Tuesday April 20, 2004

Kerry/McCain 2004 It just shows how centrist I am, I would probably have voted for McCain in 2000 instead of Gore. Even though I don't agree with all his planks, I've liked his independant attitude and willingness to speak his mind. As unlikely as it is, this is a combination I could show some enthusiasm for (as demonstrated by my posting this).
( Apr 20 2004, 09:59:03 PM ) News Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/a_href_http_www_sfgate

RUNNING FROM BACKUP

Earlier tonight my "server" died (an older laptop with display issues and a dead CD drive). When I rebooted it reported that "hal.dll" was corrupt, and that I should replace it. Of course, WinXP is deader than a doornail and there is no way to copy in a replacement. And with the CD drive dead I cannot restore, even.

So, Brainopolis Blogs is running of a backup database from April 8th. Any files you've uploaded are still on the brick, the laptop cum server. I tried pulling the harddrive and installing it in my dev box, but the pins are some unique arrangement that I don't have any cables for.

I don't think it's worth spending any money to recover, but I'll keep trying what I can.
( Apr 20 2004, 09:36:04 PM ) Technology Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/running_from_backup

Thursday April 15, 2004

Migrating to Roller

Wouter is considering moving to Roller, and rightly wonders if he can migrate his existing posts from MovableType. Here is the comment I left to his post:

I'm working on Import/Export for Roller, supporting RSS and Atom. The export was the easy part, the Import isn't done yet. With Atom you will be able to migrate your comments as well, but I don't know if MT will generate Atom+Comments. Since there is not a 'standard' way to represent comments yet, my interpretation makes each comment an Entry, with a Link pointing to the Entry they refer to. This will be in Roller 0.9.9 (is in CVS now). As I said, though, Import is not finished (maybe this weekend).

I've just got to tie the pieces together, run a couple tests and it should be done.

Later: I mispoke, Comments are linked to their parent Post by the annotate tag.
<annotate type="comment" rel="parent">$entry.id</annotate>
( Apr 15 2004, 03:04:19 PM ) Roller Permalink
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Tuesday April 13, 2004

More Roller Hacking Hard on the heels of other Roller hacks, comes this good one from Jeff Mattfield for Preventing Comments for an Entry.

I've created a page on the Roller Wiki where these and futures hacks can be documented.
( Apr 13 2004, 03:06:22 PM ) Roller Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/more_roller_hacking

Monday April 12, 2004

Re: Comment permalinks

I like Sam's idea, so I'll be working on implementing this for Roller. It should only mean some macro/template changes....
( Apr 12 2004, 03:08:44 PM ) Roller Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/re_comment_permalinks

Thursday April 01, 2004

Building A Better Brain

Several people have posted links to this article, but I waited until last weekend to read it, so I'd have both halves. Neat ideas, good read. I've got it in mind to take this idea and run, but using/extending the Atom format rather than using the format invented for the article (which does have the virtue of being nice and trim). Yeah, like I've got the time; we're selling our house, looking for another to buy, I still have work to do on Atom4J (though it's mostly there), and of course I keep working on Roller. I guess this post will serve mostly as a bookmark to an interesting idea.
( Apr 01 2004, 08:32:57 AM ) Technology Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/building_a_better_brain

Expert Shilling

Is it just me, or does Jack's article seem like a clever way to direct (ever) more traffic to his website? This "first installment" doesn't really say anything on the topic matter, then ends with a bunch of links to his site. Clever!
( Apr 01 2004, 08:22:20 AM ) Humor? Permalink [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/expert_shilling

Thursday March 25, 2004

Update on Roller and "The Ultimate Weblogging System"

The advent of UrlRewriteFilter (well, my finding a link to it) led me to review my comparison of Roller against The Ultimate Weblogging System. The following is an update on where Roller stands against some of these "requirements".

#4, Non-crufty URLs: Roller has supported this for some time now, you can get to a specific entry at . Roller still doesn't have "archives", and cannot show you a specific day/month/year's worth of posts (though you can go straight to a day with yyyyMMdd). Roller does provide a Category view, but it is currently crufty: ?catname=blogerati. I'm thinking that we should be able to address this last issue with the UrlRewriteFilter. Question: if you request a certain date, do you want to see entries ONLY for that date? What if there are no entries for that date? Currently Roller shows N posts, backwards from midnight of the requested date.

#5, Metadata: Roller still has a long way to go to become Ultimate, but as of the current version (in CVS) Hierarchical Categories is now a reality.

#6, Syndication: Roller now pings Weblogs.com, and plans are in the works to make Roller configurable so that the administrator and users can choose which "aggregators" to ping.

#8 Backward compatibility: Two items high on my ToDo list are export/import of RSS/Atom and, now, using the UrlRewriteFilter to support "foreign" URL patterns. To that end, anyone care to supply the URL patterns for popular (and not so popular) blogging tools?
( Mar 25 2004, 10:06:07 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [4]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/update_on_roller_and_the