Product Reviews

For the past week, I have been moving into a new apartment. While doing so, I switched internet providers and realized that I needed to get a new cable modem and router. I eventually settled on the TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Routerand the Netgear DOCSIS 3.0 High Speed Cable Modem (CM400-100NAS).

My choices were largely influenced by http://thewirecutter.com/. This is the best review site I have ever seen. For the router, I just went with the recommendataion given in http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/. Easy.

For the cable modem, http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-cable-modem/. I went with the runner-up. The winner supported lots of different internet providers, which wasn't important to me. The runner-up was in stock at a local best buy, so that's what I went with.

I like how the reviews take into account reviews/complaints found on other sites, like amazon. This is something I would normally do, but thewirecutter does it for you. There isn't a review for every single item under the sun, but if the wirecutter has already reviewed something that you are looking to buy, I highly recommend it for its depth and ease of understanding.

Trying out Flask

I have been building a new web application, called Done Notes.

To build the application, I have been playing around with some new toys:

• Flask is a web framework for Python. It's supposedly a micro-framework, but it seems to do a lot for you. This makes it easy to do things, but hard to debug.

• Postgresql is an open souced sql database. I have been playing with no-sql data stores, so it's very comfortable to return to using a relational, sql-based database.

• Heroku is a cloud application platform. I haven't really had a need to debug things on the cloud or stressed the resource limitations. So far, it has been just fine.

• Alembic is a database migration tool. This tool connects my data models with database migrations. It generates upgrade and downgrade statements that are real sql statements (or very close to them). It makes version controlling your database changes easy to do.

I think it's nice to work with new tools once in a while. It can be frustrating, but it often helps you think differently.

Keeping Busy

In an effort to improve myself, I have been trying to write code every day.

After 41 days in a row of github checkins, I forgot to check in something yesterday. The chain is broken, and thus my current streak is back at 0. Sure, it was a modest streak. Some people have done much better. But it was the longest one I ever had.

During this past streak, there were lean days. On those days, I ran out of time and just did something small to keep the streak alive. Yet, there were many days where I did something of substance.

I ended up improving http://englishtokoreanforum.appspot.com/ from a barely functioning prototype to a semi-usable app. It's still not really production worthy, but I use it fairly often and it's making my life easier.

Today, I'll start the next streak. Let's see how long it lasts.