Ana Balica

Hi, I'm Ana.

I'm a software developer. I mostly do Python. This blog is about my adventures with code, travel experiences and relevant life events. I try not to take myself too seriously.

Here's what I'm doing now.

Occasionally I give talks.

Please don't take my words for granted, because Internet is full of bad advice, and I might be part of it inadvertently.

Buda and Pest

Every time going on vacation to some new place I am telling myself to not look into any guides and follow my intuition. I want to be amazed and surprised by what I see and preferable have zero expectations. That...

Packing light is hard

Especially for girls. I used to pack up a giant travel luggage, even if I was going to be out for 2 days. “I dress according to the moods I sense in the room. As such, I must have options.”...

Why travel?

And Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn’t make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made...

Autoversioning static assets in Flask

Whether you are actively developing a web application or just occasionally making small changes, you will most probably face the problem with browsers caching static content you have (JavaScript, CSS, images). Basically it means that your users will see outdated...

Erasmus for Moldova

I will not tell you what is Erasmus Mundus in official terms, history background or program conditions. What I want to share is opportunities that exist for Moldovan students to enter an exchange program in one of the EU countries....

OMG! git reset --hard

I bet you know that jaw-dropping command git reset --hard <commit-hash>. Remember that first time you lost all that code? No? Well, good for you you didn’t. Fair enough the command is considered potentially dangerous. I have even seen blogposts...

SiCamp Moldova 2013 speculations

Social Innovation Camps are ok. Moldova also has one, I wonder why it’s not marked on the map of Global SiCamps and no words about it even here. Seemingly we are apart from the rest of the world as usual....

Custom Python Markdown Extension

Markdown is awesome. It’s a pleasure to use it and it’s a pleasure to extend the Python Markdown module to fit your needs. Along with a bunch of official extensions, the module contains a nice API for writing your own...

Welcome to Design Patterns

There are many recommended books and articles to be read on Design Patterns. High variety leads to a problem of choice. So based on the magic of rational randomization I decided to read and understand Head First Design Patterns. I...

xkcd getter

Some time ago I had an assignment to implement a crawler. Now I understand that I didn’t do the right thing, since a crawler is a program that will follow links in a systematical manner on every page. What I...