Why I Hate Django

Cal Henderson
 O HAI

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 My happy face
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 2.8 billion photos

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 2.8 billion photos

1 per 2.3 people on earth

9.2 per US resident

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 35k photos/sec

>2m photos/min

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 Many thousand pages/sec
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 Scale nerd

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 Serious Language
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 Wordpress
Yahoo

Mediawiki Facebook
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 Wordpress
Yahoo

Delicious
Digg

Mediawiki Facebook
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 Flamework

Serious Toolset

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 Flamework Flink

Flint Flotos

Flinderbox Flictionary

Flaux Flops

Flag Fleng

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 Why hate Django?

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 What does he even know

about Django?

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 Pownce
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 A fucking blogging engine

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 Why all the hate?

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 An attack on several fronts

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 An attack on several fronts

The team
Python
Frameworks
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 Django itself

Performance

Scalability

Maintainability
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 The Team
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 Frameworks

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 Struts
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 Craig McClanahan
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 Exhibit A : Beard

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 But Struts is for suits!
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 The Hot Shit

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 Rails = Badass

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 Instead?

A boy band?
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 DjangoCore
The Album

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 Also, a wizard

Simon “Stinky” Willison

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 Python
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 Trendy

Google!

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 But not that trendy

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 But not that trendy

It’s no ruby

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 But not that trendy

It’s no ruby
Or Haskell

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 But not that trendy

It’s no ruby
Or Haskell
Or Erlang
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 But not that trendy

It’s no ruby
Or Haskell
Or Erlang
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Or Scala 47
 Significant Whitespace

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 Salmon

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 Universe of marshy force. Field sense
shallows the hatchery saying Hello,. World!.
Hydro. Power spring sometimes; snowmelt
powers snowmelt always.

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 No quantum
superpositions

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 “-”.join(array)

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 Restarting the server?

WTF!?
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 WSGIReloadMechanism
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 “I buy my eggs at the cheese shop”
- Aaron Straup Cope

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 “I buy my eggs at the cheese shop”
- Aaron Straup Cope
E ]
A G
G U
AN
L
ON
O
[M
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 __import__()

from future import awesome

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 Basically, for hippies

Scared of real

OO languages
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 Frameworks
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 Flamework is a framework

But what does that mean?

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 Make common tasks:

easier
faster
error-free

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 Show a list of photos

Write an API method

Kill all humans

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 Front-tier frameworks

Act as glue
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 Other
Services Data store

Data Model

Business
Logic

Request Interaction
Templates
Dispatcher Logic

Framework

Users

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 Great for getting started

Slows you down later?

What is it doing in there?

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 Fast
Easy

Scalable
Flexible
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 Large scale

is often not a good goal

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 Skyscrapers are special

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 Regular houses

Don’t need 10 story foundations

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 Just build!

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 Everything here is possible!

We care about easy

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 Large Scale
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 No multiple DB clusters

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 Manual partitioning
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 No multiple hosts per DB
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 Where do we read from?

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 How about now?

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 How about now ?

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 Read/write consistency

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 Read/write consistency

LAG!!1
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 Good for non-writing users

(logged out)
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 Non time-sensitive data

Feeds
Read-only APIs
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 Cool kids use
master/master pairs
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 Consistent read/write

1. Write to side A

2. Read from side B

3. Replication occurs

4. FAIL
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 Consistent read/write

1. Write to side A

2. Read from side A

3. ???

4. PROFIT!!
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 Then we can start to get fancy!
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 Where do we read/write?

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 Abstraction FTW

db_query($cluster_name, $sql)

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 No sharding
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 WTF is sharding?

All about books

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 Dewey Decimal
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 But it can’t do everything

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 Makes some things

‘impossible’

No shard walking
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 Django knows our models

It’s possible
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 If we accept constraints

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 No external sequences
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 Auto-incs can be bad

master/master

shards
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 No automatic denormalization

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 Counters would be easy!
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 And copied fields too

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 High
Performance
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 It’s slow!

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 There are limits

But they only apply

When being really silly

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 Sessions

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 OMG UR ON CRAK
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 Extra DB table

A read on every page

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 Lightweight = better

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 Signed cookies

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 No parallelization
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 Multiple cache-requests
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 Multiple multi-keyed reads

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 Slow HTTP requests while
we’re doing other stuff

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 Creates dumb SQL

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 foo.exclude(bar = true)

WHERE (NOT (bar = 1))

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 foo.exclude(bar = true)

WHERE bar != 1
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 foo.filter(bar = false)

WHERE bar = 0

Indexable!

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 Maintainability
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 Maintainability
Awesomeness
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 Verbose template syntax

<h1>{{ foo.bar }}</h1>

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 <h1>{{ foo.bar }}</h1>

<h1>{$foo.bar}</h1>

3 extra characters!
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 <h1>{{ foo.bar }}</h1>

<h1>{$foo.bar|e}</h1>

Well almost…
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 {% if edit_mode %}
woo
{% endif %}

{if $edit_mode}
woo
9 extra! {/if}
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 Verbose template syntax
makes people cry

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 No query debugger
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 >>> from django.db import connection
>>> connection.queries
[{'sql': 'SELECT
polls_polls.id,polls_polls.question,polls_
polls.pub_date FROM polls_polls', 'time':
'0.002'}]

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 >>> from django.db import connection
>>> connection.queries
[{'sql': 'SELECT
polls_polls.id,polls_polls.question,polls_
polls.pub_date FROM polls_polls', 'time':
'0.002'}]

Not good enough!

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 Better, but not amazing

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 Page summary

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 Make it clickable…

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 EXPLAIN is AWESOME
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 And/or show the data

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 MySQL Query Profiler

Enough data to

choke a whale
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 Not smug enough

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 Unreadable SQL
SELECT
`app_userprofile`.`user_id`,`app_userprofile`.`account_status`,`app_userp
rofile`.`account_status_reason`,`app_userprofile`.`account_delete_type`,`
app_userprofile`.`syndication_key`,`app_userprofile`.`blurb`,`app_userpro
file`.`location`,`app_userprofile`.`country`,`app_userprofile`.`postal_code`,`
app_userprofile`.`gender`,`app_userprofile`.`theme`,`app_userprofile`.`tiny
_photo`,`app_userprofile`.`small_photo`,`app_userprofile`.`smedium_pho
to`,`app_userprofile`.`medium_photo`,`app_userprofile`.`large_photo`,`ap
p_userprofile`.`orig_photo`,`app_userprofile`.`bday_month`,`app_userpro
file`.`bday_day`,`app_userprofile`.`bday_year`,`app_userprofile`.`is_pro`,`a
pp_userprofile`.`privacy_settings_id`,`app_userprofile`.`email_settings_id
`,`app_userprofile`.`preference_settings_id`,`app_userprofile`.`ad_counte
r`,`app_userprofile`.`num_friends`,`app_userprofile`.`num_fans`,`app_user
profile`.`num_feeds`,`app_userprofile`.`num_blocked_fans`,`app_userpro
file`.`num_friend_requests`,`app_userprofile`.`default_set_id`,`app_userpr
ofile`.`invite_id`,`app_userprofile`.`invite_round`,`app_userprofile`.`avail_in
vites`,`app_userprofile`.`original_email` FROM `app_userprofile` WHERE
(`app_userprofile`.`user_id` = 1)

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 Unreadable SQL
SELECT * FROM `app_userprofile` WHERE
`user_id` = 1

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 SELECT * is fast!

Faster over the wire

Faster to parse
Easier to debug
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 Unreadable SQL
SELECT
`app_note`.`id`,`app_note`.`type`,`app_note`.`body`,`app_note
`.`sender_id`,`app_note`.`date_sent`,`app_note`.`num_recipie
nts`,`app_note`.`recipient_type`,`app_note`.`set_id`,`app_not
e`.`direct_to_id`,`app_note`.`media_file_id`,`app_note`.`url`,`a
pp_note`.`url_inline`,`app_note`.`url_clicks`,`app_note`.`embe
d_id`,`app_note`.`event_id`,`app_note`.`is_direct`,`app_note`.`
is_public`,`app_note`.`is_deleted`,`app_note`.`is_ad`,`app_no
te`.`reply_to_id`,`app_note`.`forwarded_from_id`,`app_note`.`
original_note_id`,`app_note`.`stars`,`app_note`.`rsvp` FROM
`app_note` LEFT OUTER JOIN `app_userprofile_notes` AS
`m2m_app_note__recipients` ON `app_note`.`id` =
`m2m_app_note__recipients`.`note_id` WHERE ((NOT
(`app_note`.`is_deleted` = True)) AND
`m2m_app_note__recipients`.`userprofile_id` = 17573)
ORDER BY `app_note`.`date_sent` DESC LIMIT 16
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 Unreadable SQL
SELECT
n.*
FROM
app_note AS n
LEFT OUTER JOIN app_userprofile_notes AS l
ON
n.id=l.note_id
WHERE
n.is_deleted = False AND l.userprofile_id=17573
ORDER BY
n.date_sent DESC
LIMIT 16
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 Django makes me

scared of joins
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 Actually,

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JOINs are evil 157
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 Low version number

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 Suspiciously small

Django: 105 klocs

Flamework: 260 klocs
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 Suspiciously small

Very long lines?

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 Can’t pluralize octopus

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 Commit all fields at once

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 Race conditions!
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 Dirty flags
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 Don’t make Malcolm cry
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 No simple way to inc/dec

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 UPDATE foo SET x=x+1

Makes consistency hard!

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 Character encoding
Input validation?

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 Character encoding
Input validation?

(Probably broken)

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 No mascot!?!

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 Echidna?

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 MAGICAL POWERS

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 No deployment system

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 Extending models

Tables are never

big enough
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 Model changes

manage.py reset appname

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 django-evolution

dmigrations

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 What’s django
done for you
lately?
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 thanks

(now go make it better)

 Photo credits
• flickr.com/photos/wilson/18685396/
• flickr.com/photos/uhop/105063089/
• flickr.com/photos/plasticbag/91453376/
• flickr.com/photos/zenoc/1408162618/
• flickr.com/photos/subinev/27810058/
• flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/2531797176/
• flickr.com/photos/esti/243781036/
• flickr.com/photos/oneras/253617128/
• flickr.com/photos/josefstuefer/72512671/
• flickr.com/photos/pgoyette/168076182/
• flickr.com/photos/paulhammond/2825869449/
• flickr.com/photos/nez/378348754/
• flickr.com/photos/calevans/2265863104/
• flickr.com/photos/mbiddulph/416190643/
• flickr.com/photos/obliterated/2249663391/
• flickr.com/photos/salim/67753003/
• flickr.com/photos/sosalem/2816909110/
• flickr.com/photos/radiorover/324193883/
• flickr.com/photos/nickwheeleroz/2773776799/
• flickr.com/photos/rse/22972901/
• flickr.com/photos/rougerouge/534615363/
• flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/386355092/
• flickr.com/photos/escalla/438817719/
• flickr.com/photos/mknightphoto/2295688304/
• flickr.com/photos/petereed/138369750/
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• flickr.com/photos/sharynmorrow/2571566304/
• flickr.com/photos/florathexplora/286035943/
• flickr.com/photos/webguru4god/2233500779/
• flickr.com/photos/emdot/195189924/
• flickr.com/photos/kayepants/391645870/
• flickr.com/photos/ppowers/793939285/
• flickr.com/photos/dinesh_valke/425540358/
• flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/306276212/
• flickr.com/photos/cedric1981/383614033/
• flickr.com/photos/macspite/1118042091/
• flickr.com/photos/jpstanley/1440357613/
• flickr.com/photos/ashclements/248887492/
• flickr.com/photos/kecko/1876479840/
• flickr.com/photos/difusa/131100622/
• flickr.com/photos/amagill/378984660/
• flickr.com/photos/bea_k63w-wa/2466009108/
• flickr.com/photos/namullim/2096115820/
• flickr.com/photos/lotterymonkey/175248733/
• flickr.com/photos/13519089@N03/1380483002/
• flickr.com/photos/gswj/10344097/
• flickr.com/photos/deanj/67607256/
• flickr.com/photos/malias/2218694639/
• flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/120760767/
• flickr.com/photos/grandpamikey/2228239585/
• flickr.com/photos/lea/2829752510/
• flickr.com/photos/superamit/196481424/
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 More photo credits
• flickr.com/photos/simon999/2419051858/
• flickr.com/photos/tonyjcase/2172060723/
• flickr.com/photos/heypaul/1428681/
• flickr.com/photos/swisscan/2308034084/
• flickr.com/photos/apollonia666/310793656/
• flickr.com/photos/bdorfman/15846725/
• flickr.com/photos/wishymom/566394520/
• flickr.com/photos/jgarber/121886004/
• flickr.com/photos/eole/380316678/
• flickr.com/photos/917press/1940509163/
• flickr.com/photos/wallyg/476718069/
• flickr.com/photos/biwook/390088839/
• flickr.com/photos/bdjsb7/1674027307/
• flickr.com/photos/naveenroy/314965221/
• flickr.com/photos/wyldkyss/2757474674/
• flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/409812627/
• flickr.com/photos/candiedwomanire/1651870/
• flickr.com/photos/dalvenjah/408497650/
• flickr.com/photos/krikit/2657457178/
• flickr.com/photos/w5nyv/2370344/
• flickr.com/photos/jordanfischer/72510316/
• flickr.com/photos/tedsblog/91531710/
• flickr.com/photos/celesterc/1069893367/
• flickr.com/photos/spacematters/766372252/
• flickr.com/photos/esti/147733640/
• flickr.com/photos/rbp/2833593771/
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• flickr.com/photos/jordanroher/228435564/
• flickr.com/photos/tambako/2524829095/
• flickr.com/photos/66132721@N00/2725908636/
• flickr.com/photos/freeparking/1279927021/
• flickr.com/photos/drurydrama/1352506223/
• flickr.com/photos/mn_francis/397620193/
• flickr.com/photos/dramaqueennorma/273371415/
• flickr.com/photos/chasqui/2338990305/
• flickr.com/photos/cityhunter12/2574288725/
• flickr.com/photos/akbuthod/1508537255/
• flickr.com/photos/nunoforos/2811186142/
• flickr.com/photos/marcusjb/432600086/
• flickr.com/photos/12495774@N02/2405297371/
• flickr.com/photos/larimdame/572477975/
• flickr.com/photos/harryharris/1525946537/
• flickr.com/photos/davemorris/91808851/
• flickr.com/photos/aplumb/121285138/
• flickr.com/photos/peebot/825451566/
• flickr.com/photos/reillyb/2216541900/
• flickr.com/photos/steffe/423086866/
• flickr.com/photos/ciordia/255983919/
• flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2472230611/
• flickr.com/photos/pnoid00/1909096140/
• flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/2229899/
• flickr.com/photos/foxypar4/766801643/
• flickr.com/photos/wizardhere/2413404079/
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 these slides are online:

iamcal.com/talks

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