bgneal@3: About
bgneal@3: =====
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: Hello! My name is Brian Neal. By day I am a real-time, embedded C++ programmer. By night and
bgneal@3: on the weekends I like to hack on interesting projects in Python_. Right now I am mainly 
bgneal@3: focused on web development.
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: My interests in web development began several years ago when I started a community-based
bgneal@3: website for instrumental surf music fans. I simply downloaded a popular PHP CMS system, set
bgneal@3: it up, and opened shop. Very quickly bugs appeared. "No problem", I thought, "I'm a programmer,
bgneal@3: I can fix this." Opening up that code in a text editor was quite shocking and disappointing.
bgneal@3: It was obvious I had chosen a framework built by amatuers with no concern for security, efficiency,
bgneal@3: standards, or any kind of software engineering discipline. I spent about 2 years working on the
bgneal@3: code with a group of dedicated enthusiasts, but eventually grew tired of the sprawling, cut & paste
bgneal@3: spaghetti code. It was simply too broken and too tedious to make fundamental changes.
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: I started looking around for other alternatives and discoved Django_. I had some limited experience
bgneal@3: with Python from work, and Django looked incredibly useful. Django allowed me to concentrate more
bgneal@3: on my application and less on the "grunt work." Once I had created a small website for a friend's 
bgneal@3: band, I knew I was hooked. I then sent out on a nearly 2 year mission to rewrite my growing website
bgneal@3: with Django and Python. The rewrite finally went live about 2 weeks before I attended my first 
bgneal@3: PyCon_ in 2011.
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: This blog will be mainly about my experiences in web development and Python. C++ and my day job may
bgneal@3: sneak into the blog from time to time as well. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to
bgneal@3: contact me via any of the links in the sidebar or by email (*bgneal at gmail dot com*).
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: Disclaimer
bgneal@3: ----------
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: I hope this is obvious, but please bear with me. This blog reflects my own personal opinions and 
bgneal@3: not those of any past, present, or future employers. I hope the information found herein is useful 
bgneal@3: to others, but I may in fact be on crack and I make no warranties of any nature. This blog is a
bgneal@3: snapshot of my thoughts in time. I may change my mind as I learn more and gain further
bgneal@3: experience.
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: Some blog posts may allow comments. Please note that I reserve the right to remove comments for any 
bgneal@3: reason at any time.
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: Colophon
bgneal@3: --------
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: This blog was created with Pelican_, Python_, reStructuredText_, Mercurial_,
bgneal@3: Vim_, Fabric_, and Bootstrap_.
bgneal@3: 
bgneal@3: .. _Python: http://python.org
bgneal@3: .. _Django: http://djangoproject.com
bgneal@3: .. _PyCon: http://us.pycon.org
bgneal@3: .. _Pelican: http://getpelican.com/
bgneal@3: .. _Bootstrap: http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
bgneal@3: .. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
bgneal@3: .. _Mercurial: http://mercurial.selenic.com/
bgneal@3: .. _Fabric: http://fabfile.org
bgneal@3: .. _Vim: http://www.vim.org