Fabric is a pretty neat deployment toolkit for creating deployment scripts in python comparable to capistrano. You can use it to execute commands locally or on the target server without having to deal with ssh tunneling, shell scripts etc. There are a few concepts that take some time to figure out but once you grasped the main concept, this simple tool allows you to do quite a few things much more efficiently.

I’ve published my fabric script that I’m using to deploy a few smaller-scale django sites as well as deindeal.ch on Github. Disclaimer: I’ve been using it productively for a while but it definitely lacks the documentation and there probably still are some quirks that I just haven’t found yet. Continue reading →

Crash course for the daily life in Moscow

1. -32° C (or -25° F) is cold. Any task involving taking your gloves off outside for longer than 10 seconds like taking a call on your phone should really be avoided. Also: when travelling in the Metro, you’ll get really good at closing and opening your jackets.
2. Learning the cyrillic alphabet is easier than expected and helps a lot. Even without understanding the words, being able to read, recognize and memorize them is crucial for navigation.
3. Escalators are about twice as fast in the Moscow Metro than in Berlin. Other interesting facts about the Metro: On busy stations you often end up waiting longer to get on the escalator than to get on the next train. During rush hour there’s a train every 90 seconds. The longest escalator is 126m. The number of passengers in 2009 was 2.4 billion passengers. 99.98% of the trains are on time. Source Continue reading →

My growing list of russian Facebook friends and checkins on foursquare have already somewhat revealed what has been keeping me busy in the past two months. We’ve been preparing our Russian site for launch. Bonial and Fastlane Ventures partnered to bring our business model to Russia launched publicly today.

We’re not only launching our new Russian Site lokata.ru but announcing what I’ve been working on since last June, Bonial International Group, the umbrella brand for all of our current and future endeavors.

Many people might ask, why Russia? Christian answers this question in his blog post about the launch with some very interesting stats, something I plan to talk about in a follow up post.

Entering Russia as our third market may seem as a surprise – the decision however was made carefully, and it is simply based upon the vast market potential in the East: Russia, as the largest country in the world by geography and its 140 million inhabitants, takes the second “European” place after Germany in terms of internet connectivity (60 million users) and will take the first place by 2014 (80 million users). From 20 to 40 million Russians use mobile web; there are 17 million smartphone users in Russia.

- read his blog post on: http://www.christian-gaiser.com/two-b-i-g-moves-for-our-familia

The Lokata press conference at Progress Bar (Digital October)

Thank you to our team in Moscow doing a great job making sure, that the user experience is perfect from day one!

On my most recent trip to Moscow, I checked out the exhibition of Doug Menuez’ 15-year project “Fearless Genius” chronicling the rise of Silicon Valley from 1985 to 2000.

The exhibition is filled with interesting and more often than not rather funny and nerdy images of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and the likes along with great anecdotes.

If you’re going to be in Moscow in April, I recommend you go check out the exhibition which is at Manege right next to the Red Square. For everyone who isn’t, I have taken the liberty to show a few pictures along with their stories below. Doug Menuez maintains a blog himself, where he also posts about this project.

Continue reading →

Nothing to see here.