lennys May 17, 2024

The Big Book of Small Python Projects...and other stuff.

So I'm about one-eighth of the way through my newest book, "The Big Book of Small Python Projects", and so far I'm not very enthused. I just finished writing a program from the book that uses a random number generator to play a small game, which is good practice, but I've found that I would prefer to be working on something a little more complex than what this book has provided so far. I'm probably just being picky, but making text-based games is not very interesting to me. This book is written for beginners primarily, and I guess I'm more at an intermediate level now so the exercises aren't very fulfilling. I'm hoping the rest of the book will have some more interesting code to work with. At any rate I'm going to keep banging away at it until I'm finished with this book, then move on to something more interesting. I restarted the Python lessons in my datacamp.com account. I've worked through the "Beginner" and "Intermediate" levels so far, and overall it's been good, but I'm still left with a feeling like I'm not grasping the material as fully as I wish. the next step is a Python project in Datacamp that does something with Netflix movies - I read through the description but haven't started it yet. Hopefully it'll be more challenging than what I've done so far. I keep reminding myself to look into Ansible, but I haven't got to that yet. I'm going to read up on it some today, and maybe start the process of installing it on my Cisco gear. I have a small server in my cabinet at work that I'm not using for anything right now, so I think it'll be useful as an Ansible box. That way I can keep things separate from the web hosting server that runs this blog, because I don't want to get the big server messed up somehow. Last Wednesday (my day off), I washed and waxed my entire truck. So I've got that off of my to-do list. The next major home project I have is restoring the bottom toolbox I've had sitting in my living room for a year and a half. I need to disassemble it so I can get the frame sandblasted and ready to paint. I restored the top toolbox for it a long while ago, and it's been sitting on a shelf in my living room for a long time now. Once this project is complete I'll move all the tools I have into these two boxes, get rid of some stuff I don't need any more, and have a nice setup. Hopefully I can get moving on this before I go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I'm still studying the CCNA stuff too. Right now I'm going over the chapters in the CCNA books that cover cloud computing services. It's irritating to discover how much of this I've forgotten over the last year or so, but all I can do is keep on banging away at it. I'll need to go over some of the router and switch IOS stuff again, to figure out how to setup my gear with the new IP block I got from ARIN recently. I will also need to figure out how to get NAT working on my Mikrotik router again. I had it partially working when I set things up last year, but ran into some issues I never figured out. The Mikrotik router OS is a different animal altogether that I'm having to fight with, I have a book but it was translated from Italian or something so it's not a huge help. The book also doesn't cover BGP, so I'm out in the weeds a bit in some areas with this thing. Ah, the challenges of a life in IT. The amount of subjects you have to be fluent in is mind-boggling.

lennys May 09, 2024

Moving on...

So I finished up with the "Beyond" book a couple of days ago, and now I'm about to start on a new Python book. This one is named "The Big Book of Small Python Projects", written by Al Sweigart who wrote the last book I went through. This new book has a lot of programs I'm going to use for code-writing practice. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get through this book, but I bet it'll be a few weeks at least. Hopefully I can devote at least 2 hours or more to it each workday. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of Python, but I still have a long way to go before I can start coding my own programs from scratch. I have my next book picked out already. It's named "Fluent Python" and is huge, so that one will definitely take a couple of months to work through. I haven't ordered it yet, I'm going to wait until I'm most of the way through with my current book. I recently got assigned a batch of IP addresses from ARIN that I haven't done anything with yet, but I'm starting to formulate a plan in my head. I have a /24 of IPv4 and a /48 of IPv6 addresses now, and I think I'm going to assign them to the Cisco gear I have in my cabinet at work. But first I have to figure out how to get NAT working on my Mikrotik router. I have NAT working partly. It translates a public IP into a private IP that is assigned to my big Cisco router, so I can reach it from anywhere on the Internet, but I wasn't able to get the outgoing part of NAT working on my Mikrotik router last year, so basically I can log into the Cisco router, but I can't ping out to the Internet from within it yet. It's strange, I set everything up according to the documentation, doublechecked it all several times, fiddled with it, and even got a friend at work to help, but we couldn't get the outbound NAT to work for some odd reason. That was last year, and I've upgraded the Mikrotik OS since then, so I'm hoping I can get it working this time. I still want to start using Ansible with all of my servers, routers and switches, but that's a more long-term project idea. It'll be neat if I can get it working. I'm going on vacation in June. I'll be driving up to Oregon and staying at Mom and Doug's house for a week. I'm looking forward to it, going to take my bicycle along and hopefully get outside while I'm there. If the weather's nice we'll probably go kayaking on the river too. Mom has already enlisted my help cleaning up the back yard, pulling weeds from the garden and stuff so that'll be fun to do. I have a big Stephen King book I'm going to take along with me, plus my laptop and Python stuff so I think I'll be able to get a little bit of work done while I'm there. Should be a fun relaxing time.

lennys April 29, 2024

Beyond the Basic Stuff, again...

I'm done with my second round of "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python" now, and my brain is a little fried from it. The last chapter was about dunder methods, amongst other things, and the way they work can be a little difficult to wrap your mind around if you don't pay close attention. Overall I'm liking the books I've read that were written by "Beyond"'s author, Al Sweigart. I have another one of his books on the way from Amazon now, but that'll wait for a bit while I read through "Beyond" one more time. I want to give the material a good chance to sink in before I move on to anything else. Eventually I'll be ordering a Python tome called "Fluent Python". It's so big you could use it as a weapon, or strap it on as body armor. But for the moment I'm going to try and focus on writing code regularly. The next Al Sweigart book has over 80 programs written in it, so it should be good practice for me. It's tough finding time for everything. I have a paid account at datacamp.com which I've been wanting to resurrect, as that site has lots of Python material. I also want to start working with Ansible, which is written in Python, and hopefully use it to manage my routers, switches and servers. I also am spending a few hours every workday going over my CCNA material - I split my day up between that and my Python books, so I'm spending at least a couple of hours on both each day. I don't do any of this on the weekends, at least not yet so I can give myself a bit of a break. Besides, I have old projects at home that are languishing in the dusty corners of my apartment that deserve some attention. And somewhere in amongst all of that I do my daytime job Thursday through Monday, go to the gym three times a week, run errands and do chores, go for a bike ride once or twice a week, and deal with whatever else comes up during the day. Somewhere in there I'm supposed to be developing a business too, that will make use of all the stuff I've learned over the last several years. That's more of a "someday, maybe" project. I have "immediate" stuff, "urgent" stuff, "not so urgent" stuff, "longer-term" stuff, and "someday, maybe" stuff all competing for my attention. I'll be taking some time off in a couple of weeks and going up to visit family in Oregon. I'm looking forward to that. I'll be taking my laptop and a Python book with me to fill in the quiet time, but I'm not going to put any pressure on myself about it. Whatever I get done while I'm there, I get done. Hopefully the weather will be pleasant and we can all get outside for a while. Should be fun.

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