Unloading autoenv based on a directory

AutoEnv is a killer tool that will automatically activate your virtualenv environment based on the directory you are in (based on the contents of a .env file). But what happens when you move out of that directory? Unfortunately, the same environment stays activated until you land in a directory that contains a new .env file.

Simple workaround: place this .env somewhere high in your directory tree (possibly in the root)

if [ -n "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ] ; then
    deactivate
fi

I dropped the above .env file into my user’s root folder, changed directories above my current directory and my virtualenv environment quickly changed. Thanks to kazagistar who suggested the fix!

 

Thoughts on the “performance lab” at Music Tech Fest

I love this discussion of people coming together to create an interesting experience in “The Absorption Chamber” (a cavernous concrete space built around the DDR-era concert halls of Funkhaus Berlin, the East German radio and sound facility):

But I could go on about each of the individual artists, neuroscientists, engineers (some migrating in from the MIT lab), designers, and hackers who got involved. Via an invited international group, we had people who were as handy with a Max patch as they were with a needle and thread, who could sing and write code, who could parlay research knowledge into on-the-spot experimentation. In just one week, they invented from-scratch performance interventions – most of the collaborators meeting for the first time. Everyone shared with everyone else, but there were eventually three distinct performance groups (one including Viktoria), plus some offstage experiments, presented to the public in an afternoon.

Link (CreateDigitalMusic)

Miranda July’s Honest and silly book website

Penelope Trunk told me about an amazing website Miranda July created for her book.

It starts like this:

Photo of black text "ok, here I go. I'm going to make this whole website right now on this dry-erase board"

and keeps:
Black text on white board

going:
Photo showing kitchen counter and text written on a fridge

I clicked through at least 20 “pages” of her site. I never do that. I’m a skimmer. I browse through a site and skim for the stuff I think I want, then perhaps bookmark it and never go back.

There is something (visceral | curious | engaging) about seeing someone’s handwriting and dirty dishes right next to each other.

I’ll admit, I’m a judger. Visiting someone’s website, I want to nitpick it. I want to find the outdated portions and secretly judge people deep down for not having an amazing proofreading staff. AH HA! You forgot to spell Guns n Roses correctly! Ha!

Actually, that isn’t true. I don’t want artists and writers to have a proofreader. I want them. I want to engage with another human being and learn about them. I want to see their silly imperfect handwritten letters and be reminded I’m imperfect and interesting. You should see my wife’s cursive lower-case letter ‘a’. It is adorable. When she writes an ‘a’, it looks like Jigglypuff ate too much and decided to go to sleep in a coma of cuteness. I mistake her letter a for o. ALL. THE. TIME. And it is adorable and human. Her letters remind me that I am adorable and human and slowly gaining weight like Jigglepuff. (JP, if you are reading this: lay off the puffs, puff.)

I want to see their silly imperfect handwritten letters and be reminded I’m imperfect and interesting.

I’m excited. I think we need more Web Brutalism. We need more top-of-the-fridge whiteboards websites. We need more people being people- softer, rounder, real-er people.

Setting up Mailgun DNS in CPanel for Ghost

WordPress kills my (shared) server’s CPU. Jeff documents how Ghost is absurdly fast. It runs on Node.js, but isn’t as easy to use and doesn’t have as many plugins available. See: Multisite: Ghost vs WordPress.

Mailgun is a transactional email provider recommend by the Ghost blogging platform to send notification emails instead of the built-in PHP emailing options on most sites. (We are installing Ghost for speed, so why not choose a quick email service, instead of our site’s normal email processor?)

Here is how I setup DNS for Mailgun in my CPanel.

Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 11.42.43 AM
Choose the “Advanced Zone Editor”.

screenshot of CPanel DNS interface

Add a TXT record

Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 12.02.30 PM
Click MX Entry
Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 11.42.24 AM
If you are hosting your email elsewhere, follow the Mailgun instructions to add both MX records they recommend.


Wintersmith – a simple website editor

wintersmith
I’ve been searching for a simple website editor that doesn’t require a complicated setup and large amounts of supporting files like WordPress. I found Wintersmith when I was browsing the Justthetwoofus website.

Wintersmith tries not to put any limitations on how you work with your content. You can transform it using plugins and structure it as you please.
No special directories or odd metadatafiles, just a directory structure. This means that you can simply throw in your old hand-crafted static site or content from other generators.

Interesting. Source: Wintersmith