Jacques' Brain Drain

The program I’m writing is beginning to come together. I have now gotten the web applications framework cleanly talking to the database back-end and the rss parser. At this point, I have a functional, but not yet feature complete, RSS feed reader.

My plan at this point is to write a few methods to integrate that functionality more completely into the web application framework – thus making it feature complete. Then, I intend to add methods to create a “wiki” style notebook functionality. Last, I intend to create import and export tools so that a bunch of related pages within the notebook can be linked together and exported as an RSS file with a set of enclosures – and such a file with enclosures can be imported into a wiki notebook.

The plan is for this to become a framework for remixing information the way people remix music. I eventually intend to integrate fckeditor to simplify editing the individual “wiki” style pages – that will make life easier for people with a less technical background. (It will also mean hacking FCKEditor to support intra-page links, but that should be doable.)

I’m currently working on an interesting program. When it’s done, it will allow books to be represented as an rss feed with pages and chapters as individual entries within the feed. The system will keep real bookmarks (where you’re up to when reading) , integrated notebook (to keep the notes and the material together) and the ability to get all its resources from remote locations (tcp/ip enabled).

I’ve chosen to write in python using the CherryPy web framework and integrated webserver, the FeedParser universal RSS feed parser, the Sqlite integrated database engine, and the PySqlite extension to hook Sqlite and Python. These tools really make it easier to bolt together something like this.

Currently, the feed reader and http generation, as well as the integrated webserver are working. The code to parse the feeds is working well, and the webserver integration is going well. At this point, I’m working on the database integration portion.

Right now, the current purpose for this project is twofold. The first goal is to increase my skills in python and my skill at using these extension modules. The second is to create a tool for tracking and working with my own information. Ultimately, the idea is to get the tool to the point where it will allow both the creation and access of these materials over the internet.

G got called back by a company called Massage Envy in Phoenix, AZ. They want her to come down for an interview. This is the first callback since we sent out resumes, and it’s really nice to see it this soon. Hopefully, we can line up 2 or 3 interviews over a “weekend” and she can come back with a new job. Then, we can get into the heavy-duty moving thing.

I’m expecting a few more phone calls over the next week or so, and then we can get the ball rolling.

A student at my complex tossed out a portable computer desk today. Since it was a bit larger and sturdier than the piece of particle-board junk I had been using, I decided to do a quick desk upgrade. The top of it is just a bit beat up, but when I pick up my router in RI this fall, I’ll just glue a new sheet of laminate over the old one, and the rest can stay just the way it is.

One of the major ups to doing this is that the new desk can be cracked down and packed flat in about a minute. The old one was held together with about 30 screwa, and took about 45 minuttes to disassemble and prep to move. This one also takes up less space in storage. This will be important when I move in a few weeks.

Over the past few day, I have been reading and listening to a good bit of the educational work of a man called Stephen Downes. (his website can be located at http://downes.ca/.) What’s interesting is how he believes that the education environment will change over the next number of years. Among other things, he is strongly in favor of using the web as a notebook for project information. His approach is that if you make your notes is blogger, you can use google to find your own notes.

I think that there is a great deal of validity to this approach, so I’ll try to use it a bit and see what happens.