A lot about nothing.
Darren Heath
dcheath@hiwaay.net
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Fri, 08 May 2009
Just a test
This is a test.
This is only a test.
Do not panic.
Do not adjust your set.
The authorities will arrive shortly.
Come along peacefully and nobody will get hurt.
This is only a test.
This is also a table:
|
Column 1 |
Column 2 |
Column 3 |
|
|
Row 1 |
Some Data Here |
Some Data There |
Some Data Everywhere |
|
Row 2 |
Here some stuff |
There some stuff |
Everywhere some stuff |
This is a diagram:
The point of this exercise is to see how easy it would be to edit posts locally using Word (or preferably Open Office), save them as HTML, and upload them using sftp. It seems pretty easy. I have tried some other blog hosts, but the Network Nazis where I work have been blocking them one by one.
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Sun, 09 Sep 2007I am a software engineer. I design software in accordance with a set of specification or requirements that define the thing being designed. I need to lay out some requirements for whatever-it-is I'm building here. The requirements can be informal, but that's okay. There is no contractual relationship here.
- It must look better than what I have. (Shouldn't be hard.)
- It must work on my ISP. My ISP supports HTML, CGI, Perl, MySQL, Java, maybe some others. Those are the ones I know about.
- It must have some way to enter articles/stories other than vi from a shell login. I hate vi. I agree that anybody that does anything on Unix must know vi. But if you use vi as your main editor, then you are just too lazy to find something better. My preference would be to edit articles via a web form, with appropriate login security.
- It must support user logins. I want a login account for myself with privileges to edit any document. I want logins for certain friends and family that would allow them to see pages I don't want the rest of the world to see. If writebacks or comments are supported, I want control over who can writeback when and where.
I love Modern Marvels on the History Channel. I'm watching this episode entitled "Bedroom Tech". (Calm down, perverts. The episode is about how mattresses are made and the history of alarm clocks.)
The alarm clock segment began by showing this torture device of an alarm clock, marketed by Hammacher Schlemmer. It consists of a fairly standard looking alarm clock with a helicopter-like rotor on top. When the alarm goes off, the rotor spins up, taking flight and zipping around your bedroom until it finally crashes harmlessly into some dark, cobweb-infested corner of your room. All the while, a hideous siren bellows from the alarm clock. This siren, signaling either an impending nuclear meltdown or the rising of the morning sun, continues until you drag your sorry butt out of bed, find the little rotor thingy, and place it back on its perch atop your alarm clock. It is fitting that the alarm sounds like an air raid warning, given the flight of the little intruder around your bedroom.
The guy who invented this thing should be interrogating terrorists in Gitmo. Those guys down there don't know torture.
This alarm clock would last me about one night. The rotor's launch pad would be thrown through the window. But it would get me up.
When I decided to jump back in and renovate my decrepit old web site, I thought for a while about what I should do. A friend of mine has had a blog for four or five years now. "So," says I, "I could build a blog." (Leave it to me to be cutting edge for five years ago.)
So, I'm thinking that I can check out the software my friend uses to host his site, which is currently WordPress. If my ISP can support WordPress's system requirements, then I'm in business. I quickly discovered that WordPress wants PHP, but my ISP doesn't (at least not on personal home pages. If I want to pay for a commercial grade web site, then maybe).
After a little research, I discovered that most (probably 75% or more) blog engines want PHP and MySQL. My ISP does support MySQL, but not PHP. I quickly dismissed the thought of attempting a local install in my home directory. I have no desire to tick off my ISP. They may have good reason for not running some of these things on their web server.
My ISP does support Perl. That narrowed my search down to just two or three, among them, Blosxom. Blosxom is very simple and easy to install, and very easy to add entries. The Blosxom website also lists dozens of plugins and customizations available. I have a winner. I downloaded the Perl script and followed the installation instructions. Quick. Easy. I now have a blog.
Remember that quip about being "cutting edge for five years ago"? After playing a few days with my new blog, I discover that most of those links for Blosxom plugins are dead links. Blosxom, despite working like a champ, is very poorly supported. The original author has moved on to bigger and better things and has turned Blosxom over to the open source community. The open source community is not exactly standing in line to produce new and improved versions of Blosxom. And there is little activity apparent in plugin development. The stuff that is available seems to be very solid and stable. There just ain't much happening here.
This brings me to wikis.
In searching for live links to Blosxom plugin developers, I found one or two former Blosxom enthusiasts have turned to wikis. OddMuse, for one. OddMuse seems seems to have a lot in common with Blosxom. It is a single Perl script at its core. It does not require a database back end. It uses flat files for storage. It's free. All the things that attracted me to Blosxom. And in reading about it, I detect some current activity. The most recent releast was less than a month ago.
OddMuse looks good so far. I'm going to read a little more about it, but I may be changing from a blog to a wiki in less than a week. I feel so cheap.
Wed, 05 Sep 2007
New Category
I'm starting a new category, "Nuts and Bolts". This will chronical my
efforts to install, configure, and customize my blog.
Work In Progress
This is a work in progress. It doesn't look like much now (and may never look like much), but
hopefully, this will improve over time. I plan to replacing 99% of the existing web page.
The original website was basically a place to organize my bookmarks. It also represented an opportunity for me to learn HTML. All of the page is (poorly) hand-coded HTML. That was probably about 15 years ago. The site has been neglected for probably 10 years now. Most of the links are dead, or meaningless to me now.
This site is still a learning opportunity for me. Instead of hand-coded HTML, it should be more along the lines of Perl, with a minimum of HTML for formating blog entries. This should be fun.
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Second Post
This is my second post. With an update.
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Typical First Post
Your typical Blosxom
post consists of a required title on the first line and any manner of
text and HTML markup in the body.
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