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.
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.
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.
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
Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media
I've always wanted to like AppleScript more. Even though I've occasionally been paid to write AppleScript code, and always have a few little snippets gluing parts of my work environment together, I've never really gained facility with it. I've always summarized its flaws this way: It's very easy to read for general sense, but damn hard to write. Sort of the inverse of Perl -- which, probably not coincidentally, is the world's most popular glue language. So while this characteristic of AppleScript may have been a conscious decision on the part of its designers, I'd argue it hasn't served us all that well. (I'd also argue that Automator is a partial acknowledgement of those failings.) John Gruber of Daring Fireball sums it up nicely in his recent posting:
the language syntax is optimized for English-likeness, rather than being optimized for making it clear just what the fuck is actually going on.
Comments use Markdown syntax. Your comment will not appear until approved, which may take a few hours or more. Spammers will be torpedoed.
The iPhone keyboard doesn't suck
Python one-liner of the day
7 comments
How not to advocate via Google Code
2 comments
99 problems
3 comments
bitmonk
Obscure "svn mv" problem solved
88 days ago
Charlie
Book news: Rough Cuts and Amazon
89 days ago
Simon Griffee
Django Mercurial mirror tweaks
106 days ago
Jason Calleiro
From PHP to Python
107 days ago
Yuli
dpaste.com
110 days ago
bruce
Neat Python hack: infix operators
114 days ago
David Reynolds
The original Lego Star Wars
122 days ago
At least 36667 pieces of comment spam killed since January 12th. Thanks are mostly due to Akismet.