How's It Going?

When we last saw our brave hero, he'd just emerged victorious from his struggle over the dog pack of FLOSS project hosting choices, but the looming battle against the three headed dog of Python, Bazaar and Object Orientated Programming was yet to begin.... Will he survive to see another day?

Sorry - Rocket Robin Hood flashback. Thanks Teletoon Retro....

Just a quick update on where I'm at. I've set up a project on Launchpad. That was a straightforward click n' drool kinda thing. Just fill in the blanks where required. I spent some very constructive time reading the documentation. It's got lots of information on all the various Launchpad features (and there are quite a few) but I was most struck by the amount of 'why' as well as 'how' in the information. Since I've not been exposed to project management per se before, it was good for me to see how the website was designed around a project flow, rather than the other way around, and expose me to the common steps most projects go through.

I had already registered my GPG key when I signed the code of conduct earlier, so I just had to create and upload an ssh key for use with bazaar. It took me a bit of twiddling to get that working, mainly because I wanted a separate launchpad key from my regular ssh key. My regular key is already used in too darned many places. The twiddling was purely self inflicted - launchpad was working perfectly all along :-)

Next up, I went looking for some docs to get me started on learning Python. A quick inquiry in the (newly created) Python group on identi.ca pointed me at 'A Byte of Python'. Turns out it's licensed CC and available for download.

As I work my way through the examples, I've been creating the them in GVim. Another bit of Googling followed with an identi.ca query found me some pointers for using Python in Vim. As I've created each example and tested them, I've committed them to a +junk repository and pushed it up to Launchpad. This post by Paul Hummer made getting that all set up painless and simple.

Are you seeing a trend here? I'm using Linux, SSH, GPG, GVim, Identi.ca, Python, A Bite of Python, and a blog posting by a Launchpad dev. All of it FLOSS. All of it no charge. All of it quality information and tools - downloaded off the internet by nothing more than the sweat of my little pinkies. It's just amazing when you sit back and think about it. It's downright flippin' awesome in fact.

Thank you one and all that made this happen, and continue to make it happen. Hopefully I can do my little part too, and keep the steamroller rolling.