Something I've had on my todo list for a very long time now was to get my notes from School published automatically on my website. They are already stored in ReStructured Text, and they are already stored in git repositories, so my use of smug already had me 95% of the way there. (I have a write-up about my note taking method: here)

I spent my day off, and finally found some better approaches to the problems I had, and I now have automatic sharing of my notes on my website.

The thing that was holding me back was the fact that smug couldn't do everything I wanted it to. I also store other things, such as homework, papers, and other assignments in the same git repository. Also, the way that I would organize a website is different than I would organize my personal files.

Here is an ...

Python for Unix and Linux System Administration First Edition

This is an O'reilly book that focuses on using Python in a niche that has long been filled with shell scripting languages like bash, along with perl. Python's scripting capabilities are very nice. I like Python, and I'm a System Administrator.

The Introduction explains the authors' reasoning why Python is a good choice. They explain why Python can be a good choice. For the casual reader that may have picked up this book in a bookstore, this is a good thing. I've already been sold on Python, which is why I got the book in the first place.

The book's chapters each focus on a specific type of task that a System Administrator might need to do. Some chapters covered topics that I could have written about. They covered creating a few small Django apps in ...

So I've had a slice with slicehost for about a year and a half now. I love all the things I can do with my very own relatively cheap server on the Internet. I started out with a 256 slice, and then I talked my wife into upgrading to a 512. I kept putting more things on my server because it was so convenient, and fun to have a 100% static IP on the internet. I've started running my own mail server, and slowly I've been moving all my personal sites to Django. I even host a website on my slice for a small fee.

After a little while, I was curious as to why all my Django apps seemed to run so slowly. I don't use my own website very often, so I didn't notice the slowness creeping in. Running top revealed that I ...

I recently read about django-webalizer http://github.com/arneb/django-webalizer/tree/master

I decided to set it up. I'd never really cared to analyze my log files before. I set up webalizer, and it was great. The django-webalizer app provides a good interface for my statistics. I'll definitely include it for any freelance work I might do in the future.

When I ran webalizer on my site for the first time, I realized there were a couple broken links, and I noticed there were some things I could do to better my site. I don't use a favicon, so I had several hundred 404s in my log. I also analyzed logs for a public facing site at work, and fixed quite a few things.

This was good, but all those errors that happened at the beginning of the month have been taken care of. webalizer doesn't ...

I've been a semi-active participant in the Django community for over a year now. I've seen thousands of e-mails come through on the Django-users and Django-developers list. I've written a few patches, and helped revise some as well. I may not be the most seasoned Django community member, but I see the same questions pop up fairly frequently. Here are some of the solutions to some of those problems, and some helpful ideas that may be helpful. This is no substitution for the official docs. All of this is documented very well at http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/static-files/

Static media seems a little weird if you're new to web frameworks. It seems like Django should be responsible for serving that media. It shouldn't be. It can, however, be useful in some instances. Many questions about serving static files fall into two categories ...