I need my code run at Django application startup, before Django starts listening for incoming connections. Running my code upon the first HTTP request is not good enough. When I use Gunicorn, my code must run in the parent process, before it forks.

<https://stackoverflow.com/a/2781488/97248> doesn't seem to work in Django 1.4.2: it doesn't run the Middleware's `__init__` method until the first request is received. Ditto for adding code to `urls.py`.

A quick Google search didn't reveal anything useful.