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.

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.

The Book

Book cover I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley in October 2008, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well. Click on the book title above to learn more.

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 45593 pieces of comment spam killed since January 12th, mostly via Akismet.

Go Beavers: The OSU Open Source Lab

At OSCON I learned that just up the Willamette River from Portland, in sleepy Corvallis, Oregon State University's Open Source Lab hosts www.mozilla.org. Maybe you've heard of it. They also provide hosting and/or mirror services to Apache, KDE, Xiph.org, Debian, Gentoo, and others. In the early '90s I briefly lived in Corvallis and this just gives me the warm fuzzies.

Public universities have a long history with open source -- my server would not be what it is without Berkeley in particular -- but I don't come across a lot of explicit advocacy from schools beyond the level of individual employees or researchers who work on projects of their own volition. Public universities should be big backers of open source, I think, so I hope that OSU's example is inspirational.

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
mozilla + open source