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 67581 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

A different kind of switching

During the same period that I thought I'd be playing a lot with an old Dell laptop running Ubuntu Linux (but haven't), several notable Apple fans have made, or are seriously and publicly considering making, the jump from OS X to open-source operating systems like Ubuntu.

Mark Pilgrim led the way. (He does work for IBM, though he's gotten remarkably few snide remarks about that in the comments.)

Cory Doctorow is talking like he's about to do it as well. Cory has a Mac tattooed on his bicep, but that might not last either.

Tim Bray also seems ready. Some kind of XML-based conspiracy between him and Mark no doubt.

John Gruber is not switching, but has some thoughtful comments. My favorite:

I'm deeply suspicious of Mac users who claim to be perfectly happy with Mac OS X. Real Mac users, to me, are people with much higher standards, impossibly high standards, and who use Macs not because they're great, but because they suck less than everything else.

Jason Kottke expands on early adopters, canaries, and coal mines.

Tim O'Reilly mulls it over. With graphs.

Friday, July 21st, 2006
apple + linux + os x + ubuntu