E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. 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.

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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

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Podcasts I actually like

As I said in my last post, I haven't found many tech/software podcasts worth sticking with, but since people have asked, here are a few that I generally like.

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
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7 comments

Comment from James Robertson, later that day

Thanks for the kind words on the podcast! As to the name - My blog is called "Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants", and Michael Lucas Smith's blog is "Smalltalk and my Misinterpretations of Life". Dave Buck joined us later; we came up with the name by mashing the blog titles :)

Comment from Paul, 1 day later

Ah, now I see, thanks! Seriously, though, I think you could increase your reach just by changing the name of the podcast. Though I suppose it could be worse -- you could have called it "IndustryMisinterpretColon" or something...

Anyway, thanks for producing the show, I've really been enjoying it. I especially liked the recent "Code Smells" discussion, with all its cross-language references -- somebody even mentioned Io!

Comment from Marius Ursache, 5 days later

You should give it a try to Software Engineering Radio (se-radio.net) and Python 411 (awaretek.com/python/index.html). Also some of TWiT's FLOSS episodes were quite good.

Comment from Paul, 5 days later

Good suggestions, thanks. I just found SE-radio the other day and have listened to a couple episodes now. Listening to a Java programmer explain dynamic typing to other Java programmers was interesting, though not something I'd like to do every day! Python 411 seems like a good idea, but rarely clicks for me (like I said, I'm picky). FLOSS does have some good listening -- the interview with Guido van Rossum, for example.

Comment from Troy, 1 week later

Lug Radio is brilliant, i'm glad the user base is growing constantly.

Comment from mrben, 10 weeks later

Heh - found your blog via your django snippet ticket system, and now I find you like LugRadio!

Will you be at LugRadio Live?

Comment from Paul, 10 weeks later

I'd love to -- I hear Wolverhampton is lovely this time of year -- but it will have to wait until the surplus in my bank account is larger or the distance between here and there is smaller...

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