weston
Tornado vs Django
Tornado is a server which is also a minimal framework, Django is a full featured framework which includes an ORM and is not a server. The early stage decision to use one or the other seems to often hinge upon the concept of speed. This, as well as my framing as “versus” to get your attention, is wrong, and here’s why.
(If you’re looking to benchmark geek, the baseline is that Tornado is asynchronous and fast compared to the still speedy Django served through nginx and uwsgi.)
These two pieces of tech have different purposes. Pairing them in ... read more »The Pattern of Decomposing
Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled, 1955A pattern language, he says, in its essence, is a fundamental worldview: "It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must also repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it." In that way, a pattern language, as a parallel structure, invokes a sense of responsibility to and for the world, holding out an alternative to the monoculture. ... more ...
read more »Every user always has a current directory, which belongs to him
Quasicrystal
The matter that matters is now called "Quasicrystal" in which the arrangement of atoms follows a definable mathematical pattern, but the pattern is not repeated. There are aspects of this patterning seen in the ancient concept of the "Golden Mean" as well as in medieval Islamic mosaics, which provide for a lot of analogies and pretty language in explaining what this stuff is.
"There can be no such creature" is what Shechtman wrote in his lab notebook when he first observed the patterns that do not repeat themselves using electron diffraction. ... more »Theo Jansen and his Strandbeests
Why I Went Into The Woods, Why I Left The Woods
I was lead developer at The Onion for over 5 years. It went quickly. It was fun. It was also an incredible amount of work, usually 24/7. I hope it looked effortless. But sometimes you just need to know you have to move on and work on other things. The Onion, too, is moving on, back to the Midwest.
I'll now be working with Corey Menscher at betaworks developing for findings.com.
Before I worked as a developer I worked as a librarian and bookseller-bookbuyer -- the first job I had when I moved to NYC was at Gotham ...read more »Meanwhile, In Iceland: Memories Of Old Awake
How Many Dots
"Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays."I should be deeply concerned about Facebook -- they've morphed into an uber-entity, a meta-culture, a global force. Recently in a plane I was looking down at all the little houses and in a sort of Harry Lime internal voice I wondered how many were, or were going to become Facebook members. This kind of calculation of course has huge corporate implications. It has large social implications. But I don't care. Why? Because it is now not just "majority", it's no longer moving upward, growing, but entirely ubiquitous.
Ubiquity is barely functional, always complained about (in fact if ... read more »Mix It Up A Little
Who Is Your User, Program?
Start with a Tron quote, then mention “User”. Crazy hippie technologist. I’ll meet you in 1982 by the bus at the Dead show. Bring your printouts.
"User" sounds like an antique term, stereotypical. The idea now made somewhat laughable. User no longer a target, now it’s value, demographics, market share, a bag of other indistinct terms with flair. Often, it’s just the generic slurry barrel known as “traffic”.
Is it? Consider the NYTimes demise of the TimesPeople feature, which was their social network strategy they launched with tons of fanfare (I can make a reasonable guess it ... read more »
