Welcome! About a month ago, I started my journey converting all of the web pages on the Exploring Winnipeg Parks website from being coded manually, to being generated automatically via Python scripts. I started with the web pages that follow a common template, such as individual pages for parks. Today, even the home page and about page are generated via scripts. The templating library I chose is Jinja2. The current version as of this writing is 3.1, which requires Python 3.7 or later. ...
An Introduction to Python
Welcome! It was only about a month ago that I introduced myself to Python, but I feel like I’ve come quite a ways in becoming familiar with the language. In this post, I’ll be covering the basics of getting started with Python, from installation to writing your first Python script. I’m coming from a long background in Java, JavaScript, and C++, with much of my career spent as a web developer. I primarily develop on a Windows machine, but Python has good cross-platform support. This article should appeal to readers who have prior experience programming and using the command-line, but are new to Python. ...
My Experience Using ChatGPT for Technical Discovery
Welcome! Over the past month or so, I’ve been making fairly extensive use of the free version of ChatGPT as a personal assistant. It’s generally been a very positive experience, with just a few pitfalls. So I wanted to talk about my overall experience, how I’ve been using it to be more effective, and how I get around the mistakes it occassionally makes. (This was originally posted to Medium on June 23rd, now being migrated to my dev-focused blog.) ...
Exploring Winnipeg Parks - Dev Blog for a Photography and Community Website
Welcome! For the past few years, I’ve been building up a website featuring my photos of parks, community centres, and other landmarks throughout my home town of Winnipeg. I started this personal project about a year-and-a-half into the Covid lockdown period, in large part as a way to get myself outdoors and staying active. Since then, I’ve visited enough parks throughout the city to post well over 100 photo galleries, with many more in the queue! ...