serving up python with the quickness
Inspired by Justin Lilly, I spent some time looking at various ways of running python web applications with an eye to performance. Nicholas Piël has done some great work testing and documenting many of them. Gevent looks like a great option as does CherryPy, but uWSGI caught my eye because it provides an nginx module and I’m already running lots of nginx. Since its fairly new, my stock nginx from the Ubuntu Karmic repository doesn’t come with uWSGI, but compiling it in is trivial.
So I’ve added uwsgi and nginx + uwsgi to my launchpad ppa for anyone out there who’d like to give it a spin on Karmic. My initial impressions are very positive. If you want to try it out, you can add my ppa to your apt sources and simply run:
sudo apt-get install nginx uwsgi
switched from drupal to wordpress
I’m not sure if anyone noticed this, but lithostech.com is using a drastically different theme. It’s just a canned theme like the old one because I’m not a designer and also can’t afford one. That’s not the only difference though. I’ve also switched from Drupal to Wordpress. Mainly, I made the switch because we’re considering moving to Wordpress from Movable Type at work and I wanted to get a feel for how it works. Continue reading →
details on the mysterious loan modification
No doubt many recent home buyers lauded the Federal Making Home Affordable program when it was announced. The program which began in 2009 promised to give some relief to certain homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages. The actual details on what it takes to get a lender to agree to a modification under this program are slim. Details on the nature of these modifications are even more scarce. What exactly can an applicant reasonably expect? Is it really worth all the time and effort to apply?
This is what I set out to discover as I began applying in June, 2009. I say began applying because I applied many times. The initial application process was nothing more than a long survey of my financial situation. Since my situation changes from day to day as paychecks come in and bills go out, I didn’t lose heart as I got denied the first three times. Each time I answered the survey (once online and 3 times on the phone), I was able to truthfully give different answers especially when it came to the last few questions about how much cash was in my bank account at that moment. In August, I called CitiMortgage again and answered the survey. I was completely prepared for another denial and I probably wouldn’t have applied many more times had I been denied again. Instead, I was accepted for a trial modification. The agent on the phone explained to me the basic terms of the trial plan and asked if I’d like to accept them. Continue reading →
bad job listing number one
Update Feb 15:
You’ve gone and made it even worse by adding e-commerce experience as yet another requirement. Have you had anyone apply who’s not still in high school? This is still only $2.00 over minimum wage. I can’t even get a guy to come lay tile in my bathroom for that price. Now you’re just asking for it, I’m putting up a link to this shameful job posting.
I might make this a regular feature because I think pointing out some of these bad job listings in a humorous way may help some businesses figure out how to attract great web developers and designers. I’m hoping this will be both funny and educational. This is an example from Fresno’s craigslist. I’m going to copy it here stripping out most of the identifying information to protect the guilty.
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building a more compelling environment for young professionals
I have two good options for internet service at my home in the Fresno High area: AT&T DSL which tops out at 1.5Mbits at my location or comcast which is much faster but can’t be unbundled from cable TV service which I don’t want and costs almost $80 / month. This is not attractive to a young professional like myself and doesn’t score the city any points when trying to attract other young professionals to the area.
This is why I was excited to see Google’s announcement today about offering its own internet service to interested municipalities. What’s more, they want residents and city officials to nominate their own communities to be among the first on Google’s rollout list. If we can get enough interest going, perhaps we can be one of the first cities on Google’s new internet service area plus it would get us some national attention and in a good way. Can we do it?
The service Google will be offering is 1Gb on an all-fiber network which is many hundreds of times more than my current service with AT&T. Lets force AT&T and Comcast into a real competition for once. I’m tired of crappy internet service and sometimes it makes me wish I lived elsewhere.
Open Source is Gaining Momentum in the Mobile Arena
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buy local? how about sell local
Before I launch into my tirade which I’m particularly jazzed about, let me just start by saying that I actually like buying local and I even like the buy local campaign. I would go so far as to say that the campaign doesn’t even come close to covering all the benefits the economy would see if we were all following along.
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I use ORMs (and so should you)
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excellent css begins with excellent markup
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s3fs for openwrt
If you’ve been following along with my wifi radio posts, you may recall my problem of storage for the platform. I chose an ultra-low power and nearly zero storage device for my music collection because I planned to buy an external storage device and serve music from that device. I still think that’s a good idea, but I’m too cheap to spring for the kind of device I really want. So I’ve been experimenting with cloud storage which has a number of big advantages which I won’t get into here.
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