Posts by lennys (72)

lennys November 10, 2023

A small milestone...

I finished up the Django for Professionals book yesterday. My bookstore project is live at https://lennys-bookstore-c5f5989fa0ca.herokuapp.com/ and has the basics - you can sign up for an account, log in, log out etc. Some of the bugs aren't worked out yet - the signup page can successfully sign up a new user, but the site throws a 500 error when you try. It does add the account into the admin section though. Some of the pictures aren't being rendered right either. Since this project was just for practice, I'm thinking of just moving on. I have the Django for APIs book with me and am eager to get started on that one. I'm still waiting on the new engine for my truck to arrive from Wisconsin. While I was at the gym yesterday someone with Midas called and left a voicemail, saying it would be there in 7 to 14 business days. That's going to put the actual engine install either the week before Thanksgiving, or right after. The truck seems to run okay on just 5 cylinders, but I don't trust it any more and I'm not going to go anywhere far away with it until the new engine is installed. I really hope that after all is said and done I have a good running truck, because otherwise this ordeal will just crush my spirits because of the godawful amount of money I've had to spend. Things to do: - build a sitemap for this blog - either fix Summernote, or replace it with a Markdown-enabled text editor - fix the "Projects" URL on lennyshort.com - build a "Contact Us" page on lsenterprises.tech - setup Ansible on my smaller server and Cisco equipment - get a flu shot - do some research on good business ideas at the library There's more to be sure, but that's all I can think of at the moment. I'm looking forward to getting out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday and seeing my brother and his family. I could use a break.

lennys November 05, 2023

Update for the last week or so...

It's been several days since my last post. I've kept myself busy with my Django for Professionals book, which I'm about 2/3 of the way through. One criticism of the book I have so far is that the author doesn't use environment variables from the beginning, to keep sensitive information like passwords safe. I've been pushing my code to GitHub periodically, and I accidentally uploaded a few files that had the Django secret key and the database password in them. So I had to go back and change those after the fact, because of the lack of security in the earlier lessons in the book. Live and learn, I guess. He also doesn't use a .gitignore file. If he had used one, I wouldn't have made that mistake. Overall I'm happy with the book, I just wish the author would've used better security in his code. My truck is on the fritz. This is the other thing that's been keeping me busy these last 6 days, dealing with that. I took it to a Midas shop near my apartment because the check-engine light came on last weekend. I thought it just needed a tune-up, but after I got it in the shop they discovered that there were bigger problems. 3 of the 6 cylinders were misfiring because of a leak in the exhaust gas recirculation system, plus the spark plugs and plug wires needed to be replaced, plus a tune-up, plus some other stuff I can't recall at the moment. So far I've spent about $2500.00 on repairs, and that fixed the misfiring on the left side of the engine, but the number 6 cylinder on the right side is still misfiring even after installing a new fuel injector. So now it looks like we're going to have to replace the engine entirely. I'll find out on Monday what that will cost. The truck is 20 years old and has almost a quarter of a million miles on it, so I'm not surprised that it needed a lot of work done, I just wish I was in a better position to fix some of it myself. I don't have a garage so I can't really do any work on it by myself, even if I did know exactly what to do. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, between paying thousands to get this truck fixed, or pay more thousands to buy another, newer truck. I checked online and saw a few trucks I liked, but they were either way too expensive or way too old. If I were to buy a truck, I'd want something that's less than 10 years old, and trucks in that age range still cost anywhere from $15000 to $30000. Meanwhile my poor Dakota isn't worth $2000 at this point. Getting it fixed will be cheaper than getting a replacement, so I'm stuck with that I guess. It's a good thing I've saved my pennies these last few years, because I'm going to need them now.

lennys October 29, 2023

Sitemap trouble

So yesterday and again today I tried and failed at getting Django's dynamic sitemap generator to work in this blog. I followed a tutorial I found on learndjango.com and was able to get the tutorial's sitemap to work, but implementing it into my blog wasn't so simple. The tutorial was written by the same guy who wrote my Django for Beginners book, and it was easy enough for me to understand, but I seem to have trouble whenever I try implementing things on my own. Yesterday morning I managed to get the robots.txt working in this blog and in my main site after working through another tutorial on learndjango.com. Today I wasn't so lucky. I have a bad habit of picking things to do that are outside of my comfort zone and/or area of expertise, and then beating my head against a brick wall when they don't work right. I started working with Django a few years ago because of another Python book I bought, which had a very basic tutorial in the last chapter, so it seemed logical to continue with that kind of thing. But now, I can't help but wonder if I'm just wasting time with this shit. I'm going to forget about the sitemaps for now, and focus on my next book, Django for Professionals. Maybe there will be something in this book that will help me understand things. I really wish I had someone with similar expertise who I could consult with, but for now the best option I have is to post a question on StackOverflow.com, and hope that there's someone out there who can get me pointed in the right direction.

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