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. I teach photographers web design and professional skills. 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. Its strong points include an introduction to Python, and better coverage of Django 1.0 than nearly anybody else. 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, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 67532 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

TrimPath Junction: a pure Javascript clone of Rails

I won't ask "why?" because I think it's kind of neat -- TrimPath Junction is an unabashed Javascript clone of Ruby on Rails that was released earlier this year. Requires a Javascript interpreter on your server of course. (For bonus points run it on a Javascript web server too.)

I have to admit that until looking at the Junction example code I had never realized that though Javascript has objects, it has no classes. That sent me off reading more about prototype-oriented languages (that Lua just keeps popping up).

With all the Javascript action these days I wonder when we'll see additional "universal" client-side languages. Javascript is really entrenched. But as the client-side piece of web development continues to expand, will we really be able to get along with only one language?

Saturday, November 19th, 2005
javascript + rails + web frameworks