PyBlosxom 0.9 coming soon.... (revised)

We're almost done with 0.9 and the code is baking in CVS and Ted is doing interesting and exciting things with metaweblog, comments, and his Lucene search plugins. When that all gets sorted out, then we'll do a release which has been a long time coming.

In the meantime, if you want to try out what's in CVS, here is a snapshot as of February 24, 2004. Setup is just like PyBlosxom 0.8.1. Features for users are pretty much the same. Biggest changes are architectural which will enable plugins to solve a very wide variety of problems and do all kinds of exciting stuff.

Official announcements and all that on the PyBlosxom site soon. Additionally, I've been working on Planet PyBlosxom, which will provide a centralized newsfeed of PyBlosxom stuff from PyBlosxom users' web-sites via their RSS feeds.

How to use w.bloggar with pyblosxom

I just finished making a bunch of code changes. So if you go this route, you may encounter problems. Having said that, feel free to email me or the pyblosxom-users mailing list with questions. It should be noted I'm posting this entry with w.bloggar right now.

  • Make sure you have the latest CVS codebase

  • Add the xmlrpc and xmlrpc_blogger plugins

  • Read the top of xmlrpc.py and set up the right config.py parameters

The w.bloggar account settings should be as follows:

In the Content Management System section:

  • Blog Tool: "Custom"

In the API Server tab:

  • Host: the name of your server

  • Page: the url of your blog with /RPC at the end (mine is /~willkg/blog/RPC)

In the Custom tab:

  • Posts: "Blogger API"

  • Categories: "Not supported"

  • Templates: "Not Supported"

  • Title Tags: (make both fields blank)

  • Category Tags: (make both fields blank)

When you go to write a new entry, leave the title field blank and do your entire post in the data section with the first line being the title (just like blosxom entries).

One thing you should note is that pyblosxom will take the first line and use that to generate the file name of the entry. So if the title of the entry is "How to use w.bloggar with pyblosxom", the file name ends up being "How_to_use_w_bloggar_with_pyblosxom.txt" which is a little annoying but whatever.

That seems to work for me. Poke me if you have questions and I can update this entry with the adjustments.

testing... testing 1 2 3

Theoretically, I just got w.bloggar working with my blog. There were some minor fixes I had to do to the xmlrpc lib we have in PyBlosxom. I'll be checking these changes in.

Beyond that, I wanted to see what the tool actually did. Where does it put the file? What does the file look like? What's the name of the file? So on so forth.... Enquiring (or is it Inquiring) minds want to know!

I have a screw loose

On Friday, I sat down at my desk at work, put my coffee mug down, and went to scratch my eyebrow when suddenly the lens fell out of my glasses and the tiniest screw in the universe dropped almost unnoticeably to the desk in a beautiful swan dive. This surprised me greatly and led to three different epiphanies:

  1. It's hard to fix your glasses when you can't use your glasses because they need fixing.

  2. When a jewelers screwdriver isn't handy, a paperclip can do--but poorly. For some reason no one has a jewelers screwdriver handy which is a shame. All mine were at home and I was at the office. I was able to screw the tiniest screw ever using the edge of a paperclip while squinting so much I was in that funky limbo between where I couldn't see because I wasn't wearing my glasses and I couldn't see because I was squinting so much trying to adjust for not wearing my glasses because that's what I was trying to fix. Anyhow, I fixed it enough that I was able to get home.

  3. When you ask someone for a jewelers screwdriver (which they don't have) they show you all the stuff they do have which might (but really doesn't) suffice. People have a lot of weird stuff at work.

Anyhow, I was amused to discover that Ted also had vision problems. We're like TWINS!!!

I got home today and totally forgot to fix my glasses until I had been sitting here for 10 minutes staring at this weird bug I found (or thought I found) in PyBlosxom that was happening in one of my blogs but not the other. The PATH_INFO for the url http://blog/george/sophia showed up (incorrectly) as "/blog/george/sophia.txt" and for the other showed up (correctly) as "/blog/george/sophia" Both blogs were configured almost identically, so I was perplexed. Then I realized that it was just me doing something silly. That's when I remembered that I had to fix my glasses. So I pulled out one of my jewelers screwdriver kit (I have several--one of which I should bring to the office) and pulled out a perfect screwdriver, fixed my glasses and marvelled at how a screwdriver of the right size can make all the difference in the world.

To summarize, my glasses are fixed, I fixed my configuration, PyBlosxom doesn't have a bizarre PATH_INFO bug, and I learned that a paperclip can be used as a quick fix.

Geek Valentine poetry

I explicitly make a habit of not reading Slashdot and especially not reading the comments. However, I saw this on boingboing and it is pretty amusing and clever and I figured I'd post it here in case people I know didn't see it.

Roses are #FF0000 Violets are #0000FF chown -R you ~/base

KillerHamster in a /. comment

My theory about interacting on the Internet

  • Don't email anything to anyone that you wouldn't mind reading out loud 10 years down the road to everyone on Earth.

  • Don't write a journal entry, paper, or other item published on the Internet that you wouldn't mind reading out loud 10 years down the road to everyone on Earth.

  • Don't put up photos that you wouldn't mind showing in a very large slide show 10 years down the road to everyone on Earth.

  • Double check everything you publish on the Internet BEFORE you publish it.

  • Don't make jokes about your relatives--they could be computer illiterate but someone from work could tell them.

If you want to do these things, write them in a private journal. You know--one of those paper kind.

My thoughts on organizers

My cell phone is doing things that are reminiscent of a small furry woodland creature in the throes of death. It even makes the same noises, though my phone makes the noises in a highly non-reproducable and intermittent sort of way. Thus, I've been tossing around getting a new cell phone in the near future. That's the first problem.

Along comes problem two: my schedule went from this easy-to-manage one-or-two-things-to-do-a-week to a massive stack of errands and events that I honestly can't come to grips with short of getting a helping hand. I tossed around getting another Palm Pilot or similar device and then decided I should replace my phone and get a Treo 600 (buy at Amazon) because they're waaay cool.

I tossed this around for a week and then ended up deciding to punt on the phone issue until it actually dies and getting a paper organizer that fits in my pocket.

The biggest reason I got a paper organizer and not a PDA (that's "personal digital assistant" and not "public display of affection" in this context for those who are wondering) is that I want less gadgets in my life. Every time I add a gadget to the arsenel, it adds to the total amount of time I'm spending maintaining and fixing things not to mention the huge chunk of time it takes to get the things to work with all the other things I own. This is definitely a case where less is more and more is less.