P16: Practical Progress

My dog snoozing in my sweetie's lap

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 park

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 you

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 little generosity can put a smile on someone's face.

Stay safe in your travels, and I'll see you in the new year!

Election day attire!

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 + Nginx

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.

Catskills Twisties Crew :) - Oct 4 ride report

I haven't ridden my motorcycle much this year, but on Saturday I met up with some folks from the Brooklyn Motorcycle Meetup for a long group ride through the Catskills.

12 hours in the saddle! 320 miles on the odometer! We froze our butts off in the morning, but we were rewarded with amazing twisties, and amazing views of just-turning fall foliage. Plus there was a huge BMW rally happening at Hunter Mountain, which we visited briefly.

FYI for celebrity watchers -- I'd swear we saw Tabatha Coffey while we were having lunch at "Sweet Sue's" in Phoenicia, NY. But I'm probably mistaken. :)

How Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account was hacked

You may have heard by now that Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account got hacked. It was her personal account, but allegedly she was using it for state business or somesuch.

More interesting to me is the story of how it was hacked.

Veracode Blog - Learning From Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail Compromise

Shockingly easy: they just used "password reset" and guessed some supposedly-private "secret questions". The article also points out why Gmail's password reset function is more secure.

Lesson: don't use "secret questions" that someone can easily guess about you -- or look up on Wikipedia!

Website security audits -- how to get on the right track, for web startups

Someone asked me a rather interesting question today, and I'd like to share it (and my reply) with you.

Imagine you're in charge of a internet startup. You haven't launched yet, but the product is coming together and you'll be launching and promoting it soon. Everyone on your small team is working flat-out and doesn't have a second to spare for anything. At. All.

In one of those seconds you didn't have to spare, you think, "How do I ensure our website is secure?" So you don't have a big, gaping security breach on your shiny-new webapp the moment it gets some positive press?

Usually the answer is "Ack! I don't have time for this!" and you move on. Maybe you cross your fingers the next time the thought crosses your mind.

If you happened to be product manager within Yahoo!, instead of a startup, you'd have access to a wonderful resource: the "Paranoids". They're a highly experienced security assessment team who can quickly and clearly spell out best practices, find the booby-traps in your code, and smack your developers' wrists when necessary.

Alas, Yahoo still hasn't bought your startup yet. What now?

Interesting tech events this week in NYC

Dear readers - my apologies for posting so lightly as of late. I suppose I should come up for air more often, even if I'm enjoying my work.

Some things going on in NYC this week:

1) Web 2.0 Expo New York 2008. Not planning to go; I don't feel like dropping $1k for a conference right now. However, the one session I would love to see is Joshua Schacter's presentation on del.icio.us. Wednesday Sept 17 at 1:20 PM.

2) CouchDB tech talk @ Arc90 - tonight at 6pm. I'm interested, but I want to ride my bike home tonight so I'll probably pass.

3) An evening with S60 in New York. Weds Sept 17 at the Nokia Store in NYC (57th St). This is critical for Nokia fans -- count me in for sure! :)

ps: I upgraded my phone to a Nokia E71 about a month ago, and I'm loving it. Nothing against the iPhone 3G, but I like this better. If you like Nokia devices and haven't read Joel on software's review of the E71 -- take a moment to read, it's priceless!

"disco", a new map-reduce framework - in erlang+python

Woo! Another alternative to Hadoop crawls out of Nokia Labs:

Disco - discoproject.org

It's yet another Map-Reduce framework. This time the core is written in Erlang, and tasks are implemented in Python. Data transfer between nodes happens simply via HTTP.

There's no DFS implemented at all yet. It seems intended to run on Amazon EC2, where you'd just use S3 as your data store.

This feels like it might be a good fit for our needs, since we're a Python shop, and I'd rather hack on Erlang than Java. :)