Life itself is a movie about the hero in oneโs story. It follows two generations of two sets of parents, whose children build their own families.
What caught my attention specifically was this statement by Abby, a character from the movie who writes a failed thesis on life as the ultimate unreliable narrator.
Unreliable Narrator!.โฆI'm going to argue that every narrator by its very definition is unreliable because when you tell a story there's always an essential distance between the story itself and the telling of said story, right? So therefore every story that has ever been told has an Unreliable Narrator. The only truly reliable narrator would be someone hypothetically telling a story that unfolds before our very eyes which is obviously very impossible SO what does that tell us? That the only truly reliable narrator is life itself. But life itself is also completely unreliable because it is constantly misdirecting and misleading us and taking us on this journey where it is literally impossible to predict where it is going to go next... Life as the ultimate Unreliable Narrator.
No one knows where their story is going, nor who the heroes in it are going to be. At any moment life will surprise you.
Abby, Life Itself
First of all, what? Now, dear reader, stick with me for a moment; it's going to get exciting. Let's shift to a more familiar scene. Trevor Noah, Patriciaโs son and author of Born a Crime, saysย when he is giving an interview he says:
I thought that I was the hero of my story, but in writing it I came to realize over time that my mom was the hero, I was lucky enough to be in the shadow of a giant. My mom's magic dust sprinkled on me and I hope I have enough of it to be as brave as she was and continues to be.
Trevor Noah, Interview on Born a Crime
Now that we have two separate accounts, one debating whether you are actually the hero in your story and another confirming that indeed they were not the heroes of their story, Take a moment, look at your life, and ask yourself: Are you the hero in your own story? I know for sure that I am not in my story. My life is the culmination of my parentsโs bravery, patience, hard work, perseverance, and success. It's my story, but they are the true heroes. I am just glad to be standing on their shoulders and grateful to God that he chose them for me. I could not have made a better choice.
I am not sure whose story I have been telling, whether its mine or its some characters I have yet to meet. I am not sure of anything all I know is that at any moment life will surprise me it will bring me to my knees. And when it does, I will remind myself that I am my father, I am my father's father, I am my mother and I am my mother's mother
Elena Dempsey-Gonzalez, Life Itself
In other personal news, I got selected to join the DEFNA (Django Events Foundation North America) board. I am absolutely over the moon with this news! Getting selected to join the DEFNA board is a huge honor, and I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity. As a Django developer, I am eager to learn from the experienced board members and contribute my skills to further DEFNA's mission.
Happy New Month! We made it to the fifth month. This is my birthday month. This birthday is going to be a special one for so many reasons. One that I would like to highlight is change on all levels of my life, professionally and personally. I am proud of my progress, and I hope you are proud of yours too.
To get to the technical stuff, this article takes you through the decision-making process of a team of people who took two weeks to build a tool to help the local homeless. The article walks you through the decisions made, the plan, the building process, and the post-building phase that brought the app to life.
I love cheatsheetsโgetting all you need in less than a minute. Github has a nice cheatsheet on Git. Trey also created a cheatsheet on the timeย complexity of Pythonโs data structures.
Watch this livestream on Django Trends by Paul Everitt, Sarah Boyce, and Sarah Abderemane to learn what the statistics are. Additionally, Eric Matthes is in part three of his series โDjango from First Principles', which is about templating in Django.
Django 5.0 introduced GeneratedField,
which allows us to calculate database fields. Here is an article showing you seven illustrations using the GeneratedField.
Jeff wrote about how to use Github Actions to clean up old Docker images.
Kafka is an open-source platform for handling real-time data streams. Here are the top 10 tools for Kafka engineers.
Technical writing is a skill that all of us should develop. Check out Fabrizzioโs favorite technical writing books for technical writers. You can learn a thing or two to improve your skills.
PyCon HO hosted their meetup on open source tips, tricks, and getting started with the community this weekend. Dawn shared her talk slides, which you can learn from here.
The word of the day is Ken. Ken refers to someoneโs range of knowledge, perception or understanding. Example in a sentence: The author wrote about a book beyond the ken of most men.
I'm making my grand departure into the unknown. Until the next issue, my treasured reader, go forth, and may the odds ever be in your favor!
Congratulations Velda, I'm so proud of you! Looking forward to more Django and Python releases.
Happy birthday in advance.