Entries for archive: 2007-12

Found 9 entries.

Zaapt is One Year Old

A few days ago, Zaapt became one year old. But the best is yet to come.

It's been a great week for Zaapt this week. Not only has it passed it's first birthday (born on first check-in) it's also had a lot of development done on it. The models were improved in Sep/Oct and this month it's been the controller side of things. The views didn't need much change but maybe a minor tweak here or there.

I mentioned the other week that I am now using the issue list on my Google Code Project Homepage. At this very moment I can tell you that there are six issues I have to do before I release v0.1 - which will be an amazing achievement. It will also signify the first release which I will be happy for other people to start using - before now it was still in a little flux.

As 2007 finishes up, I look back on the number of hours I've put into Zaapt and see that it's all been worthwhile. I have spent a hell of a lot of hours on it but to now have a CMS written in Perl and using PostgeSQL as it's main store is just great. It was always an ambition of mine to have that combination and Release v0.1 will realise that (note if you Google for cms, perl and postgres, Zaapt is in the top 10 hits and has been since March).

As Nigel a friend of mine said to me recently, "We just shake you and a site falls out" - which just proves how easy it is to create a Zaapt site.

So 2008 will be a belter of a year for Zaapt. I'm aiming to get it into Debian with the help of Francois Marier so after the v0.1 release, I'll sit down with him and figure out what I should do before we put it in - he doesn't know this yet :-)

Finally, just to give you a glimpse of how interesting Zaapt will be next year, here's a quote from one of my current open issues:

This issue also implements an idea I've had for a while in which models can also be mash-ups of other models. In this case, one model is referencing another. In another case, who's to say that a model might not just link together a blog.entry, a gallery.picture and a map.location.

Wouldn't that be oarsum - "CMS mash-ups".

Labels: perl, zaapt, cms, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, postgres

Inserted: 2007-12-24 17:32 (4 years, 1 month ago)

Ideas for Things to Give

Here is a few ideas of things to give for presents if you so insist on it.

In my last post, I complained that \l{giving presents at Christmas was a waste of time and money|the-christmas-circus-and-the-commercial-merry-go-round.html} so go and read that post if you have the time. Alternatively, this is a much happier and less cynical post :-)

So this is the list of ideas of gifts that I would like if you insist on giving me something.

Basically, I feel that there are many more worthy causes for your money than I so here are my suggestions on what I would consider a good present.

The first is easy:

  • give some money to a charity of your choosing and tell me about it

I don't really even care who to or how much since whoever you give it to will be a charity that you consider to be a good cause and that will be good enough for me. Of course, you can tell me who and how much but I will only be interested in the former.

The second thing you could do is 'gift' me one of the following, or something of the like:

or alternatively, if you want to give me something physical, try this (and yes, it is slightly commercial):

So there you go, anything on that list would make me happy though still, you should go from the top down.

Labels: presents, charity

Inserted: 2007-12-15 23:39 (4 years, 1 month ago)

The Christmas Circus and the Commercial Merry-Go-Round

So as time goes on, I like Christmas less and less. I enjoy meeting up with people, having some nice food and a good laugh but the rest of it kills me.

Today I went to the shops just to pick up a few things. Unfortunately for me, I went in the middle of a Saturday afternoon when it was chock-a-block. I don't like it at the best of times and now that it is two Saturdays before Christmas it's just a bit silly for me.

On the way out of the car park (after I'd picked up non-Christmas related stuffs) this dude decides to beep his horn at me and shout expletives in my general direction. I just stared at him as I went past as though "WTF is that for?" Such a nice guy, about 60 and in front of his wife too.

The next car park I was in - the supermarket - a girl in the car in front of me was being impatient of the one in front of her. She accelerated and swerved suddenly and then nearly caused an accident because the one in front wasn't expecting it.

All this because everyone is so wound up and tense in the argy-bargy that is Christmas shopping, in what is supposedly the season of goodwill. Yes, I'm very sceptical of the whole thing and am glad that today has been my only dealing with shops this whole silly season.

So Christmas, let's see! There are three things that are associated with Christmas:

  • religion
  • family/friends
  • presents

1) I'm atheist so Christmas doesn't mean anything to me in the spiritual sense. Some people have religious beliefs which they are entitled to and I fully respect, so I'm not going to comment on this point. It's just not for me and I shall say no more on the subject.

2) This is the one that means the most to me at Christmas time. It's nice to be able to meet up with everyone, share some food, a drink or two, some games and lots of laughter. This is what Christmas is all about, the sharing of each other's company.

3) The giving of presents is the one that annoys me most and is the subject of this post. Basically, I think is a waste of time - at least where adults are concerned. Most presents between adults are either gimicky (therefore they end up in the bin) or unloved (therefore they end up on auction sites). You know what these presents are because they are given with the following lines: "But it's so funny", "Oh, it's just a laugh" or "it's only a little something". Many times, friends of mine have said that a present someone gave them was just so wrong and they have never used it. The same can be said for me too.

The only time giving a present works is if you've already decided with the person what you're going to get them - and them with you - so therefore, you might as well both scrap it, not bother and just buy your own. Get something you actually want and need. I personally think it's all just fuelled by the shops and it leads us further and further down the road to a consumer nation in constant debt because the pressure of giving and putting on a big Christmas is just too great.

As an example, some of my family insist on sending presents from the UK to NZ. That's a phenomenal half way around the world. In all cases bar none, the cost of the postage was at least as much as the present itself. And half the time I could have bought it cheaper here! This makes no sense at all. In one case, the present sent never even arrived. Also, the cost of transferring money from there to here is prohibitively high for such amounts and in reality, that's just a silly present to give (oh, in return for your monetary present, I'll give you some money too - Q: Who wins? A: The bank).

In a lot of cases, if I want something, I'll go out and buy it and most of the people I know are capable of doing the same. Therefore, pretty much anything I get as a surprise present is probably something I don't actually want! This is the same for birthdays too, I just want people to stop wasting money buying me presents. If they want to give me something then they should give something to a good cause or charity and tell me about it (this is the subject of my next blog post).

This year, in return, I shall be making a generous donation to a charity of my choosing and I hope that everyone who I am 'expected' to buy presents for will understand that there are more worthy causes in the world. I shall not say who I'm going to give to nor how much, since that is a personal matter and I always keep my donations to myself.

Finally, just remember that everything I said above is related to giving presents between adults and that I haven't mentioned kids yet! I do believe that Christmas is for kids and I think it's nice to buy them a little something. But it's still too easy to go over the top.

Labels: presents, charity, christmas

Inserted: 2007-12-15 23:16 (4 years, 1 month ago)

Tonight's Happenings

Gathering interest for next April and June.

It's amazing how many people are already expressing an interest for Script Frenzy next April (for which I hope to be ML) and for SoCNoC next June.

Tonight was Catalyst's Christmas function at Wellington Zoo and I had a number of people come up to me and express an interest in both of the above events. It's awesome to see that some of my enthusiasm for writing is rubbing off on other people. Not that it needed much rubbing off since most of them had thought about writing many years ago - it just so happens that this just gives them a little kick to give it another go.

And as a final note, many thanks to all the organisers of this year's Zoo Doo, it was the best of my four so far. Thanks Pauline, Vicky, the directors and everyone at Catalyst who made it happen. It was awesome.

Labels: socnoc, planet-catalyst, zoo-doo, script-frenzy

Inserted: 2007-12-13 01:15 (4 years, 1 month ago)

Zaapt has Issues

For ages I have ignored the issues tab for Zaapt inside the Google Code site but I decided that I had so many plans and ideas rolling around in my head, that it made sense to get them down.

So tonight I have just entered 18 issues which I need to work through over the next few months.

Currently there are two bugs, two tasks and the rest are enhancements.

So you can see that I think Zaapt works pretty well but there are still plenty more things to do.

Google Code Project Hosting and its issue list is also helping more than just listing the issues. It is also helping me figure out which issues I'm going to fix before I release v0.1 of Zaapt and which ones I can leave until v0.2 (milestone ordered list).

This also means that once those ones are done, I know it's time to release. A bit like TDD whereby you know your development is done when all your tests pass (we hope).

P.S. I just found a bug in the issue search so I'll report it to Google once I gether evidence.

P.P.S. The grid view is awesome. On that page I'm categorising the 'y' axis as Which version of the software the issue relates to and the 'x' axis as The release in which it will be fixed. That's pretty cool.

Labels: zaapt, planet-geek, google-code, planet-catalyst

Inserted: 2007-12-07 00:30 (4 years, 2 months ago)

Delegating Control to Others

For wellington.geek.nz, we now have other people administering certain calendars.

Well okay, we have one person administering their own calendar (read about it on the new blog) but it's a start and here's why.

Before now, I have usually given out blanket permissions to do something on a site (e.g. on KiwiWriters) but now it's much more refined. I'm creating specific permissions, with specific roles and correct assignment of such and therefore being much more detailed about who can do what.

This is all possible because I recently added RBAC to Zaapt and this is proof it works and works really well.

There are still lots of things to do on Zaapt but as each day passes, it gets more complete.

Labels: zaapt, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, wellington-geek-nz

Inserted: 2007-12-05 00:26 (4 years, 2 months ago)

NaNiWriMo Winner

So I'm late posting this - about winning - but better late than never.

November and NaNoWriMo turned out to be awesomly hard this year. I think this was because I was working a lot at the start of the month so it consumed more time than I wanted it to. But I clawed the words back towards the end of the month.

You can see from my progress that I did quite a few days of over 4,000 words and even managed 5.6k on the last day (though I remember doing a 6k day last year). Then again, I didn't write on 10 days, which meant my average was over 2.5k a day.

Anyway, winners certificate:

The current status of the novel is that there are about 3 scenes to go so probably just a few thousand words. I told this to the others during the TGIO party on Sunday but no-one believe me that I'll finish it off - hehe, like my previous two novels. This year, I'm determined to prove them wrong (naming no names but Kerryn and Travis are the main two non-believers). Just you wait and see!

P.S. That image was uploaded using the new(ish) file upload feature of Zaapt which I just fixed to work properly with Apache2 :-)

Labels: zaapt, nanowrimo

Inserted: 2007-12-04 00:23 (4 years, 2 months ago)

A Quote about Open Source

The roots of Open Source lie in Academia and Scientific Papers and Peer review.

Simon Willison pulled this quote about Open Source from an article by Dave Shields.

I love it, though my favourite quote from it is:

As a programmer, it [Open Source Software] is the best arena in which to work.

P.S. my blog entries are not usually this short so I now need a Tumblelog for such things. Time permitting, I shall be implementing a (initially small) Tumblelog model for Zaapt in December.

Labels: open-source, zaapt, tumblelog, planet-catalyst

Inserted: 2007-12-02 00:26 (4 years, 2 months ago)

Blogger in Draft now Accepting Comments with OpenID

Exciting news for people who comment on Blogger blogs. They're now accepting OpenID on BloggerInDraft so soon enough it'll be phased into the rest of Blogger.

So on their post announcing that Blogger will accept comments using OpenID I decided to leave a comment there using my own identity.

And it worked - beautifully. It even asked my OpenID Provider some other details such as my name. I allowed them to do this and sure enough, my name appeared with the link to my site. So that's pretty cool too (I only typed my site url).

Anyway, I got number nine in the comment list.

So now, that means both LiveJournal and Blogger both accept OpenID for comments. I reckon that must mean that a large majority of blogs on this planet now accept OpenID - so let's now get Wordpress and Typepad to do it too.

Labels: livejournal, blogger, planet-geek, wordpress, planet-catalyst, open-id, typepad

Inserted: 2007-12-01 00:15 (4 years, 2 months ago)