About the worst thing about any project – especially one that is being spun out of your own head – is that you are almost always at square one, with a blank sheet, and an empty SVN repository.

It’s the same as writing something like this post – or any other creative work. Unless you have a clear objective, you can’t really set a direction. Without a direction, you can’t make those first steps.

Of course, in starting a project, you generally have a bit of an idea on the outcome – but you should always set down what your objectives are. Then you can figure out the steps needed to reach those objectives. And once you have those steps, you can work out everything this else.

So, I’ve gotten past the blank sheets by knowing what I want to get out the project – and the only problem left is the focus of attention that the work requires.

Focus of Attention

Lately I’ve been dabbling in Python, which is pretty nice language, and quite fun (a lot of the documentation is written in a familiar rather than over-technical way). But, the experience has been frustrating as well.

After spending time investigating various methods and solutions, I kept hitting on issues with limitations in a particular solution, or scarcity of documentation of another.

I ended up spending more time looking for documentation than I did making any kind of progress (and a lot of the time, I wasn’t even moving forwards).

One major block, I guess, is that I spend 40 hours of my week working on PHP solutions (and sometimes PERL, but only in order to patch or extend an existing script) at the office,  and jamming in another language just wasn’t happening.

So, I took the decision the other night to use and develop the skills I have, and then focus my attention on the work needing to be done instead of reading, reading, reading.

And so, in one 2-hour session, I made more progress than I had done in the whole previous week.

Experience

That’s really the key, when you think about it. I’ve been at PHP since 2002, and clocked up thousands of hours of knowledge and experience along the way. I’m still learning it – sometimes time constraints on projects don’t always let you spend the time to find the better solution – but all that experience does add up.

So, for at least a while longer, I’m going to be a PHP developer.

Okay, I’ve been really slack on the publishing front recently – my contributions at Religious Funny and Random Tweak have been suffering as much as here.

The main reason is that I got bit by Python about a fortnight ago, and I’ve been spending most of my time at home learning this language – I really wish that I had listened to my friend Chris about it a lot sooner, as Python is a really powerful and accessible language. The supporting documentation is excellent, and there are also a couple of extremely well-built frameworks for generating various types of applications.

Obviously, I’m interested in creating websites, so I’ve picked out Django – it’s not a content-management system, but a framework on which a CMS could be built, or any other type of website for that matter.

Other things that have been taking up time have been an art course (I may or may not scan my pictures) over the past month, and also making my flat a little bit neater for the regular inspection from the agent.

Also, I spent some time away with my parents and sister’s family in Second Valley – so named, because it was the second valley along the mainland from where the settlers first landed after they started to move on from Kangaroo Island.

Some of the photos I took are available in my albums

I’ve now got a week off from work, over which I’m hoping to spend some time out and about with the camera, and also some Christmas shopping, and probably get my first Python/Django site up and running.