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.

Pile o'Tags

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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

Dreaming In Code: The Interview

Dreaming in Code Over on the Well we're having a discussion with Salon.com co-founder (and longtime Well member) Scott Rosenberg about his new book, Dreaming in Code. The book follows the Chandler project -- conceived as a radical reinvention of the personal information manager -- from its inception in 2002 through... well, through multiple stalls and restarts that lead not to a triumphal "Rocky of software" finish but to our embedded journalist moving on after deciding he just can't wait any longer. Oddly, this a more satisfying ending; more honest, more interesting, and, for most programmers, more painfully familiar. It's a postmortem on a project that hasn't actually died.

If this intrigues you, head on over to check out the conversation (instructions on how you can send in questions for Scott are posted in the topic). If it doesn't, chalk it up to my miserable head cold and go check it out anyway.

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
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Some related posts: Belated comments on Dreaming in Code • Enforcing Style • The twenty-minute trouble ticket system • Required reading: Steve Yegge • "Reverse" game update -- my language safari • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • Ajaxy regex tester in Python: retest • BASIC Computer Games • Salon turns 10 • CodeZoo

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