OK, so I have been working a new polymer theme for this blog. I have just deployed to production and already have found various issues with it. The worst issues affect me.
Of course, i did test the website beforehand. The issues i am finding now are around performance and usability on a mobile. The performance, i have a quick fix that should go partway towards fixing the problem. But the real problem is probably that using polymer results in a lot of dependencies.
I thought it might be nice to give some information on how this blog is setup.
First off, the blog has been made using python, with the pyramid application framework. I compared various python Web frameworks and pyramid seemed to have good documentation, plenty of support and a nice api. And they also have some nice tutorials on getting started, and some starter templates.
I considered django but pyramid seemed a lot more flexible. Things like being able to choose any database and template engine you want, without things being hard to get working together, were a draw for me.
I didn’t like English at school. I suspect I’m not alone. In one of the books I recall reading at school (I’ve forgotten which), in the preface there was mention of how forcing children to study a book, to write essays about it, causes them to dislike the book. The feelings of annoyance, of frustration at homework, become partly directed at the book.
You see, it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy reading. One of the many gifts granted to me by my mother was a love of reading. But analysing a book, writing an essay, these detracted from the enjoyment of reading.
The scary part is the predictability.
I have been hearing on the news about the rise of smaller political parties, how the extreme parties are gaining more support.
This is not new. Remember before the second world war, how extreme right parties grew in power in places like Germany, and how the extreme left grew in Russia.
But let me repeat-what is scary is the predictability.
So the question that comes to mind is is this a short term trend, or will there be long term ramifications. I expect the latter.
I have ended up with some new years resolutions this year. In an attempt to get myself to actually stick to them, I’m writing them here:
So here is my final post in this series about Zimbabwe. I’ll probably have to edit most of this post at some point.
One of the things I sometimes wonder is if Zimbabwe will ever get out of its current predicament. There is an opposition party, and in general I would expect not many people to support the current government. But it feels like change will only come when the current leader passes away.
Here is the second part of my tales from Zims. Note that this is a reposting of a post I wrote in December 2012.
Now, as of writing this post, I am not a well-travelled person, and have seen very few cities. To me, Harare was extremely busy, overflowing to the seams with cars, commuter buses and pick-ups. This is what you get when there is no public transport, and the state of the roads made this no better. Combined with bad driving (the commuter buses again) and an erratic power supply, and you end up with the worst transport system I have laid my eyes on. Seriously. Locals there told me that it wasn’t always like this, that they used to work in the city and come home for lunch. Now, this would take far too long.
The following post was originally written in 2012. Given that the blog it was originally on is no more, I am reposting it here.
As promised in the previous post, I will talk a bit about Zimbabwe. Also, to make it clear-in this post, I am talking about Harare, specifically the suburbs and not the poorer areas.
I was very fortunate to be able to spend over a month this year in Zimbabwe, a place which is commonly perceived in the West to be a broken country ruled by a corrupt dictator, who somehow manages to retain power at the age of 88, showing no signs of letting his grip loosen. In fact, this is pretty much what Zimbabwe is like right now-broken, corrupt, poor and underdeveloped.
“If there is one thing I have learnt, … it is to distinguish clearly between Rafa and Rafael. Rafa is the famous tennis player; Rafael, the name they call me at home, is the real one, the one who could have ended up doing something else altogether with his life and it would have made no difference.”
FT Weekend magazine interview, 10 Jan 2014
I like that quote. It highlights how people class their behaviours in different situations in different ways.
Ok, as promised in the last post, here are my views on beauty.
I don’t particularly focus obey on how I look (some would say that’s an understatement). That doesn’t mean I don’t maintain myself, but that I don’t buy fancy clothes or really fuss about what I wear to weddings. I don’t feel too fussed.
I do notice other people are fussed, and I do notice other people commenting on other people’s clothes.