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P16: Practical Progress

Technology that doesn't suck, plus some that does. By Matt Kangas


My dog snoozing in my sweetie's lapJanuary 6


Aww! Snug!
Originally uploaded by mattkangas

This is my dog Buckley, snoozing in the crook of my fiance's arm during the long drive back from North Carolina on Dec 28. Hank (below) may be doggone cute, but Bux is my boy!



My sister's dog Hank, in the parkJanuary 6


Hank sitting pretty - aww!
Originally uploaded by mattkangas

We took the dogs to the park this weekend, and for one fleeting moment, Hank actually posed for a picture. So cute! You'd never think he was a troublemaker from this photo.



Three amusing/enlightening distractions – my holiday gift to youDecember 23 2008

Dear Reader,

Happy holidays! Whether you're celebrating Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or anything at all, I hope you find some seasonal cheer in these weeks.

My gift to you for the holidays -- a few links for your enjoyment:

  1. (video) Why Cal Henderson hates Django

    This is the keynote address from Django Con 2008 by the lead engineer from Flickr. The title is tongue-in-cheek -- of course he doesn't really hate Django or Python, but he makes a good pretense of it. Hilarious and educational!

  2. (quote) Jimmy Wales on steak knives

    One quick quote from Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, from ConvergeSouth in Greensboro, N.C. on Oct. 8. A rather fascinating perspective on "security" in the context of "social software"... I'll bet Facebook has never thought about security in this way.

  3. NY Times Op-Ed: Hard Times, a Helping Hand

    The story of one man's generosity in the depths of the Great Depression, 75 years ago, in a small Midwest town you've probably never heard of -- which just happens to be my hometown. :-)

Please consider giving to those in need this holiday season. There are lots of people hurting out there this year, and even litt

Election day attire!November 4 2008

Election day attire!
Originally uploaded by mattkangas

I just had to wear this shirt today. Too bad I didn't have a "Colbert/Manilow" shirt instead. :-)




Quick demo of Python + WSGI + NginxNovember 4 2008

At Daylife, we're running a whole lotta Python code inside Apache using mod_python. This works great so long as each request can be processed quickly, and you don't need your Python processes to keep much of anything in RAM.

However, any real web app inevitably needs to break those rules, at which point you start to venture into a world of increasing pain. Thus arises a need for alternatives to our cozy, familiar, tried-and-true mod_python.

I've set up Lighttpd before, but this time I decided to try Nginx. (It's pronounced "engine x")

Here's a quick demo recipe for running two standalone Python FastCGI+WSGI servers that listen on Unix domain sockets, and configuring Nginx to load-balance between them. This config allows you to run more than one Python VM, but not need N VMs to handle N concurrent requests. It also allows you to restart VMs individually with no service downtime.

On CentOS x86_64, enable the EPEL repo and "sudo yum install python-flup nginx"

Download the two files in this directory:

Google Code – p16blog – python_nginx

"cp nginx.conf /etc/nginx". Then: /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Start one Python FastCGI server (you downloaded this file above, right?)

python hello_flup.py -n 1 &

See that this creates a socket fi