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. 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. 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 71104 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

Ctrl-T considered harmful

Here's an odd bug in OS X's Mail.app: if the cursor is either at the beginning or the end of a message you're composing, and you press the keyboard shortcut for "Transpose characters" (ctrl-T) the application spontaneously quits.

Bummer!

Caution -- don't idly test this out right now if you have an unsaved message open. I know it's tempting.

MacFixit has a suggested workaround -- use ~/Library/DefaultKeyBindings.dict to disable the key -- but it's not ideal since ctrl-T has valid uses in other applications, like invoking spellcheck in Pico or Nano. Unless you tend to hit ctrl-T accidentally, I'd just leave it alone and wait for the inevitable patch from Apple.

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005
os x + tips