Subscribe in a readerMap Your Mind With Gimini
Gimini is a neat little mind mapper written in Python using wxPython. Mind mapping in an excellent activity that helps organize thoughts and notes much better than bulleted lists. So far most of my mapping has been using a pen and a notepad. Pen and paper is still the best way to mind map, but I wanted to try it electronically.
I tested many projects, including Freemind, and for one reason or another was unhappy with the interfaces. When I found Gimini it was unmaintained and extremely out of date. I won’t claim that all of the bugs have been worked out, but it does allow you to save and load files. For now that is good enough for me. My next step it to start using setuptools so that it is easy for other people to install.
Why did I decide to use an incomplete project instead of one of the more mature ones? I firmly believe in reusing things that exist in most cases. But a mind mapper needs to function in a particular way. I wanted something a little more in tune with how my mind works and how I want to mind map. Something a little closer to the ultimate flexibility that a pen and paper offer.
At this point in time I wouldn’t recommend using it unless you want to help develop it. I’ll be sure to make an announcement when it is stable enough for the general public.
Greasemonkey Script: DDJ Podcast Download Fix
The download button on DDJ Podcasts works great in IE, but not in Firefox. I have tried on both my Linux and XP laptops. This Greasemonkey script makes the button work in Firefox.
Kid {minus} ElementTree
Kid no longer requires ElementTree. Many people think that Kid used it to do the XML parsing. This is simply incorrect. It was actually only used for the class interface. During the serialization process Element instances, as well as instances of other ElementTree classes, were used to represent the data. This was not a strong enough reason to depend on a 3rd party package.
This move does not imply in any way that I don’t like the ElementTree package. In fact that is my favorite package to use when manipulating XML data. I introduced it to AGI sometime ago and have heard nothing, but good things.
Code Mash
This January 18-19 I’ll have the opportunity to be at CodeMash in Sandusky, Ohio. CodeMash aims to be a world class technical conference. And being located at a hotel with an indoor waterpark you know it will be fun. The quality session topics is quite impressive.
Neal Ford will be talking about how to be a more productive programmer. Mary Poppendieck will be talking about Lean Software Development. Mark Ramm will be explaining the Python ORM SQLAlchemy. A fellow Clepy member, Kevin Dahlhausen, will be talking about Test Driven Development in Python.
Of course I didn’t want to be left out of the excitement. I had two sessions accepted. One on enterprise development with Python which will be a discussion of real world solutions for other developers and architects. The other session is a more detailed, code driven explanation of web services using Python.
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