strangely entangled

Over the past two months I’ve been building a fairly straightforward database-driven application for a client. Originally we were going to code it in PHP, then I started looking around at some of the newer application frameworks out there. Ruby on Rails was considered, but Django really got my attention as it is Python-based, and I have a soft-spot for Python.

Yesterday, my client requested a series of changes be made to records in the database. Nothing too nasty, just adding prefixes to certain fields, renaming a few others based on the contents of another field, etc. Django made it simple.

For example, to prepend “ns-” to the name of every Novell server in the database:

from servers.model import Server
server_list = Server.objects.filter(os_architecture = “novell”)
for server in server_list:
    server.name = “ns” + server.name
    server.save()

I know, it’s a simple example and easily done in other languages and frameworks. I just like the fact that I could do it in Python, quickly.

I was browsing through my Flickr page the other day and noticed that one of my photos has over 30,000 views! I took this photo on Robson St. in Vancouver, back in 2002. Nat and I had flown out here for a week to take a look around and see if Vancouver was somewhere we’d want to move to.

We were walking down Robson St. together when I caught this out of the corner of my eye. The sidewalk was pretty busy, but I managed to get a slightly blurry photo. I never did check out the website or call the phone number listed on the sign to see what it was really about.

What’s funny is that a quick Google for “Missing my imaginary friend Steve” shows that the photo has been downloaded and re-posted all over the place. That’s very cool, although I am a bit annoyed that some places like imagepoop.com have gone and stuck their own watermark on the photo. But whatever, I didn’t come up with the poster in the first place, I just took the photo.

The text on the photo reads:

Missing: My Imaginary Friend Steve
(Picture taken 3 years ago) Last seen March 21. Frequents discount sushi bars and polka raves. If you see him, tell him Vince is sorry about the ice cream and to come home.

Wow. Get mentioned by Amber MacArthur and watch your blog traffic skyrocket (the site saw somewhere near 20x the normal amount of traffic the other day). Somehow, I don’t think my link back to her is going to have the same effect on her traffic.

Regarding my iPod Touch issues: I recently reinstalled my MacBook Pro, and then several days later I restored my iPod Touch to factory defaults. Shortly thereafter I noticed that the Mail application was missing from my iPod.

I had forgotten that being an early iPod Touch adopter, I had to purchase the Mail, Maps and Weather apps from Apple back in January (boo!) … and that the software update file got turfed along with all my old data on MacBook Pro when I reinstalled. Note: if you’re planning to do something similar, backup the file in your Library/iTunes/Mobile Applications/ folder. More details can be found here.

In any case, I figured that resyncing the iPod with the MacBook Pro would cause it to re-download the file. Wrong. I ended up having to email Apple Support and ask them to re-issue the upgrade to me so that iTunes could download it again. Not a big deal, but a bit annoying as the “upgrade” is really just a key that unlocks the apps on your iPod.

I did however have the pleasure of dealing with “Sheree” from iTunes Support, who was quick and courteous. You have to love her response to the thank you email I sent after my problem was fixed:

Dear Mike,

You’re very welcome. Nothing makes me happier than to no (sic) that I have pleased my customer. If any assistance is needed in the future please let us no (sic), for here on the iTunes Support team we are always available and ready to assist.

Wow. Whatever they’re putting in the watercooler over at iTunes support must be some good stuff! Thanks again Sheree.