Jason Leveille's Blog

This is my last semester of graduate school. In May I will be graduating with a MSCS degree. This semester I am taking an Operating Systems course as well as an independent study. So far the subject matter for the OS course has been good, but what I’m really excited about is my independent study. Last week I submitted my study proposal and on the same day found out that it had been accepted. I am thankful that I have professors who are open-minded (and not stuck in the theoretical muck).  It is my goal to document my progress here on this blog, starting with the posting of my proposal.

Portions of My Independent Study Proposal

The Building of a Blogging Engine

Thank you for considering my proposal for independent study. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. My phone number is (xxx)-xxx-xxxx, and my email is blueberry@pie.yum.

Overview

• During the course of this project I hope to build a blogging engine, powered by Python and the Pylons Web Development framework, and backed by PostgreSQL.
• It is my goal to also include as a component of the engine, a “lifestream” application backed by CouchDB (”a distributed, fault-tolerant and schema-free document-oriented database accessible via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API” - http://couchdb.apache.org/)
• Finally, for every aspect of the build and implementation of this engine (with the exception of Apache2 and git), it is my goal to use technologies that I have never used before in production.

Methods, Technology, and Resources

The tools that I will be using during this project include: Debian 4.0 (or FreeBSD), Python, PostgreSQL, CouchDB, Dojo javascript library, 960 grid CSS framework, Apache2, nginx serving static media files, git for version control, Mint for site analytics (not open source), Gimp for site design, VIM as my sole editor/debugger/etc, and my own 1U rack mount server (which I will be installing, etc).

Challenges and Obstacles

• This is of course an ambitious undertaking as I will have learning curves for almost every aspect of this project.
• With my experience tackling new technologies I feel that I am capable of meeting these challenges head-on.

Comments

Of the few people that follow this blog, you may remember a post from September of ‘08, where I wrote about overhauling this blog with Django.  I definitely haven’t forgotten about that post.  I don’t want to make a habit out of not following through.  I have changed things up a bit though.  Instead of Django, I will be using Pylons.  It is my hope that there will be a Django project in my near future at work, and Pylons has piqued my personal curiosity.  So, Pylons it is.