The Perl Goddess

At Pantheacon last week I attended a talk by a Tarot guy. It was really interesting, and I learned a great deal (and reminded myself that I want to learn more). One of the concepts he brought up was "reversed" cards - when the card is laid out upside down. Various people have all sorts of descriptions of what this means, but his was really interesting - a reversed card means that your path is blocked, that there will be some struggle getting to the other side. "Huh," I thought, "I wonder what that means." You see, my path is rarely blocked, the universe usually steps aside gracefully to let me get where I need to go, and the very notion is puzzling to me.

This week I think that all my cards are upside down. It's the only possible explanation. I started off the week with a driving desire to knock things off of my to-do list so I could feel like a superior person (superior, that is, to the person I am with a long undone to-do list). In that spirit, earlier this week I spent three days diligently trying to get an appointment for a mammogram to celebrate my new oldness (finally succeeded, went yesterday). My post from Wednesday described the contortions I needed to do in order to achieve a relatively simple technical task. Yesterday, after getting my mammogram, I thought "hurray! I can now get a couple more things done and become that superior person!"

But the universe, she likes to play with me. My way is free and clear *except* when I start pushing, trying to assign extra importance to things. My car registration is due, and I wanted to take care of it - but first, living in California as I do with a newly old car, I needed to get my smog check done. So yesterday, after my mammogram, I went to our mechanic, hoping to get two more things off my list. No, sorry, they were too busy to do a smog check then, but they assured me that if I came back this morning at 8:00 they could do both lickety split. Came back at 8:00 this morning, asked for smog check/oil change again, left the car there for 90 minutes, came back and... no, they hadn't done the smog check. In fact, the front desk lady insisted that I had not actually asked for it. And then the front desk fellow helpfully suggested that I could come back tomorrow morning and get it done first thing. Oddly, I didn't take this offer. I'm afraid to say that I stomped out, angered by the thwarting of my quest, and resolving not to darken their doorstep again (a side note - I have been a loyal customer of theirs for 10 years, despite increasingly mindboggling displays of incompetence).

So, the stomping. It amuses the universe. It causes her to turn my life into an Infocom game. You remember... "Oh, sure, I have the flibjar you need. But before I can give it to you, you need to get a blopspur from my sister." So every simple task becomes an epic quest, and by the time you finish the game you feel like you've scaled a mountain.

Anyhow, I headed down to the Shell station at the other end of town (this is, um, 2 miles from the first place) and they said "Sure, no problem, smog check, 20 minutes." Headed to Starbucks, and came back in 20 minutes to receive the first actual goodie in my quest - the smog check certificate. Woo! Heady with my success, I determined to drive down to the AAA office RIGHT THEN to pay my registration (I had lost my registration renewal form a few weeks ago, dooming me to an in-person interaction).

Down to the AAA office I drove. On the way, I thought "I know, I'll call and renew victoria's prescription for Singulair, because the acacia trees are killing her." Of course, the pharmacy had no record of such a prescription, so I need to call the doc and get a new one. Ah well, just one more flibjor to retrieve in my quest to get things done. Arrived at the AAA office ready to end my quest. But, oh dear, my AAA membership expired. So I waited fairly impatiently for a new member dude to come and fetch me to take me off to new member creation. Note that it would have been virtually impossible for the waiting at the AAA office to even scratch the surface of the inevitable wait should I go directly to the DMV, so I took my medicine as graciously as I could. Eventually he came, I got my new membership, and... I paid my registration! There are now stickers on my car indicating my right to drive the car for another year.

*Whew*

The universe does this to me to remind me that I want to strive for zen mastery. The more grumpy I get about the way things are, the more things appear to increase my grumpiness. Eventually I remember. Like now. I remember. I'm sure it'll last forever... or at least until the next time my to-do list looks overwhelming and I decide to hang my self-image on my ability to get it trimmed down efficiently, and the universe turns all the cards upside-down to remind me to retain perspective.

The entry "The Universe in Reverse" has no entry tags. Posted by Synedra at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Don't get me wrong. I do like django. I've been working back and forth in Pylons and Django, trying to learn each of them well enough so that I can figure out which one will give the right answer when I know better what the powers that be want.

So, if you, like me, have a debian etch box upon which you want to install django, have it work with the tutorials in the book and on the site (thus needing python2.5), using mod_python so that you can work on a remote server, with postgres, do the following:

• Use the Django from subversion. It lives in http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk (don't forget to uninstall python-django if you've already installed that.
• It requires python2.5. The packaged version is fine. apt-get install python2.5
• Get mod_perl as a package, because it will make all the connections correctly (but it will be linked to python2.4), and then
• Install apache2-prefork-dev so that you have the right apxs2 to build mod_python against python2.5
• Download mod_python from http://ftp.wayne.edu/apache/httpd/modpython/mod_python-3.3.1.tgz
• Configure it (with --apxs=/usr/bin/apxs2)
• Install it
• Get psycopg from http://www.initd.org/pub/software/psycopg/PSYCOPG-2-0/psycopg2-2.0.5.1.tar.gz. Don't get fancy and try the new one. It doesn't work.
• python setup.py install that sucker
• And then restart everything and all should be lovely in the world

So that's...

svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk django

ln -s `pwd`/django /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/

ln -s `pwd`/django/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin

apt-get install python2.5 libapache2-mod-python apache2-prefork-dev

wget http://ftp.wayne.edu/apache/httpd/modpython/mod_python-3.3.1.tgz

tar xzf mod_python-3.3.1.tgz

cd mod_python-3.3.1

./configure --apxs=/usr/bin/apxs2

sudo make install

cd ..

wget http://www.initd.org/pub/software/psycopg/PSYCOPG-2-0/psycopg2-2.0.5.1.tar.gz

tar xzf psycopg2-2.0.5.1.tar.gz

cd psycopg2.2.0.5.1

sudo python setup.py install

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

I spent a good deal of today trying to find these answers. So, you're welcome :-)

The entry "Django is great^h^h^h^h^hfrustrating" is tagged: debian, django, postgresql, pylons, python Posted by Synedra at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This weekend some friends visited and we had a fabulous time playing together. One of our outings was to Stitches West, the land of yarn, patterns, and other knitting goodness. I had a wonderful time petting all the yarn, and found myself pulled back into the whole knitting thing. One of the booths was for Ravelry, a relatively new social knitting site. Michelle insisted that this was the coolest site ever created, and that I should take a look (knowing, as she did, that I'm dealing with various cool ways to visualize data). Skud has also sung their praises, which led me to believe that they must in fact be pretty cool. I got a chance to shoulder-surf behind Michelle while she demonstrated the wonder that is this site... and I have to agree. This is an amazing site.

Although I haven't yet gotten my invitation, I've already done a bunch of thinking about why this is such a great site. I think one of the main innovations is the integration with existing knit blogs. People have been knit blogging for years, and most of them have a devoted following, making them reluctant to move their knit musings to a new place. Allowing people to integrate their narrative blog posts in with their more structured data on ravelry, and point back and forth between them gives the most actively posting knitters incentive to use the site and keep it filled with new and glorious content. I do like the stash tracking and the forums, but I have to say that integrating with people's existing content is inspired. In fact, I think I'll make a knitting blog again here (and fold it in with this one using MultiBlog) so that when I finally get my invitation I'll have some posts to look at.

So now *I'm* inspired. I'll probably offer a hand in making the site better, just because it seems really amazing. But I also spent a good deal of time today looking around for something similar for cooking. There are tons of food bloggers too, churning out content on a regular basis which is all chaotically scattered about the blogosphere.

I have to do some work with Django and Pylons over the next couple of days, and one of the things I'll be contemplating is whether I could make a similar site with Django. I think it would be great to have a site which integrates existing blogs (like Ravelry does), and also allows users to link to recipes they've made (and link to the place from whence it came, with the option to buy the book from Amazon where appropriate). There could be forums and communities for different cooking types or cuisines, and probably other fabulous linky things I'm not thinking of now. There won't be a stash tracker or anything, although kitchen equipment is something I'm always interested in. I'd love to know who else made a given recipe from one of my 72,000 cookbooks. I'd also like to know who owns each of them and what their favorite recipes are from that book. And what adaptations they've made to make them more wonderful.

For now I'll just play with Django and await further inspiration (and my invitation!) but I hope to have some time to noodle about this in my "spare time."

The entry "Ravelry and Saucery" is tagged: cooking, django, ravelry, stitches west Posted by Synedra at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)