A couple of the Twisted folks are gonna hate me for this. :)

I had two options for my spring break:

1. I could spend it in DC, going to PyCon; or,
2. I could spend it in San Juan, going to… well, San Juan.

In both cases, I’ve been offered a free place to stay (frankly, I can’t afford a hotel or a hostel). Both trips would probably run me an equal amount in travel expenses, since plane tickets to Puerto Rico were dirt cheap. So the choice was a week hacking with really smart people, or a week drinking in the sun. I’ve spent practically every school vacation at work since age 15. I figure I need some rest and relaxation on the beach before graduation.

So, while I’d certainly have plenty to do at PyCon, and I’m sure I could accomplish a lot in that one week, the beach won. I fly out this coming Sunday, and fly back in the following Tuesday morning.

There are, however, a few things that I still want to work on, and hopefully after break (and midterms) I’ll have a little more spare time to focus on them:

• Go, the system I use to manage my site, is undergoing a [second] serious overhaul. Working with Nevow makes a lot of complicated tasks dead simple. I’m adding support for users, access control, and some other cool stuff. Thanks to Freeform, I can edit each page, set permissions, change the site configuration, and even edit the user database through automagically-generated web forms. When I get back, I’ll write more on what I’ve got so far.

• Nevow itself still lacks a couple things I think could be really useful. Support for lists is a big one; this seems to work for Quotient’s Pools, but not as a general-purpose development tool. One of these days I’d like to start helping Donovan with all this… but not today.

• Crow’s Nest, a project which I started last summer at Adeptra, hasn’t really been touched in months. Travis pointed me to his project Informant; it seems to have duplicated a lot of the structure of Crow’s Nest, but with a focus on user apps instead of server monitoring. I’d like to help Travis move some of Crow’s Nest’s functionality into Informant; the goal should be to have one powerful Twisted-based event monitoring app, instead of two not-so-powerful Twisted-based event monitoring apps.

On top of all this, there’s schoolwork (which I do a fairly good job of ignoring), and my continuing search for a job. So we’ll see how much of this I actually get to work on.

I will, however, be checking email and reading my subscriptions, so I expect to hear some interesting things next week from those of you who will be in DC. :)

It’s absolutely horrible. I know, I remember, that words aren’t nearly enough to express the emotion that follows such a senselessly violent act. Nevertheless, my heart goes out to Madrid, to Spain, to all the families, friends, and lovers who have been affected by this savagery.

There is never an excuse for the murder of innocents. Never. Whether Basque separatists, Arab militants, or simply deranged psychotics, there are people in this world who do not value human life. We will never rid ourselves of them, but we can, must, and always will fight them. Those who would achieve their goals through fear and terror should be given no respite, however brief.

To every sympathizer who makes excuses for these criminals, to every pundit who defends such acts of barbarism as a political statement, to every last person who argues that the willful and intentional destruction of innocent lives — regardless of race, nationality, or faith — can be justified, for whatever reason… damn you.

History holds no glory or reverence for terrorists, and the future holds no pardon for those who defend their atrocities. Nor do I.

I just received the following email from noreply@polynode.com. For the record, polynode.com is a domain I maintain for personal use.

Dear user of Polynode.com,

Some of our clients complained about the spam (negative e-mail content)
outgoing from your e-mail account. Probably, you have been infected by
a proxy-relay trojan server. In order to keep your computer safe,
follow the instructions.

For further details see the attach.

For security reasons attached file is password protected. The password is “22663″.

The Management,
The Polynode.com team
http://www.polynode.com

[Attached file: Document.zip]

I was never aware I had such a diligent and resourceful management team working for me. Three cheers, guys, for keeping me safe from those dreadful proxy-relay trojan viruses. It’s a good thing I installed this software that you sent me, or else I’d sure be in trouble!