Moron realization...

I realized this afternoon that I am moron. You know, I've tried reading "Programming for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Programming," but I've settled on the "Banging on the Keyboard for Morons," because that's what I am. Knowing what category you're in is critical to choosing the right reading material.

I realized this this afternoon while I was bemoaning the to-do program that's part of Django. It does everything I want, but it's ugly, and I stopped using it a long time ago.

On the other hand, I have a static HTML document that I've been using for years as the home page on my browser. It has lovely typography, a memento mori image (another brain in a jar), a javascript clock ticking with the phrase "Are you sure this is what you want to be doing?" with a list of projects to the right that I could be doing other than opening another browser window and playing around. Every once in a while I'd update the raw HTML of the projects list, which was nicely organized into contextual groups, just to keep myself reminded. I use it because It's the one thing I know will be before my eyes regularly.

Today, for no reason I can fathom, I realized that if I applied the typography and imagery of my reminder document as the base.html document of the Django to-do list and added a few jQuery upgrades to make it editable on the fly with keyboard controls, I'd have the best of both worlds.

Why it took me years to realize this is beyond me.