All my Django sites are running 1.2, which poses a conflict with writing apps for Google’s App Engine, as use_library currently only supports < Django 1.1. There are two solutions that I found: a) use virtualenv, or b) chroot, which I’ve already detailed. This document will hopefully show you how to create a virtual environment to use a secondary django version, especially for GAE. Of the two options, I think this one is a bit quicker, but there will likely be tradeoffs that a chroot environment can deal with better, e.g. python imaging (I don’t use it for GAE). First, install PIP and virtualenv:

One thing I love about open source stuff is that the developers usually take great care to allow awesome debug messages. There’s a catch-22, however: how much logging to enable? Today I was creating a Postfix/Dovecot/Postgresql install and I kept getting an error message in mail.log, but it wasn’t very helpful. Luckily you can turn up the verbosity in Postfix for error messages. You’ll need to find out what component is in error, e.g. “postfix/virtual[4467]: warning:”, and then open master.cf. Add a -v to the end of the daemon that’s faulting, and you’ll get more logging than you know what to do with.

After much consideration, I’ve decided to retire yet another website: Colddirt. This site was created as an example of how to use the different parts of Django, mostly in just one afternoon. I’ve decided it is time to just take a few screenshots and retire the site - the domain is expiring, and honestly, I don’t want to spend $10 to renew the domain. So, here are the screenshots.

Sometimes all good things come to an end. There aren’t too many links going into either of these sites, but I’d like to redirect all of them to a page on my blog saying the website doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve already created simple screendumps for nostalgic purposes with the Firefox plugin Screengrab!, so the remaining simple server-side steps are: Edit the DNS records from the live server to the server with the notice page is on. Create a new vhost on the server the notice exists on, add old websites as ServerAlias. Add a redirect in the vhost to the notice about the retired sites. Reload apache config. The below vhost entry will redirect any link to the retired sites to the notice …

Over the years I’ve created several websites, some with the hope of becoming big and popular. Naturally, I’m still waiting to create a site that becomes big and popular. In the meantime, it seems appropriate to retire some of the older sites and ideas. The truth is, I’m moving all my little sites from MySQL on a mediocre VPS to Postgresql on EC2. Because I put some sweat and blood into these sites, I thought it would be only appropriate to record how the sites looked for future sentimental value. I downloaded a small plug-in for Firefox to take full-length pictures, and I thus post them here.

You may have just read that I recently duct-taped my own walking treadmill. While driving home, I realised a reward might encourage me to keep going instead of simply crawling into bed with my laptop. Sydney’s winter is coming, and while it is not as cold as back home, it is colder than you might think. My house also seems to provide very little insulation (is reverse insulation possible?), so it can fall to 5-8 degrees Celsius inside.

There are a few problems with modern life, especially for an office worker, most notably the sedentary lifestyle that comes with it. The last few years have been the most inactive of my life; I joked today about barely having a bruise or shedding a drop of blood since arriving in Sydney. Although I’ve never been a serious athlete, I was in decent enough shape at university to know that I’m now heading down a slippery slope. The clearest warning sign came when my dress pants started becoming too tight at the waist. Since I only dry-clean them, I can’t even blame the washing machine. They were also tailored during a trip to Bangkok, so I can’t claim they were tight to begin with.

I have to admit, to me, editing OpenStreetMap is actually a little therapeutic. Sort of like gardening. My first major contribution was when I brought my little QStarz GPS unit across Indonesia, by train, sitting against the window. The most recent contribution was our trip to Dubbo, where I helped fill in a few missing roads, and added an initial outlay of Dubbo Zoo.

I am a big fan of trains. I especially like sitting back and relaxing, reading a good book, and writing postcards. After my 60-hour train ride through China, the six-hour train ride from Sydney to Dubbo was no problem. Before visiting Dubbo, I researched how to get around without a car; I like to live green, and renting a car is sometimes a bit expensive. After eventually finding the bus schedule, which didn’t even go anywhere near the zoo, I knew I had two options: 1) take taxis and rent a bike, or 2) rent a car. Two bikes for four hours at the zoo cost $30, plus the taxi around the city. Unfortunately, Dubbo is just a bit too big to comfortably walk around, and being in Western NSW, it is 40°C during …