• Build a Snowman: Emmy had a lot of snow time, but I didn’t get out there like I should have. We’ll try to get out there this week.
• Work on a puzzle: I think I spent too much time on Mario Kart and Wii Bowling to get this one done, plus having a puzzle out with lots of little kids around spells trouble.
• Pass lots of levels of the Python Challenge. I’ll work on this one more this week.
• Learn all about Ham Radio. I turned this into a more specific goal: pass the Technician class exam on January 13th. I’m pretty close: my practice exams were all passing scores, but I still have some work to do before next week.
• Read a book. I chose to start reading The Chronicles of Narnia for this one. I’m halfway through The Magician’s Nephew, but I haven’t even picked it up for two weeks now. I’ll definitely be done with at least one of these books by the time school starts again.

Only five goals left to go, and two more weeks! Not too bad. As long as I find a puzzle to work on, I think the rest are pretty much under control. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of the Christmas Goals update in two weeks!

Family

• Get to know baby Kaylee
• Play with Kaylee, Emmy, and their cousins
• Take Pictures and movies to share with family
• Have a Wii Bowling Tournament
• Have a Mario Kart Tournament

Traditions

• Build a snowman
• Get up early on Christmas (and wake up Beth if I have to)
• Watch BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl
• Crack lots of nuts on Christmas
• Watch the greatest Christmas movies, including Ernest Saves Christmas, Elf, and Christmas Vacation (and many others, of course).
• Sleep In
• Eat Junk food and work on puzzles for New Year’s
• Take Emmy to see Santa Claus

Learning

• Work on Quotational, my Django site
• Learn all about Ham Radio
• Pass lots of levels of the Python Challenge
• Tweak my Ubuntu settings
• Read a book

Wow, that’s lots to do. I can’t wait. Since classes start next month on the 20th, that gives me one month.

1. Episode 1: Setting Up Version Control
2. Episode 2: Settings and Models
3. Episode 3: Why Customize the Manager?
4. Episode 4: This is the Fun Part (urls, views, templates, and more)
5. Episode 5: URL Reverse Resolution
6. Episode 6: Debugging
7. Episode 7: What’s the Downside?
8. Episode 8: The Foundation for Social Networking
9. Episode 9: Reusing a Function to serve customized data
10. Episode 10: Generic Views and Pagination
11. Episode 11: Advanced QuerySet Techniques
12. Episode 12: Adding AJAX
13. Episode 13: Deployment

I’m a huge fan of Django, but I’ve only had time to work on one site. The best reason to learn how to use Django is that creating websites can be fun again!

Get your hands dirty. After getting a feel for what Django is, start the tutorial. I recommend skipping version 0.96 and going straight to the development version of Django because there have been a lot of exciting new features added since 0.96. As long as I’ve been sure to keep up to date with recent changes, I haven’t had any problems using this development version.

Back up often! Make sure you keep copies of different versions of your files. Doing this will help your programming from the beginning, and it encourages you to improve your code instead of being afraid to touch it for fear of breaking something.

Read the Manual. I admit that I usually don’t understand the things I’ve read in the Django Documentation. However, the more I play around with Django, the more I start to understand in the documentation.

Get to know the community. Subscribe to the Django Community feed and find some authors you like to read. Skim the articles that come across and browse through blog archives for more information on subjects you aren’t familiar with yet. Some of my favorites Django authors are James Bennett and Malcolm Tredinnick, although there are plenty of others worth reading.

Take a look at other’s work. One place to start is the DjangoResources page on the wiki. Find a simple application and open it up - figure out why it works the way it does. There are plenty of places to look for this type, including Django Pluggables and Django Sites.

Don’t be afraid to ask! If you can’t find help on a given topic, try a few web searches. If that doesn’t give you what you’re looking for, ask for help on the django-users mailing list. As you learn more, be sure to give back to the communities that have helped you get to where you are now because there are new users who won’t have your experience, and sometimes freshly-learned information can be easier to share with newbies since you’ve been in their shoes recently.

As Django moves toward a 1.0 release in just a few months, there’s never been a better time to learn Django.

My new site is really just a relaunch of one that I was writing in PHP and never really finished. Quotational.com was supposed to be a quotes database of funny quotes from movies and TV Shows, but I was never able to expand its humble beginnings with just one TV show. Now the new quotational has been live for a few hours and I’ll progressively add features as I learn more about Django. The idea is to get the site out there so I can get some feedback, so if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments. I’ve got plenty of ideas for things to improve, but I’m more likely to work on features suggested in the comments.

So I guess this means I’m semi-committed to Django, right? Well that’s okay, because it’s been a lot of fun and the learning curve hasn’t been too bad. Thanks to the framework makers for making web programming fun again!

It’s hard to explain why I like the Royals, but it all started when I was a kid. While I was growing up in Missouri, something about baseball struck a chord with me. We played baseball a lot with our neighbors in the field across the street from our house, and even though there were only four or five of us playing it was one of my favorite things to do. Tyler was a Cubs fan (probably because you could see so many of their games on WGN), Ray was a Cardinals fan, and I was a Royals fan. I chose the Royals because I liked their players and they were fairly close to where we lived so we could see some of their games on TV during the year. The sports section of the Joplin Globe often included stories about the Royals, and I read every one of them.

When we lived in Missouri I became more and more interested in baseball. The Royals were the third best team in baseball in 1989, just missing the playoffs. One of my favorite Christmas presents ever was the video game RBI Baseball 2 for the Nintendo. I collected a lot of baseball cards when I was a kid, memorized the statistics, and kept track of the players, but I kept my Royals cards in a separate binder, with all the George Brett cards at the front. In fourth grade we had to do a large research project for school, and I chose the Royals as my topic. My mom saw a note in the newspaper saying that two of the Royals players were going to visit a local bank, and they would be signing autographs! I thought this would be the perfect highlight to my Royals report, but unfortunately the players weren’t able to make it. I was disappointed, but they did send some autographed photos to hand out to the fans who showed up, which I promptly added to the cover of my Royals baseball card binder.

The Royals remind me of being a kid again. My family went to two Royals games when I was a kid, and I won’t forget how fun that was. My dad took us back once since we moved away, and I had just as much fun as I did when I was a kid. I loved Little League when I was little, and I was fascinated by the fact that Mickey Mantle played in the same town that I did when he was a minor leaguer for the Yankees. I continued playing baseball even until high school, and I loved every bit of it.

So fast forward to now. My favorite players from when I was a kid have all gone, but I’m still with the Royals. It’s been a while since they were very good, but that doesn’t stop me from following their team. I cheered with them through all their 100-loss seasons. Recently it’s been much easier because the Royals have some young talent that seems to be getting better all the time. I don’t only enjoy it because they win. Following a winning team isn’t what being a sports fan is about, it’s about being a kid again. It doesn’t take a playoff berth or a World Series banner for me to get excited about a team, although I don’t discount how exciting that can be for their fans. In my book baseball means fun from March to October. There are highs and lows for sure, but I’ll take a sweep of the Tigers any day over an over-hyped, over-paid team.

As I write this my Kansas City Royals sit alone on top of the American League standings. If Cleveland, Tampa Bay, and the Yankees lose this evening then they may have a whole day to enjoy it. This doesn’t happen often, so we Royals fans can at least revel in the fact that we’ve beaten a team twice (the Tigers) that many have predicted to win the World Series this year, what with the addition of some great firepower to their lineup. I’m not sure if two early losses to the Royals are enough for Tigers fans to get nervous, but it’s moments like this that I’ve had to live for as a Royals fan. (Some readers will note that I’m also a Colorado Rockies fan, but my loyalty to the Royals remains and precedes the Rockies’ existence.)

So I can say that I’m officially enjoying spring, even if it means the return of lawn mowing and eagerness as I look out the classroom window* as I wait for the end of the semester to go outside and play.

(* note: there are not actually any windows in my classrooms, and even if there were, they would just show me some ugly buildings)

Alvin and the Chipmunks - My favorite was the cartoon movie, in which they got to travel around the world. My brother, sister, and I always watched that one when we were kids, possibly because it was recorded onto one of our favorite VHS tapes of all time, which also had our own copy of Star Wars.

Captain N: Game Master - I loved this show, probably because it was pretty much an extended Nintendo commercial. If memory serves me (and it might not, given that I spent much of my childhood watching TV and playing video games) this was one of my favorite shows because the main character was magically transported into his TV where he was part of the video game. It doesn’t get cooler than that.

Care Bears - Say what you will, but this show was awesome, and so were its two 80’s cartoon movies. My mom sewed stuffed animals for us of nearly all of the characters (again, if memory serves, there must have been at least a hundred… or maybe just a couple of dozen…). My siblings and I used to get out all the Care Bears and line them all up to do their patented Care Bear Stare against Shredder or Cobra Commander or some other evil action figure, leaving the villain helpless.

C.O.P.S. - This show is about fighting crime in a future time. Although it was in some ways just another 30-minute toy commercial, this show had a great cast of good guys vs. bad guys. A year or so ago I bought a copy of the first season for my brother and I must say that I’m jealous. The shows were still interesting and funny (in a retro sort of way), and I remembered most of the important characters and even which minor characters that had been my favorites as a kid. I remember playing outside in the yard pretending that we were these characters, and I can definitely say that happened more than once.

DangerMouse - What I remember most about this show are the theme song (very awesome) and the sidekick that always said “Oh, Crumbs”. These two facts alone make this show worthy of being included in this list. Also it was British.

DuckTales - Another cartoon that produced another great movie. I’m not sure how many ways Uncle Scrooge could lose his money or how many times Launchpad McQuack could crash a plane without losing his job, but we always tuned in to find out.

Garfield and Friends - This show was great. I think I actually liked the U.S. Acres part of the show more, mostly because of Roy the rooster. That guy was crazy. Also, Binky the Clown was crazy (and had a voice surprisingly similar to Roy’s). This show generated the greatest birthday song of all time (as sung by Binky “Heeeeeey Caaat!!!!” the Clown):

“Happy birthday, happy birthday, whoop-dee-doo, whoop-dee-doo! May your day be pleasant, open up your present. Just for you! Just for you!

Imagine that song, repeated over and over and faster and faster until. That, my friends, is great television.

G.I. Joe - Although most of the characters went through months and months of training, none of them could shoot a laser weapon. OK, maybe it’s the lasers that were defective, but either way, there were never casualties in the world of G.I. Joe. That’s the world of 1980s children’s television: every show must have a moral and no one can die (with the notable exception of one Optimus Prime from Transformers). Even with all that, little kids don’t know the difference, and so my brother and I used to pretend we were Duke or Snake-Eyes all the time. I don’t remember pretending we were transforming robots very often (that’s what action figures are for).

Heathcliff - When you hear the name Heathcliff, do you think of a character from Wuthering Heights, a former All-Star pitcher in Major League Baseball, or a cat? I usually think of the cat, and it’s all thanks to his great song. Perhaps it should be added that I never think about the character from Wuthering Heights.

Inspector Gadget - What kid didn’t love Inspector Gadget? With the voice of Don Adams from Get Smart and powers that RoboCop would envy, Inspector Gadget was the best crime fighter ever. Except for Penny and Brain, of course. I think it’s also a requirement for these shows to have awesome theme songs. Inspector Gadget was no exception.

M.A.S.K. - This show rocked. If you haven’t seen it, you’re really missing out. Of all of these, it’s only second to Transformers, and that might just be because I was actually able to collect some of the Transformers toys when I was young. You see, my brother, our neighbor Tyler, and I were obsessed with this show and we wanted all of the action figures. We each had a favorite character, and each character on the show had his own helmet that gave him super powers. We watched reruns of this show on WGN, and by the time we were really into it the toys had come and gone from the stores. Every morning we searched through the classifieds for people selling these toys, but tragically, my brother and I never found them. Our only consolation is that now we have poor-quality recordings of the show… why, oh why don’t they release this on DVD?

Muppet Babies - A little-known fact about this show is that it actually launched the careers of Howie Mandel and Dave Coulier. Plus it was based on a scene from The Muppets take Manhattan. I do still have one question from when I watched the show originally, however. Where on earth were these childrens’ parents?

Snorks - These amazing creatures had snorkels on their heads, which must have been for breathing. Wait, no, that can’t be right, they were all the way underwater. Odd. I remember a few things about this show, mostly something about an octopus.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - I remember when my friend brought his new favorite toy to show and tell, a Ninja Turtle action figure. Everyone (at least all the boys in the class) were really excited to see this cool toy, but I wondered to myself why it took all of them so long to catch on, and why I hadn’t brought my Turtles into class before. I can still remember my excitement after walking out of the Wal-Mart with my new favorite toys. This show gave us the best arcade game of all time, and two-and-a-half great movies (TMNT was actually pretty good, and I try to forget the third movie because it didn’t have a cool rap from either Vanilla Ice or M.C. Hammer).

ThunderCats - I’ll always remember a trip we took to visit my relatives in Nebraska, but aside from a cool childrens’ museum we went to, the only thing I remember about this trip was that my cousins really liked ThunderCats. Tragically I never was able to watch them much as a kid, but I certainly remember Lion-O and Tygra fighting against the evil whats-their-names.

Transformers - This show is definitely back, thanks to its former popularity among the children of the 1980s. This was the king of 30-minute toy commercials, and if you didn’t have Transformer toys as a kid, you weren’t cool. My grandma used to go to garage sales a lot, and she had a knack for finding lots of these toys discarded by children whose parents didn’t recognize the coolness factor of having every Transformer ever, especially the ones that were part of larger robots made up of four or five Transformers. This was definitely my favorite 80’s cartoon, and I’m even the proud owner of all of the box sets that made up of the original series. That’s right, Hasbro. Your 30-minute toy commercials worked.

Voltron, Defender of the Universe - Although he was always the lesser of the transforming robots in my mind, Voltron was still a great show. In college a bunch of us found some old Voltron tapes and watched them, which made us the coolest people on our dorm floor. The plots are familiar and the endings were cheesy, but isn’t that what the 1980s cartoons were all about?

A couple of years ago, my wife and I worked with elementary-age children who were at an age of exploration. They were often seeking of ways to test their boundaries, and it was obvious which ones had structured limits at home in the things they were allowed to do. This lack of parental responsibility was a frequent topic on our drives home, and we realized that proper boundaries could help children learn much faster than if they were given free reign to explore boundaries for which they weren’t prepared. It’s up to all us - parents, siblings, friends, whatever - to help raise future generations, so let’s never think it’s someone else’s problem.

“But he that believeth these things which I have spoken, him will I visit with the manifestations of my Spirit, and he shall know and bear record. For because of my Spirit he shall know that these things are true; for it persuadeth men to do good.”

Ether 4:11 (emphasis mine)

As a prophet, President Hinckley led and guided his people. As a leader, he touched our hearts and helped us do good. As a person, he was a humanitarian and someone who loved others. A recent insert to the Daily Universe, Brigham Young University’s student newspaper, highlights many of the major accomplishments of his life.

I am very grateful to have been able to listen to his words, including a few times when I was able to listen to his teachings in person. His words touched my heart and helped me become a better person.