilingual support that will make translating content as easy as editing the pages.
Here are the slides from my Python talk at OLS this afternoon.
Ottawa Python Authors Group meeting tomorrow Thursday May 26 at 8p.m. Best of all it's not me talking this time!
Hope you can make it out.
Catching up on some more old business: here are the slides from the Python 2 and Python 3 talk I gave at last month's OCLUG meeting.
I am also preparing some Python tutorials for the upcoming 2011 Linux Symposium in Ottawa June 13-15. Hope you can make it.
I'm late with this update (busy catching up on other work that I neglected last month) but I must report that the Ottawa IPv6 Summit went far better than I had hoped: Great turn-out, great venue, great talks and great food.
Pictures are now available from Richard Guy Briggs and we're working on putting the talk videos online with the help of ISI Global Webcasting.
The space at Telfer School of Management was ideal, and the Telfer volunteers got everyone registered helped everything run really smoothly all day.
It was tons of work, but I look forward to doing it again. Maybe I'll even catch more than a couple talks in person next time.
Just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day for the early registration discount.
I will be giving a talk on Python 2 and Python 3 at the Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group meeting on Tuesday. Hope to see you there.
The nearly-complete list of speakers for the Ottawa IPv6 Summit is now available. Register by April 15 for the best prices.
Ever find memcached is just too limited?
Apparently Redis is the newest. It allows you to store key-value pairs, lists, sets, and even perform set operations, and have them go to disk or expire. I think Jonathan did the show and tell? There are client libraries for a bunch of languages.
Notes:
The Ottawa Python Authors Group is gathering at the Georgetown pub on Wednesday March 23. The theme of this meeting is Python Data Structures and String Processing. It's a great topic for beginners and experienced python users alike. Hope to see you there.
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