About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex. 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. Then I taught photographers how to create good websites. I co-wrote a book along the way. Now I am helping turn a giant media corporation into a digital enterprise. 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 184538 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

TextMate update

A new "bleeding edge" version of TextMate appeared this evening, featuring extensive improvements to the bundle infrastructure. (If you're not sure what this means, read my earlier post on how bundles are the heart of TextMate's stupendousness.) Allan Oddgaard has put a lot of thought into the balance between distributed bundles and user customizations, and has developed some really elegant solutions that allow you to benefit from improvements in the bundles (some of which move at a rapid clip thanks to motivated community developers) while retaining your specific customizations.

Also, while this may have been possible before, I just noticed it: you can use the "Edit in TextMate" command to edit the content of snippets etc. in the bundle editor. That's nice. It's amazing how constraining a regular Cocoa text field feels after becoming accustomed to TextMate's style.

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
os x + programming + textmate