The Initial Postgres Login Explained
So after a bit of research I believe that I understand why sudo -u postgres psql worked
for me but su - postgres didn't. Initially Postgres is setup for ident/peer local authentication,
which means that you need to login to Postgres using the postgres user account created on your machine during
installation. However, this account is locked which means only the superuser can log into it.
Musings on PyUnicodeObject
The reasons for my delving into CPython internals are a story for another day, yet quite early on it became clear that I needed to better understand how Python 3 deals with text. Most of us probably interact mainly with the Python interpreter via text input and output, and with Python 3 all of these interactions are encapsulated inside PyUnicodeObjects. Common advice is to learn by putting a bunch of print statements in the code, but print... what? Not being able to decipher these objects in CPython is akin to groping around the code with a metaphorical blindfold on.
To help me learn I did search some on the Web but was surprised at how little detail is out there. Philip Guo has a nice set of videos on YouTube on Python internals yet those deal with Python 2, which handles text differently. Ultimately I had to roll my sleeves up and dive into the code and tinker until I pieced a few things together.
Developed my own blog site!
I'm migrating from blogger.com! While writing my first blog post on Blogger I realized that it wasn't the right platform for me as I wanted to use HTML5/CSS3 in my posts which Blogger doesn't fully support. So instead I took it as an opportunity to learn more about web technologies by creating my own. It was definitely the harder but much more interesting and educational approach and I will soon have a blog post about my experience in setting up this site.