Apropos

Entry published November 19, 2011

Abraham Lincoln, remarks for the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg battlefield, November 19, 1863:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as ...

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Napoleon's battle plan

Entry published August 21, 2011

So, right up-front, let me just say that May is one damn fine month to quit your job.

As previously noted, I’d been in rather an epic funk, and once my last day was over and all the paperwork was filed, I went on a mission to spend my summer doing anything other than sitting in front of a computer. I traveled a bit, saw friends both old and new, indulged some of my non-tech-related hobbies, read some books and was an all-around lazy bum. But August is growing ...

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Quo Vadimus?

Entry published April 27, 2011

I’ve been in a rather epic funk for quite a while now, and for most of it I didn’t know why. I just knew that I didn’t really feel motivation to do much of anything. No motivation to deal with things at work, no motivation to work on Django or any of the open-source projects I’m involved in, no motivation at all. I’ve basically been treading water. This wouldn’t have been surprising if it had happened, say, last year or the year before (both ...

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A stateful problem

Entry published December 24, 2010

So, this week we dropped some security updates, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t seen them yet.

We also released the first 1.3 beta, which is an important milestone since it means 1.3 is now feature-frozen and will get only bugfix and polishing work until the final release. Quite a few useful things made it in between alpha and beta, and a couple just barely slipped in under the wire. One feature in particular is near and dear to me, since I’ve been ...

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The news done broke

Entry published November 2, 2010

(or, “Dear Louise…”)

Once upon a time, Jacob wrote a wonderful insider’s view of how our election coverage works, and noted that basically the whole thing’s held together with baling twine and duct tape. That was 2006; it’s now 2010 and midterm elections are upon us again. As I write this I’m actually at my desk at the Journal-World office, and for the first time tonight nothing’s actually broken. So I’d like to update Jacob’s post with the story of how we do ...

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