Started coding

Last week I learned more about Postgres and I think I will like that better than MySQL once I have completely figured it out. I also looked at the GIS extension PostGIS and in particular how I can access it through Python. I considered Django and some other options, but this part is still a bit vague to me. I’ll fgure that out later.
In my previous post I mentioned that I will be using Git for my project. Of course, I will also keep my repository synchronized with the OpenStreetMap subversion repository (through git-svn). I already ran into my first Git nuiscence: Git doesn’t like empty directories.
Next I have been reading about Test Driven Development and Agile stuff in general. There is even such a thing as testing databases. It was interesting to read about the cultural impendance mismatch between data professionals and application developers.
Today, May 26th, I started writing actual code for my project! This is what’s new:

• a script that downloads the SRTM tiles for Australia and tests if the download was a succes
• tests to verify the content of these tiles

The files are encoded as binary big-endian signed integers and so I needed to figure out how to deal with them. I am not sure if all went right, but I’ll find out later.
I wrote a lot of tests today so once I have more Fingerspitzgefühl for all the tools, I should be able to try some real TTD.
I will write a new post at least once a week during the project. I will try to do this whenever I reach an interesting milestone, so I can keep the titles a bit more interesting than “Weekly Status report #3”.