I have a bunch of invites for you…

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• Green Unicorn and Nginx on Debian by drumcoder.
• Deploying Django project with gunicorn and Nginx
• fcgi vs. gunicorn vs. uWSGI, nice benchmark by peterbe
• Gunicorn, Django, WSGI by @benoitc, Gunicorn creator. Watch the conference online as well.
• PHP and Django: Nginx, FastCGI and Green Unicorn?
• Gunicorn / Django Debian init script by Thomas Pelletier

There are a bunch of gurus on the Internet telling how to be productive. One of the main aspects in every article regarding the topic is the mailbox handling. I’m not trying to convince anyone about my method, but I want to share it. I’ve taken suggestions from several friends, and read some articles throughout time. This is how I do it:

Gmail

• I use Gmail web interface
• I keep my personal and professional email separated (For my freelancer jobs, I’m using my personal account, though). I’m using Google Apps for Business in both cases.

Priority Inbox

• I use Priority Inbox, which needs some training:
  • Direct emails from colleagues, friends, job opportunities, etc.: Marked as important
  • Mailing lists, newsletters and the rest of bulk email: Not important
• This is how I configure my 3 panes:
  • First pane: Important email
  • Second pane: All starred email
  • Everything else
• Show up to 10 messages in each pane (at most 30 emails in the Priority Inbox)

Reading email

• Check Important pane emails (I do that every two hours):
  • If no answer is expected: read and archive
  • If I can answer quickly (or don’t need to prepare or gather information): reply, archive and star if I’m expecting an answer.
  • If I can’t answer right away, or need to prepare extra info: star and archive
• Same rules ‘Everything else mail’ (I do that three times a week at most)

Starred email

If you follow all the steps above, you will end up having all the work to do in the ‘All starred’ pane. Try to keep the number of emails there below a reasonable number (I easily get stressed if it goes above 20). When you get the replies you were waiting for, apply same rules again: read and archive, reply archive and star (if it needs follow-up).

I ended up using Gmail with no filters at all, however, I strongly encourage to use Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts.

Update 20101027: Google just announced a Gmail Labs feature that will allow you to auto-advance to the next conversation while deleting or muting messages using keyboard shortcuts. Cool!

I’ve deployed a new version of nuumber.com, a website I created a while ago to play with Google App Engine and SEO. I’ve used the flexible box model for the vertical positioning, the color gradients, and my favourite feature: The multicolumn layout. I’ve also used several new HTML5 tags such as nav and footer.

It seems that we are going to have a strong standard for the real semantic web. Bonus: I’m also using microformats to identify my breadcrumbs.

Warning: you should use a browser supporting HTML5 and CSS3 to surf the site (FF4, Chrome or Safari will do the trick).

By now, you must know that the answer to life the universe and everything is 42.

• The Sudoers: The brand under which I provide some consultancy services, such as SEO, cloud computing, systems administration, among others.
• Bicing.info: If you live in Barcelona, and you are a Bicing bike sharing service user, you probably hate Bicing’s official website availability map. Some time ago, I created a simple website which fills up your browser window with the bike availability map. It also comes with a handy search box.
• Seo it up: A project under which I’m building a set of tools connected with Search Engine Optimization. Currently, you can use the beta PageRank checker tool.

I’m keeping secret for a while two more surprises on the new server. Stay tuned during the following weeks.

Some of the most remarkable features in iOS 4.2 beta:

• Ability to choose font in Notes app
• New languages (Catalan among them!)
• Changed the default behaviour of rotate button: now it works as a Mute button (like in the iPhone)
• Ability to create folders (groups) of programs in the desktop
• Game Center
• Multitasking!

Barcelona started the match with a total dominion over the Greeks. All the players in front of Busquets, have been playing one-touch showing their abilities moving the ball from wing to wing around the penalty area constantly switching their positions.

Barcelona has been showing its power for the first 15 minutes, however, after more than 5 clear chances to score the first goal, Valdés received a goal (Govou, 0-1) after a lucky back heel by Djibril Cissé right after a goal kick.

A few moments after the kick off, Barça kept moving the ball at a fast speed, that proved Panathinaikos first goal was nothing but an accident. Less than two minutes later Messi decided to start his show. First amazing goal after getting a pass from Xavi, who’s been all match long putting the ball in the right place, and offering himself as an ally for every midfielder.

Villa, who is getting used to be surrounded by some of the most skilled players in the world, scored 2-1 (minute 32) after receiving a pass from Busquets after a corner kick, who’s been performing amazingly in blocking Panathinaikos attacks.

The most wonderful goal tonite arrived before the half time. Messi played one-touch with Xavi, and afterwards with Pedro and shot the goal that made everyone think that the night was over.

During the second half, as usual, Barça decided to save efforts for the next league match against Atlético de Madrid and displayed a clever way of playing football that allowed the team to score two more goals by Pedro (minute 78) and Dani Alves (minute 93).

5-1. The show will go on.

Some days ago, I read this tweet by @jessenoller (via @DZPM):

The future is DUNG: Django, Unix, Nginx, Gunicorn. I plan on asking HR to look for DUNG on all resumes.

What the heck is Gunicorn, I wondered… In short, Gunicorn is a Python WSGI HTTP Server easy to set up that gets on well with Django. Running Django apps using my beloved nginx gets faster and easier using Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. Look below…

• Install packages (I assume you’ve already set up nginx)

# apt-add-repository ppa:bchesneau/gunicorn
# aptitude update
# aptitude install gunicorn supervisor python-setuptools

• Edit settings.py in your Django app and add gunicorn to your INSTALLED_APPS

INSTALLED_APPS = (
  'django.contrib.auth',
  ...
  'gunicorn',
  ...
)

• Setup the supervisor of Django process in /etc/supervisor/conf.d/djangoapp.conf

[program:djangoapp]
command=/usr/bin/python /path/to/your/app/manage.py run_gunicorn
directory=/path/to/your/app
user=www-data
autostart=true
autorestart=true
redirect_stderr=True

• Restart supervisor
• Setup nginx

upstream app_server_djangoapp {
    server localhost:8000 fail_timeout=0;
}

server {
	listen X.X.X.X:80;
	server_name  .example.com;

	access_log  /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;
	error_log  /var/log/nginx/example.com.error.log info;

    keepalive_timeout 5;

    # path for static files
    root /path/to/your/app/media;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_redirect off;

        if (!-f $request_filename) {
            proxy_pass http://app_server_djangoapp;
            break;
        }
    }
}

• Have fun

It was crystal clear LAMP’s time was over, could DUNG be the next fashionable acronym in free software web apps world?

• Install Solr

# aptitude install solr-jetty openjdk-6-jdk

• Edit /etc/default/jetty and enable autostart

NO_START=0

• Create /usr/share/solr/solr.xml and specify your instances

<solr persistent="true" sharedLib="lib">
  <cores adminPath="/admin/cores">
    <core name="core0" instanceDir="core0" />
    <core name="core1" instanceDir="core1" />
  </cores>
</solr>

• Create configuration directories for both instances

# cp -Rp /etc/solr/conf /etc/solr/conf-core0
# cp -Rp /etc/solr/conf /etc/solr/conf-core1
# mkdir /usr/share/solr/core0
# mkdir /usr/share/solr/core1
# ln -s /etc/solr/conf-core0 /usr/share/solr/core0/conf
# ln -s /etc/solr/conf-core1 /usr/share/solr/core1/conf

• Get rid of old stuff

# rm -rf /etc/solr/conf
# rm /usr/share/solr/conf
# rm -rf /var/lib/solr/data

• Change path of dataDir in /etc/solr/conf-core{0,1}/solrconfig.xml for each instance

<dataDir>/var/lib/solr/core0/data</dataDir>

• Configure each instance by editing /etc/solr/conf-core{0,1}/solrconfig.xml
• Start Solr

# /etc/init.d/jetty start

• Have fun in http://localhost:8080/solr/core0/admin/ and http://localhost:8080/solr/core1/admin/.