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, 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 70645 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

A Ruby happening

The place to be during the afternoon break today was the Portland Ballroom, where the Artist Currently Known as why the lucky stiff and musical accomplices unleashed a multimedia explosion involving Ruby, cartoon foxes, animation, repeated MPlayer crashes, video artifacting, rocking out, shadow puppets, and network timeouts. I think this is the show he did at FOSCON last night. The quality of the stuff that did work was so high that the stuff that didn't work wasn't such a big deal. My favorite bits were the hilarious animated imaginary Ruby Cabal meetings. A good time was had by all and I don't think that there will ever be another conference presentation where someone says, "You'll notice we're using octagonal paper... as seen on Battlestar Galactica." Check why's site to see if he comes through on his promise to post those media files.

Thursday, August 4th, 2005
fun + oscon + programming + ruby
1 comment

Some related posts: The Language I Will Kind of Learn in 2008: Smalltalk • Best OSCON 2006 -- er, 2005 -- photo • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • BASIC Computer Games • Ubuntu, I buntu, we all buntu • Learning to talk good • FOSCON • CodeZoo • Railing • OSCON Playtime

• Comment from Paul Bissex , 1 week later

[OK, those files are up now](http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/starry/). They're funny, geeky, and a bit surreal. I especially recommend the two 'The Least Surprised' episodes. *Don't forget Django, where Python developers can be found copying Rails, WORD FOR WORD!*