TLDR: Use python-future.

This past week I started playing with GatsbyJS, a static site generator and framework centered around React.

I successfully used today it to generate a static version of this blog (I’m in the process of selecting the static site tool that will replace my vintage 2008 Django-based engine).

The componentization that React brings isn’t much of a win for me here, i.e. I’m not likely to be building components for my blog that I reuse elsewhere.

I wanted to have a quick way to see what the other team members are doing, and after pillaging a half-dozen SO posts this is what I came up with.

git branch -va --sort=-committerdate --format='%(HEAD) %(color:yellow)%(refname:strip=-1)%(color:reset) - %(color:red)%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) - %(contents:subject) - %(authorname) (%(color:green)%(committerdate:relative)%(color:reset))' --color=always

I added it to my git aliases as recent-commits. Sample output:

AC-6929 - e0c57582a - Added sorting to event list - Pat (2 hours ago)
AC-7054 - 0a9c84222 - Updated 'No mentor selected' option - Sam (5 hours ago)
AC-7053 - 337ef4071 - Removed duplicate values in formset - Charlie (6 hours ago)

A couple weeks ago I accidentally replaced our live, production database with a 17-hour old snapshot.

I had intended to target a test server, not production. I didn’t realize what I had done for an hour or so, and by that time I had already left work. (I was actually out walking my dog. Not a good setting for managing a production crisis.)

Here’s how my team and I handled it.

After a couple years of mostly using XMonad on my Linux machines instead of a standard Desktop Environmnt, I’m coming around to using XFCE. I’ve always liked it; it’s been my installed “fallback” DE (for when you need the damned settings dialog for some thing or other). Now it’s becoming my primary.

I like the low resource use. I don’t hate Unity and Gnome Shell but they are too much for my older machines.

You could say Z-80 assembly language is what really turned me into a software developer.

My first programming language was BASIC, which was built into my first computer (a TRS-80 Model III). I wrote a lot of BASIC code, including arcade-style games (compiled BASIC — you can still play them on this TRS-80 Model III Emulator).

I always wanted to keep learning. There was no World Wide Web for research and nobody I knew could guide me, so we went to Radio Shack and asked them how else I could program the computer. They sold us the Editor/Assember package.

One of the hazards of working in the web biz is impulse-buying domain names.

Back in the Web 2.0 boom days, there were a lot of “social” web plays with silly names.

I thought I’d satirize this by registering numbr.com and making a social site where you could “friend” the number 7 and that sort of thing.

I never got around to building that site. However I did get a curious email one day from “Joe” who wanted to know if I’d sell the name. He was with a startup that was going to offer temporary phone numbers for Craigslist postings or something. After some back and forth, we agreed on a price: $1000.