David Grant's blog

My favourite numerics package, Numpy is close to a 1.0 release. 1.0 (beta1) was just released last Friday and a branch for 1.1 has been created. Things are really getting interesting and it is nice to finally have an almost-standard numerics package for Python (compared to before when there was numarray and numeric which both didn't have heavy development activity).

I'm still trying to figure out how exactly to structure the taxonomy/categories of this site. I have the tagadelic and taxonomy_dhtml modules and I am playing around with them a bit. Drupal is fairly robust when it comes to categorization and I'd like to just go with something and get it right the first time. Right now I'm leaning towards flat-hierarchy free-tagging for the "stories" (blog articles) with a tag cloud or alphabetized list on the right hand side, along with archival listings. And static pages using multi-level categories with a collapsable menu. Drupal is just so damn configurable, that's the trouble and there are so many modules and different ways of doing things.

Stumbled upon a great website called What's On My Bookshelf. I think I found it through Digg.com. It's an amazing concept and very similar to the kind of thing that goes on in RoIO (Recording of Illegitimate Origins) groups. You offer up books that you have and want to get rid of and others do the same. You pay when you ship a book, not when you receive, but you have to ship books in order to receive more books. The more you ship (or the more expensive the books you ship) the more you can receive. Everyone starts off with 1 point. I already added three books to my bookshelf (all of which were duplicates after I got married and my wife and I merged out book collections). Each book counted for 1 point so I had 4 points. I then requested 3 books from other people and I am waiting patiently to receive them. No one has requested my books yet although I am sure someone will eventually and I will have to ship them.

It was 29 degrees Celsius in Vancouver yesterday which is about as hot as it gets here. Although it has dropped to 20 degrees outside tonight it is still 29 degrees in our apartment and even hotter in this office with two computers in it. Which is why I can't sleep. I'll think I'll have a cold shower then give sleeping another try.

Finally installed my new Drupal website. Just getting it set up now.