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

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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.

My Palm TX runs Windows 98

...at least that's what you'd think by looking at the User-Agent string sent out by the Blazer web browser:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; 
  PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448

Embarrassing, especially for a Mac/Palm/Unix guy. I mean, if I did use Windows, I'd run something cool like Windows 2000 Server.

Thursday, January 19th, 2006
+ +
4 comments

Some related posts: The Palm Foleo • Selling beat-up stuff on eBay
• Comment from Gene , 15 months later

Hello, silly.......
That is talking about the compatibility of the Blazer browser, not the operating system
It is used by web sites to tell the server how to serve up the web page to the browser for best handling and viewing.

• Comment from Paul , 16 months later

I know why it's there -- it's still embarrassing!

• Comment from Sparky , 2 years later

I am considering the purchase of a Palm TX, but am torn between that and the iPod Touch at the moment. I love Python and would like to be able to use Linux Apps on a PDA. I am not a gamer and am not really concerned about whether it plats movies or music all that well. I need something that leans heavily towards app flexibility. I'm thinking Palm might be best. Any thoughts and is Linux / Python easily portable to both ?

Thanks

• Comment from Paul , 2 years later

Sparky: See my [old post about moving from Palm to iPod][1]. Between the two, the iPod touch is the winner. As far as I'm concerned the PalmOS is dead. If you want Linux and Python, you may be happier with a Linux-based PDA -- lucky for you there are several good ones out there.

[1]: http://news.e-scribe.com/402

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