A Geek’s Think

I think I've set a new record for time between posts!  To repeat a phrase found many times in my past blog entries (and journal entries, for that matter), I'll try to do better... :)

Since my last post, I had a blast in Boston for St. Patrick's day (my ship spent the week there), spent a few weeks at home visiting family and friends, and left on my second naval deployment.  Busy times.

We've now been deployed for about 2 1/2 weeks, in which time we've visited the beautiful Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras and passed through the Panama Canal.  Roatan Island's primary industry is tourism centered on its beautiful beaches and many diving opportunities.  While I didn't take advantage of either of those attractions, I did take the opportunity to have a "Dolphin Encounter" at the local marine institute.  For a small fee, we had a 30 minute presentation during which we were introduced to one of their dolphins and were able to interact with her a bit.  Afterwards, we were given another 30 minutes or so to snorkel around the dolphin enclosure with about 15 dolphins.  It was a great experience, even though my camera might not agree - it took a bit of a swim itself in the process...  :(  Hopefully my new Panasonic DMC-TZ5 gets here in time for the next port visit...

On a completely different note, you may not have noticed my blog looking much different lately, but for the last month it's been a completely different system under the hood.  My former blogging software, Wordpress, was becoming more and more difficult to use over my limited bandwidth out to sea, and tended to have security problems on a fairly regular basis.  Fortunately, my site was never compromised, but my inability to update the software while away from home made that a distinct possibility.  Therefore, I took it upon myself to write my own blogging software.  Now some of you may be thinking about what a masochist I must be, but it really wasn't that bad - the Python-based web framework I used known as Django made my job easy.  This is my first real Django application and I'm quite pleased with the power and ease of development the framework offers. Maybe someday I'll give a more detailed explanation of what's going on behind the scenes of the new blog, but for now I'm just enjoying my freedom from the bloated beast that is Wordpress.