Dear Bloggart belovers (like there were any out there…), this is a quick update on what’s happening with my Bloggart fork. Yes, fork - this is now the correct way to calling it. Initially I was just touching and modelling the software to my personal needs. Now I’m really going in my own direction. Anyway, let’s stay focused. I was here to tell you about a couple of new things that are coming to Bloggart. ...
This post has been in my “TODO list” long enough. It’s time to put it in words. Let’s go! As you probably know, I decided to give up Wordpress.org in favour of Bloggart on App Engine. A great choice so far I must say. Migration, a proper one What I wanted to achieve My aim was to migrate more than 6 years of content (posts and comments) from my previous blog at detronizator.org into a bloggart installation. Why bloggart? Nick Johnson, the original author of Bloggart on Appengine, wrote a series of article on how to build a nice, little, smart blogging app on App Engine. At the same time, work on txty.mobi started to get more and more engaging, making me a lover (and advocate) of Google App Engine. Plus, I was interested in “starting from scratch”: Wordpress.org is a great project, but I just didn’t feel it “mine enough”. My blog must feel really mine: it’s about me after all. ...
When I decided to migrate to this new blog I was confronted by a very important issue: how do I make sure that the (already modest) traffic going to http://www.detronizator.org/* would be redirected to this new URL? 301 Redirection I started searching and I found this article by Danny Tuppeny on how to use a Google App Engine application to do the trick. So, what I did was to take his code and started putting it in place for me at http://redirector.ivandemarino.me. But because I’m a Software Developer that likes to make elegant stuff, I noticed that quite few things were missing: ...
Bloggart from Nick Johnson is great. I think I made it clear that I love it (there hasn’t been a post so far with a mention about it). But it has some “shortcoming”: bits that a person like me, coming from Wordpress, always wishes were there. But no worries, we can always tune Bloggart: it’s the great part of Open Source after all. Nice Branching Metaphor In fact, at github.com/detro/bloggart you can find my branch of Bloggart, where I’m gradually pushing the new functionality I want/need. ...
1 $ echo "Hello World!" This is my first post from a whole new backend. Yes, I’m leaving the underperforming and unreliable Bluehost Hosting for a scalable, distributed, load-balanced, reliable, powerful platform. I’m going Google. I’m moving to App Engine. To make App Engine serve my purpose, I picked a small, cute, interesting project to do the job: Bloggart, made by brilliant Arachnid (Nick Johnson). The old posts you ask? Yes, I’m working on a strategy for that. Most probably will work a bit on Bloggart to welcome my Wordpress’s data, and use the App Engine Bulk Loader. Of course, there will be quite few bumps on the way: Bloggart is not Wordpress. I’m sure there will be tons of features that will be left out. But Bloggart and App Engine suite my primary purpose: Speeeeeed. In fact, I recommend you take a good look at this series of article on Nick’s blog where he goes step-by-step through the development of his project: really cool stuff. ...
As I said, I’m doing some stuff with Google AppEngine. And, of course, I’m facing the usual problem of Browser Incompatibility: Browser Incompatibility ;-) =Browser Incompatibilities: the Most Common Problem= The most common problem for Web Site developers is the fact that every browser treats HTML Tags, CSS and Javascript in it’s own way. This Recipe tries to address one of the problem I faced the most: having a slightly different CSS for every Browser. =The Usual Solution= The usual solution is to load every time a different CSS depending on the Browser. But this solution has some side effects: ...
That was pretty exciting. A free, big, enlightening event about the “Google Stuff”… Ok, ok. Who spoke with me here knows that it was NOT so enlightening: most of the knowledge they brought from USA is and was already available on the web. But that’s probably not the point. The point is, I believe, to share. Share the culture, the vision and… the APIs. The Venue: Wembley Stadium!!! I went there for mainly two topics: Android and AppEngine. About Android, the presenter, Mike Jennings, was very funny (and you will see him as the second presenter in the video below) and a “great character”. But his knowledge of the Platform was pretty basic. I believe he sort of Project Manager or something like that. Plus, in the second part they invited to do a “technical talk about the SDK” a guy, Carl-Gustaf Harroch. He is developing an application that involves a bit of LBS (Location Based Services) and some Google Maps. Ok nice, but he straggled quite soon with our questions about… almost everything of the SDK. And, yes, I was quite bastard with my own questions. Come one: how can you do a talk like that without even knowing “enough” what is the meaning of the Tags within the AndroidManifest.xml? He was even quite young and not very confident, and he was unable to introduce the basic concepts before talking about more complex and in deep stuff. At the end, quite disappointing session, I must say. Probably, I knew more about it :-P . The USB freebie ;) About AppEngine, I went to a “CodeLab”: a session where you are supposed to code. And I did, focusing more on my own Python code. They were available for help and questions, either about the application they proposed to build, or about your own. “In chair”, Mano Marks: confident. Probably too confident. But, at the end, he was helpful, even if an answer or two where quite “upsetting” (I mean: if I ask a question about something you don’t know, and I tell you that you are wrong, don’t be arrogant and confident; wait and see my proof!!!). Now, let’s see the Keynote: ...
In the last period I’m spending some time working with Google AppEngine: if you don’t know what is it, be ashamed! :P I would like to highlight a couple of interesting resources that can make the life of who works with this framework/hosting platform/cloud computing system easier: * [Google AppEngine Cookbook](http://appengine-cookbook.appspot.com/) with a lot of good recipe (there are few now, written by the Googlers, but I'm sure it's gona blow up soon) The App Gallery, with a lot of interesting applications already in production phase ...