Because I can. Because I should. Because cool developers do it. I’m really doing it because I agree with an article from Geoffrey Grossenbach of the Nuby On Rails and PeepCode (actually, the guy does tons of stuff – go check his site out) fame. In it he says,

“I’ll add to this and say that every beginning Rails developer should write their own blog software. It’s a great learning experience and you can try things that aren’t possible with just an app running on localhost. It’s also a great environment for learning without the pressure of a mission-critical app. When you’re working for a client and deploying an important application, you’ll have made all the beginner mistakes on your own time (hopefully).”

It’s somewhat of a personal pride thing, as I want readers that come to my site to know that I took the time to build my own blog engine. It was a great introduction to Django and provided me a means to applying the knowledge I have gained from the tutorial and other reading.

So far I’ve done three 45 minute sessions during lunch and I have the Articles, Categories, Links, and Announcements working.  I’ve been keeping track of the time and once I’m done I’ll provide the stats on time and effort along with the source.

I have a friend that’s a Python hacker and he’s been keeping the friendly rivalry between Ruby and Python alive between us. A while back, he gave in and worked in Rails for a couple of weeks to give it a try.

For the last two weeks, I have returned the courtesy and have been working with Django and Google App Engine. I love Django! It rocks! Auto documentation (better than rdoc), Auto Admin Interface, Modular Apps, what’s not to love?

I don’t think I’ll readily give up Ruby just yet for scripting work, but I’m definately pushing Rails to a back burner for a while. I’m building a production site for a friend in Japan using Django right now, so when I’m done I’ll post a more thorough review.

A lot of the referrers I’ve been getting are people looking for a Slicehost review.  Am I still happy – YES.  It has been great service with .001% downtime of which I was notified well in advance.  They have a great service and do a good job.  If you’re looking for a Linux VPS, I still enthusiastically recommend Slicehost.

So what else am I doing?  Well, I haven’t been blogging, that’s for sure.  I’ve been working on WPF at work and founding out there are some really cool things about it, and then there are a bunch of things it really lacks.  I hope to qualify that statement with some upcoming posts.

I also took a vacation – an actual road trip to a far away land (AZ) to see some family.