Year of the Wood Dragon

Code Challenge

I’ve made a few decisions about my current code challenge.

It’ll be 60 days

Not only is this a good balance b/w 30 days (which I’ve done) and 100 days (which LOTS of PEOPLE are doing), it’s also to partially honor pushing ahead in difficult times. Day 1 of this code challenge was the day I found out my Vietnamese sister’s dad passed away. The traditional Vietnamese calendar follows a 60 year cycle (5 elements * 12 animals), so I’ll do a day/year. I’ll probably go back and adjust the blog titles or Front Matter appropriately.

It won’t be JUST code

I’m going to try to commit and push code to Github each day. However, I’ll also include technical blogging, something I want to get better at. Also, each blog post (or update of one) IS a commit. Not that I’m trying to “game the system” (I’m only cheating myself), but I fell THINKING about what you’re going to code (or NOT code) is just as valuable.

I’m also going to ignore the “tutorials don’t count” rule from 100 Days of Code. I think those can be valuable starting points. I’m also not sure what else I’ll try to learn or adapt during this period.

I might even do some streaming, if I can get things set up for it!

Potential Projects

I’ll have to narrow down this list and focus.

  • Continuing the DRF-based tutorial I did at DjangoCon US 2017 with Katia. I have a project in mind I wanted to build using that.
  • MVP Lightning Talk registration app for DjangoCon US 2018 (Django 1.11)
  • MVP Sprints sign-up app for DjanogCon US 2018 (Django 1.11)
  • Work on my die-rolling Flask/Twillio app
    • Porting it to the new Twillio API
    • Porting it to Bottle
    • Building a web interface for the existing version
    • Building a “Software Engineering for Beginners” tutorial around it
  • Work on my front-end skills with a project to be named later
  • A comparison of Python-based static site generators
    • Pelican (the most well known, I think)
    • Nikola (supports Jupyter notebooks as input!)
    • Lektor: I’ve heard a lot of good things about it
  • Gas mileage tracking app (Bottle or Flask)
  • I’ll almost definitely work on some talk ideas. That seems to be a thing I do now. I’m also not sure if I’m GIVING any more talks this year.

To Do List for 2017-09-14

What I’ll start/consider, not what I’ll finish.

  • Narrow down and prioritize my projects. Pick a starting point.
  • Gain a better understanding of Jekyll Front Matter and Front Matter Defaults
    • If I’m going to work on my tech blogging, having the posts organized/categorized is an important part of that. But I don’t want to spend TOO much time “tinkering” with just that. I’d rather focus more on WRITING about my coding now. I can “optimize” later.
  • Learn more about how Jekyll is configured in general. There HAS to be a tutorial video I can watch. But I think their docs are pretty good too. Don’t go TOO far down that rabbit hole right now. See above point.
  • Play with the time display on posts and the home page. I’ll probably want different variants of the ISO-8601 format on the home page vs. individual posts.
  • Make note to self: gain a better understanding of DNS

Busy week(end) ahead. See you all tomorrow!