derek payton

My current library, including books on Assembly, C, List, PHP, Python, Web Dev, Game Dev, and more.

(Note: Javascript for Dummies was the first technical book I ever bought. I was 11.)

Spring Cleaning

I’ve found myself with a ton of time on my hands recently (PS. I’m looking for work, hire me!), so I’ve finally cleaned up my server (technically, I spun up a new slice, migrated everything over, and decommissioned the old slice). After nearly a year of disorganization, it feels really good to login and see everything in its place.

I used to keep everything in my `$HOME` directory, which worked out fine in the beginning but became unwieldy as the number of projects grew. Things are now broken up into dev, prod, and repo. I’m sure this will need cleanup in a years time, but it will do for now.

Real Source Code Management

Until now, much of my personal work has lacked some of the discipline that I use when working in a professional capacity. If I was working on something for fun and never meant anyone besides me and maybe a few close friends to see, I never bothered to keep track of it. As a result, I’ve written lots of code that, after a period of significant development, has fallen by the wayside and become lost forever.

I am quite familiar with Subversion, but decided on Mercurial instead precisely because I am not familiar with it and wanted to gain experience with a DVCS. I originally thought about using a hosted solution such as BitBucket, but decided on self-hosting, again for the experience.

First impressions: Mercurial rocks!

It’s easy to setup, super easy to setup a web interface (though it probably helped that I’m already familiar with FastCGI setup in lighttpd), and I love that it doesn’t pollute your entire directory structure with meta data (such as how Subversion puts .svn folders everywhere).

I’ve setup a public repo for code I plan to publish in the future. There’s nothing there at the moment, but I plan on changing that fairly soon.

Bad Timing

The bummer part about about all of this is that, after putting in the effort to start fresh with a clean server and better development practices, the next version of Ubuntu is due out in about three weeks and I’ll get to do it all over. Ohwell.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

…Time to face the strange ch-ch-change-es…

For the past 8 months I’ve been working with some really smart people and doing a lot of neat things at a Bay Area startup. I’ve learned tons, built several things I’m very proud of, and had a blast doing it. But the time has come for us to part ways, and I’m currently looking for another position where I can keep learning, keep hacking with Python, and keep kicking ass.

If anyone knows of company in the Bay Area looking for a junior- to mid-level engineer with a strong working knowledge of Python and sysadmin skills, please shoot me an email at derek.payton@google’s-mail-service. I’m available immediately, and can provide a resume and references upon request

Autumn ORM

I’ve wanted a light-weight, auto-field-populating ORM for a long time, and at last I’ve found one. As a bonus, the API is pretty similar to Django’s. Win!

Year of Change

Obama’s been President of the United States of America for only a few hours, and already change has occurred.

But this isn’t about Obama’s change. It’s about mine.

2008 was quite a year for me. I was hired thrice (laid off twice, thanks economy!), moved a bunch, and became a dad. I learned a bunch about Natural Language Processing at GalaxyIT and built a contest website (in Django!) for a supermarket chain that withstood several million hits.

Yet I feel like I accomplished dick. I bought several books I didn’t read, didn’t learn any languages like I had planned, and made zero progress on my education.

My education. Man has that been a roller coaster.

Many of the people I graduated high school with are nearing completion of their Bachelors degree, and here I am not enrolled and essentially stuck in Freshman year. “Eff that,” I decided. I’ve re-enrolled in classes, and start at SJCC on Jan 26th.

2009 is shaping up to be a better year than 2008. Work is going great, I’m headed back to school, and my wife and baby girl are more beautiful every day.