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

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

This runs on Django, 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. 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 59052 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Developer meeting braindump 2007-09-20

Another successful session of non-stop technical chatter in the back of our favorite chain restaurant. Links and commentary:

The Talk Like a Pirate Day site was a victim of its own success this year. After several hours of record-breaking traffic, Chris nobly disabled the site to protect paying customers on the server. I'm looking forward to the white paper, "How to serve one million unique visitors one day per year". We also heard the origin story of Talk Like a Pirate Day and the site. I hadn't realized what a pioneer and international pirate celebrity Chris was.
jQuery UI is out. Who doesn't love jQuery?
Windows/Eclipse font weirdness.
Chris Amato had a letter in Wired. Maybe he'll notice I linked to him and come to a meeting like I've been bugging him to.
Next to Chris's letter was one from Dennis Bathory-Kitsz -- music composer, Vermonter, 8-bit computing luminary and original TRS-80 Model I warranty voider.
The RESTful Web Services book: we like it.
Evolving schemas, pre-populating databases, Core Data.
Digitizing handwritten documentation of geological data (core samples)
...which led to a discussion of all the cool stuff that the software Lou works on does.
MySQL on Amazon S3: Anybody using it?
Obligatory distributed-version-control reference: hgsvn
Notebook sleeves: Marware, CaseLogic, InCase, and at least one I forgot.
Personally I only hang out in civilized, literate online communities, but that only makes this YouTube video funnier. Caution: swearing!