E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, bitbucket, del.icio.us, Django, Emacs, FreeBSD, Git, jQuery, LaunchBar, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, Review Board, S3, SQLite, TextMate, Ubuntu Linux

Spam Report

At least 96060 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Good Listening: Pop!Tech

I found out about the amazing Pop!Tech conference last year when browsing through the archives at ITConversations. I was surprised that a full set of recordings of this fascinating (and expensive) conference were available for free. I still remember listening to Malcolm Gladwell telling stories taken from his then-unpublished book, Blink.

This year, if you want to be one of the first to get the audio files, you have to pay for them; $5 per session or $100 for the whole set. Otherwise, you can wait as they post them to their free archives over the next few months.

There's a third option, though: listen live while the conference is going on today (Friday), Saturday, and Sunday. If your schedule permits, I recommend it.

Friday, October 21st, 2005
world