Just before dinner and at the height of my frustration I figured out what was going wrong with my django form.

With some rudimentary form posting I can now update and edit my sample sentences as part of my application.

It’s actually the first time I’ve gotten user forms working with django so it was nice to break new ground and then go for dinner and a beer

Apart from coding, I’m also trying to keep reading useful content. I was emailed this by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com, I’m on his list, it’s not like we’re friends or anything.

It’s an interview talking about how to co-create products with an audience so you develop exactly what they want and are eager to buy. Seems like a really clever approach that’s better for developer and customer – win win.

Periodic Table of TODO Progress –  is up to Boron

I’ve spent some time with tutorials, now it’s time to move onto generating some of my own code.

I want to build a flashcard application with loads of amazing features, but since I’m pretty new to python and django I’d better start with the basics.

Building on the previous tutorial I want:

• a test page which will display a sentence.
• a series of buttons which rate how well I know each piece of text.
• an algorithm which shows me the best known phrases last.

This doesn’t fit exactly what I want the final product to be but I think it’s better to be writing working code than just reading about doing something more complicated. Practise makes perfect

It’s easy to get an empty shell of a website up and running with django

Now let’s try and add some meat to those digital bones.

…

I’ve added some super simple models and edited urls.py so now I can browse to the index of the site and see a message telling me I’m at the index of the site

Programming is so easy.

As long as you don’t want your programs to actually do anything.

I’m going to bed and marking this as beryllium

Will continue tomorrow with a views for a user and counting scores via POST.

And some new content for that affiliate site I started a few days back.

Still working my way through http://jarv.org/2011/10/django-jquery-tutorial-part2/

I have a working app running on localhost from part 1 so I’m eager to see how it’ll take me to break it.

There’s actually not so much to do in this part of the tutorial so I’m just reading through explanations rather than following instructions.

Moving through the next 2 parts seems similar, in order to add another item to my ‘done list’ I’m going to start coding from basics using this tutorial as a guide.

Reading instructions isn’t really immersive enough for me to learn anything

This is task 3 in my periodic table of progress, so we have moved on to Lithium

After some setup and typing yesterday, today is going to be all about programming.

I found a nice looking tutorial at jarv.org on how to build a question / answer app that uses django and some jquery for the front end. I’m hoping that I can learn from it and change things around so that I get closer to the flashcard application I want to build for myself.

The tutorial was easy to work through, I just thought I’d do some digital housekeeping before getting it done. This spawned a couple of hours of profanity and confusion as my computer refused to let me access one of my external hard drives … while displaying it to me.

Bastardly shitebag.

With that still not working, but providing fewer error messages than before I was able to setup a basic django app, import files from the tutorial author and get it running on my machine.

It uses sqlite3 for the database and should be a handy introduction for the kind of app I want to do myself.

On to part 2

- Keeping the chain of elements going, finishing the first tutorial in the series brings me to Helium

I decided to create a brand new affiliate site recently and have been adding some details about my progress to the forums at Wealthy Affiliate.

I’ve started more than one in the past and many of them have ended up unfinished or abandoned so I really want to talk about my progress in the hope that it will keep me on track.

Since it is an affiliate site and I’m going to earn money from it, I’m not going to reveal the name or the niche, but as with almost all of the sites I’ve got there’s an element of personal interest in it.

I bought the domain years ago and have done almost nothing with it since then.

Today, determined to get some work done I read up on the pomodoro technique and ended up reading through delicious tomato recipes. My procrastination abilities remain strong.

Moving on, I logged into my hostgator account and added a sub-account for this particular domain. Once that was created I logged into the new site account and found an option for a one click install of wordpress.

Very convenient.

Except it didn’t work.

I went to the site root and found some pretty php errors about files being missing. I’ve done a bit of php programming and if there’s one thing I know well it’s error messages.

While cursing the software that had done the installation I noticed that the sub-account I’d created had just 1 MB of space, which is far from enough for wordpress ( since the compressed 3.3.1 download is more than 4 MB )

Back to the drawing board ( webhosting control panel ), upgrade the account to a more robust 1000MB and delete the small number of wordpress files that did make it.

With a fresh start I decided to go for a regular install of wordpress by downloading, uploading and editing some database settings.

Worked like a charm

WordPress is incredibly easy to upgrade as well, there’s a link on the dashboard which tells you there’s a new version available and you just need to click to get up to date.

With a blank install done I went and did some keyword research for the site, looking for search phrases are used fairly often but don’t have much competition in existing pages.

I just used the google keyword tool and jotted down my results in a google document.

I’m going to associate these efforts with my first memory map keyword – which is hydrogen.

I’m not sure whether to try and create a parallel memory map for different tasks like programming or language study. It’d probably be best to try and stick to one list so that I learn it more quickly and see all the items in consecutive order.

Not much point in associating hydrogen with Ireland and its capital, Dublin – other than the O’ Hindenburg disaster.

Great Scott!

Most of the things I’ve written here have been set in the future, intentions, promises and ideas about how I’m going to do something.

I need to write about what I have done in the past.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

I’m not a big fan of football ( soccer) but was in a pub with 2 friends watching a match. I was more interested in the beer but my friends were carrying on a lively debate about each team, the players, transfers, coaches etc.

After a while I realised that they knew a huge amount of information about the sport.

And I couldn’t remember a single detail of anything they had said.

Remembering new information is easy if it relates to existing information

Each new game or player was just a small addition for their mental map but for me it was essentially random information and difficult to retain.

Tony Buzan has written a series of books on memorisation and one of his favourite methods of organising information is the mind map.

But he also recommends something called the self enhancing memory matrix.

The idea is to memorise lists of basic information on a topic, lists of countries and their capitals, famous paintings, varieties of wine grape – that kind of thing.

Once this information has been safely squirrelled away in your mind it will serve as the foundation for any more information on that topic that you come across.

So when you meet someone from Vanuatu, instead of being clueless you can ask if they lived in its capital Port Vila.

Or when someone recommends a Riesling that they enjoyed you already have an idea of its origin and taste and you can more easily remember the details that are being added to what you already know.

C’mon I don’t want to spend time memorising lists …

Nor does anyone really, I’m going to approach this slightly differently and tie this idea to my TODO list.

Each goal is going to be associated with a small bit of information. I’m going to start with the periodic table of elements.

Once I add an item, I’m also going to assign an element which should keep it in mind until I’ve completed the task.

Add another task, add another element.

Write a blog post – Hydrogen

Edit a video – Helium

I’m hoping this will help keep my tasks small and add a nice sequence of information which will highlight the progress I’ve made.

Might be a silly idea. Might be a good idea.

Each everytime you check in code or every time you finish a streak on Khan Academy you can add a label for the piece of information you want associated.

I recommend using some memorisation techniques like the places method or pegs so that you can get better at linking things together in your mind.

I was about 10 or 11 when I found my grandfather’s copy of the memory book and I had great fun learning the 50 states of america until I could recite them.

I’m hoping to be able to add a few more hopefully useful items to my mental list

I’ve tried a few different twitter apps and never found one that I liked.

I needed to be able to update more than one account at a time and not have it take up too many resources.

I just installed tweetdeck for chrome which lets me add multiple twitter and facebook accounts, schedule tweets and runs inside the browser so I can right click and use it like a normal webpage.  Sweet.

Might even start using the bloody thing

So I’m going to try and do more of everything.

For some people this would be a burden, adding even more thing to an already full TODO list.

But there’s an old saying,

If you want something done quickly, give it to a busy man.

I spend an amazing amount of time thinking about the best way to do what I should be doing.

After an entire day of this I usually find myself having done absolutely nothing.

This blog post was clattered* out in just a few minutes and it might very well be utter rubbish, but it can be counted as practise and I am going to try and do more of it.

I’m going to keep on looking for ways to make it easier to do good work consistently

And this year I’m going to make some effing money on this here internet!

When I say clattered I want you to imagine the evocative sounds of a beautiful manual typewriter and not the muted tribble of an injection moulded plastic laptop keyboard.

Until know I hadn’t really noticed how much a holiday can motivate you.

This had probably been obvious to the rest of the world ever since the grand tour but taking a week to just enjoy myself, see some sights and eat wonderful food makes me happier and more productive when I get back.

I’m writing this in Japan and will blog about what I got up to but having brought my laptop I wanted record how strange it is to dream about going on holidays when working and dreaming about working when I’m on holidays.

I’m seriously thinking of django and wordpress when I should be thinking about noodles and sightseeing.

There’s always more work  to be done and I mean that in a good way. Another idea to develop, another problem to overcome but if I never focus on anything else, the fun will just get drained out of it.