Caktus Blog

Load testing a site with ApacheBench is fairly straight forward. Typically you'd just SSH to a machine on the same network as the one you want to test, and run a command like this:

Eclipse with the PyDev module has a lot to offer the Python programmer these days. If you haven't looked at PyDev before, or not in a while, it's worth checking out.

DjangoCon 2011 is coming up next week and I’m excited to announce that Caktus is sponsoring the conference again this year! It is being held once again in beautiful Portland, Oregon from September 5th through the 10th. We’ve grown quite a bit from last year, there will be 9 team members-Colin, Tobias, Karen, Mark, Dan, Scott, George, Caleb and myself-attending the conference this year.

Leading the second talk of our Caktus Lightning Talk Lunch series, Calvin Spealman presented on the Service Page API:

The Service Page API is a prototype and proof of concept to deliver a wide range of browser plugins across multiple browsers and to extend the APIs available to websites a user visits by allowing plugins to extend the Javascript API with new libraries, integrate with external services, and more. It puts the power in the users hand to control which services can interact. This talk covers the problems with the current state of browser extensions and the difficulty in building them across multiple browsers consistently, and how the Service Page API is a solution to this, with code examples.

Estimating development time is notoriously difficult, and when moving deadlines are added to the mix, shift happens.

Estimating development time for clients is difficult enough without having to second guess deadlines. Yet despite the best efforts, if your company has a healthy deal flow, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll eventually have a project deadline shift.

Caktus is currently seeking a junior Django developer for our team. The ideal candidate would have 6 months of experience of building dynamic web applications in any language, at least 3 months of experience using Python and Django, and also have a basic understanding of relational databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL. The junior developer position will consist of data modeling complex business ideas, creating and integrating Django applications in new projects, maintaining existing Django projects and also assisting with Django deployments. 

I'm excited to announce that Caktus is actively seeking a Front End Web Developer. The position would entail creating wireframes and mock ups of proposed designs and user stories, performing front end jQuery and Javascript development, converting PSD's into standards compliant HTML and CSS, and also cloning repositories and running Django sites locally for development. The position would also consist of doing user experience design for internal and client projects. This is a contract for hire position with the potential to become a full time position with benefits. For a more detailed description of what you'd do as a Front End Web Developer here at Caktus, check out the full job posting here. 

We've been using RapidSMS, a Django-powered SMS framework, more and more frequently here at Caktus. It's evolved a lot over the past year-- from being reworked to feel more like a Django app, to merging the rapidsms-core-dev and rapidsms-contrib-apps-dev repositories into a single codebase (no more submodules!), to finally becoming installable via pypi. The "new core" is in a great state now and is much easier to work with. However, one particular aspect of RapidSMS, the route process, has always been complicated and confusing to deal with. Tobias began the conversation on this issue after returning from a 6-week long UNICEF project in Zambia. He summarized the route process like so:

Last month we hosted the first talk in our new Caktus Lightning Talk Lunch series. We started this series to get together and learn about new projects, different applications, and interesting topics that the Caktus team has been working on. Lunch was provided from Buns in Chapel Hill and Mark Lavin gave the first talk.

I am excited to announce that The Buddha site won two Webby Awards! It was built in partnership with Sonnet Media as a companion to The Buddha documentary directed by David Grubin that aired on PBS in April 2010. The site was built using Django to create a multi layered interactive experience to further explore the life and times of the Buddha.