Check out my very first posted Dj-Set (I know it’s not so great… I’ve done a lot of mess…)!

Many interesting talks, some of which I could not follow because of my commitment to the Develer SRL stand.

I want to thank all the staff at PyCon. And a big thank you goes to Develer that allowed me to attend this great event.

See you next year at EuroPython!

Though I work with the utmost passion, I often have trouble maintaining concentration. In my case there are three main sources of distraction.

1. The first is the chorus of notifications. All the world seems to try to make you lose the concentration. Emails, rss feeds, social networks, instant messaging clients. Fortunately this kind of distractions can be avoided easily, after a little training. Initially this application (Think!) has helped me, but now I’m able to ignore most of what is not important for what I’m working on without any external help.
2. “The new board is arrived, I’ve to configure the bootloader to take the rootfs from NFS, I’ve to configure the board’s network interfaces, I’ve to setup the NFS exports…“, “The mail server doesn’t work… I’m waiting for an important work mail…“, “Uh? Why can’t I reach Internet?“, “I’ve to move my desk, and to rearrange the wiring“, “The phone automatically answers that we were kidnapped by monkeys…”
   How many times will happen in your working life, to scream phrases like these? Often these tasks are tedious, complex and require much attention, attention that a programmer probably cannot detract from the project he’s working on. But God has been sighted, and, after having created the earth, animals, plants, man and woman, created the sysadmin. It is a mystical creature, able to solve in a reasonable time all these issues allowing you to return to work quickly and with good humor. It’s nice to have an entity like that.
   

   A male sysadmin working on a Windows machine

3. The last, but not least source of distraction is the one due to the tiredness. This is felt mostly when working on more complex problems. I experienced that a neat desk helps a lot. I tried to hide as possible wiring and I seem to be more calm and concentrated. Especially since I stopped tripping on the wires just slightly moving the feet. Another thing that helped me was to find a roommate that tolerate the my ideal temperature. The last thing in this sense that I have managed to do was adjust the height of the chair and of the monitor to keep an optimum posture. Remember this equation: “Less Pain == More Concentration“.

       

   Me trying to make my office room a better place (with poor results )

4. But the most important think that I’ve learned in these years of work, is that when the brain says “STOP!” it’s the time to stop… Try to continue working, ignoring fatigue is counterproductive. When the brain says “STOP!” it’s really better to listen to it.
   • The first way to make your brain more collaborative, is to close all, stand up and relax, maybe doing a nice walk, better yet, if possible, outside (a cigarette could sometimes help to relax the nerves and to back to work calmly).
     

      

     Me watching a relaxing landscape...

   • If this was not enough you could relax with a little music, you can delight the palate with tasty and healthy snacks and coffe or let off steam by playing a good game of table soccer.
     

        

     The instruments to disturb the colleagues who are trying to work.

   • If even a break like this helps you to relax and return to work more productively, then no matter. At least you enjoyed it.

But this is only partially related to what I’m going to explain you. A django project was only the first project in which I used this approach. Now I use it in most of my python projects.

So, what I’m going to explain? I’m going to explain the simplest and painless way to modify an application’s settings and some behaviors without touching its code. This means that you can do all the tests you want, without changing the deploy settings. A colleague of mine taught me this trick, as a wise Zen master, so that I could teach it to my adepts and continue the tradition.

• The first thing you need is a place you can use as hook. In django, the settings.py module (which contain all the application-related settings) is the right place.
• Then you have to add a few lines to your file. Something like this:

  # ...
  # The content of the module ends here!
  
  try:
      import settings_locale  # You will redefine the settings in this module...
  except ImportError:
      pass
  
  # That's all. Really.
  

  Obviously, any name can be fine.

• Now you have to create the other module file in the same directory of the previous edited one (in this example settings_locale.py). This file can contain everything you want (ie redefined variables, redefined functions, monkey-patches for classes or functions in the application…).

This trick is pretty simple, but the result is that you have a very useful module that could override about everything in your application, for debug or testing purpose. And when you need the real application behavior all you have to do is to remove this module. And all just works.

A great ‘thank you’ to dvd, that helped me in web development projects and taught me practically everything I know about webapp’s development process.

• Develer Srl, the company I work for. It also hosts this blog.
• Develer’s sysadmin! He’s a wonderful person, always willing to satisfy my strangest requests.
• The great Uranio team. I’m proud to be one of them. They are also hosting my old blog.
• My sweet girlfriend, because she’s able to tolerate me also when I can’t.
• My parents, because they have given birth to one of the most beautiful and intelligent creatures in the world (no, he isn’t my brother…).
• My Macbook Pro, my iPhone, my parents’ iMac quad-core, my girlfriend’s Macbook. They give meaning to my life (just kidding).
• Steve Jobs and Apple. They have designed and produced some of my favorite working and every-day-living tools.
• To all those who will read my blog. Because I decided to write in English but my English is not good enough…