Entries for label: kapiti-geek-nz

Found 14 entries.

Ready to Migrate old Blog Posts Over

A recent commit on Lollysite has enabled me to import old blog posts from my other sites. Yep, you heard right, I’m going to concentrate all my blogging prowess here.

This includes my old entries from:

I hope that once the migrations are done, and I redirect the traffic from those sites here, I’ll be more consistently posting. Also, I’m reaching the stage where I’m understanding AppEngine a little more and actually have less things to do for Lollysite now.

BTW, I’m now also writing my blog entries in Textile instead of my proprietary (but open source) wiki markup Phliky

It’s very nice. Finally, I find a wiki-type markup language I like.

Labels: phliky, textile, appengine, blog, kapiti-geek-nz, retire-at-40

Inserted: 2009-12-23 09:32 (2 years, 1 month ago)

QR Code for http://kapiti.geek.nz/

The Google Chart API now supports QR codes.

QR Codes now available on the Google Chart API. Here's mine for http://kapiti.geek.nz/:

And the link I did it with.

I originally saw this because Brad Fitz has used it to put on his Facebook profile image which is interesting.

I guess if image search engines want to know where an image originally came from, they can scan for the QR Code

Taking this futher, I can think of one really good use already. You could put it on your Creative Commons licensed Flickr images and that way, the attribution part of publisher's side of the deal is already fulfilled. That can only be a good thing (as to whether they want a black and white pattern in the corner of their published images is a different story).

So I'm already defining a small protocol in my mind which might be quite nice.

There are 4 corners of an image so maybe something like this:

Any thoughts (apart from the fact it might look ugly)?

Labels: creative-commons, qr-code, planet-catalyst, google-chart, kapiti-geek-nz, flickr

Inserted: 2008-07-11 10:11 (3 years, 7 months ago)

kapiti.geek.nz Now on Etch

After almost all of October being spent on polishing and shining Zaapt, I'm now making the move to Etch and Apache 2 from Sarge and Apache Perl.

After telling you about my refactoring on Zaapt I'm now migrating my sites over to Etch with Apache 2.

This site, kapiti.geek.nz, is the first to move. I did it last night and generally it went quite well. I got most of the bugs out last night before I switched DNS so that was good. I did find one this morning however regarding my RSS feeds, so I apologise if you had to wade through a list of broken links to my site from your feed reader this morning (one silly '/' is all that caused it).

Since then, I have found a few other back-end things which needed fixing, mainly caused by the migration from the old roles and privileges to the new RBAC. Overall though, I'm really happy. I may find some more problems when I migrate Zaapt and Zaapt Simple but hopefully all those things will be ironed out by the time I migrate KiwiWriters.

Labels: zaapt, planet-geek, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2007-10-22 13:00 (4 years, 4 months ago)

Converting kapiti.geek.nz to Zaapt

Over the past couple of nights I have redesigned my site and currently have a staging version of it all set up and ready to go.

The main reason for re-doing the site was so that I could convert it into a Zaapt site. As stated before, currently this is running using some software called Slym which was a precursor to Zaapt. Also, the old modules are no longer maintained and were starting to get on my nerves - anyone notice my blog's archive dates don't keep up? :-(

All in all, the redesign hasn't taken very long at all. In fact, getting a site up and going with Zaapt is just getting quicker and quicker. Recently, I checked in some code into the Zaapt Demo project which creates a basic (and Debianised) site upon which you can add things. To get that up and going takes about 3 minutes from start to finish - customisations after that take longer of course.

So the conversion from this site to the new one took something under six hours! That includes about 3 hrs of setting the site up, templating the HTML and some quick testing and about 3 hrs for the data migration script for everything in the old database. Currently, I'm copying and converting three lots of content sections, one blog and lots of comments and labels.

So all in all, I think getting the site going in less than 6 hours (including a data migration) is quite impressive. Also, when I got the Zaapt and the Zaapt Simple websites going way back in March it only really took me three days to get those going - and they've hardly been changed since.

Also this week, Don has stated that he may also switch to Zaapt so that makes me very happy. Finally, Zaapt will be used by someone else. It's not that I'm pressuring him :-) but that would be oarsum when it happens.

It does mean however, that the Zaapt sourcecode will now be under scrutiny from my peers. This is a really good thing (I'll know if I'm on the right track) but may also be embarassing (for those times when I've been slack or silly), but hey, that's what free and open source software is about :-) Just having someone else use it will be great...

...and nothing makes me happier.

P.S. the new design will be launched on Sunday just so I can add some spit and polish tomorrow

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

Inserted: 2007-08-18 02:49 (4 years, 6 months ago)

kapiti.geek.nz Now One Year Old

Yay! Party time. Excellent!

Not much more to say that that except I still need to update KapitiGeekNZ to a new design.

Am not sure where time has disappeared since June but consider Christchurch and Postgres being my major time sinks.

Anyways, am looking forward to a good weekend of doing things, lots of things, so I hope you have a good one too.

P.S. Fridays and Sundays are the best days of the week!

Labels: kapiti-geek-nz, birthday

Inserted: 2007-07-13 17:54 (4 years, 7 months ago)

Need to Re-write Kapiti.Geek.NZ using Zaapt

This website was a precursor to Zaapt. It laid the foundations for what Zaapt would be based on but with a many more nicer features.

It's about this stage now that I need to re-write this site, kapiti.geek.nz using Zaapt and that means three things:

  • I'll get a nicer interface, more functionality and a better framework (one that is updated, this one is just static now since I'm not developing it further)
  • I have to migrate all the data across. I guess I'll just write a quick script to import all the blog entries and the few content managed pages I have
  • I'll use this opportunity to do a re-design (or should I say re-skin) of the site

As always though, the main problem I have is time. Maybe one day someone will invent a way to make more time to use in each and every day...

...or is that called retirement. :-)

Labels: zaapt, planet-geek, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2007-06-23 17:33 (4 years, 8 months ago)

Small Makeover for kapiti.geek.nz

So after thinking about it for a while, I did it.

Here's a list of changes I've made:

  • the menu system on the left is a bit easier and less cluttered
  • the titles of each page are now the names of the page instead of a rubbish static one
  • added which section you're currently in to the section bar above.
  • added a links section to the blog to other people around Wellington (thanks Don, good idea)

Finally, I've also added a new 'content' section to the site which now serves up the index, about and credits pages. This way (moreso for the index page), I can change it regularly without having to do code changes and a new deploy.

In all this, I've certainly used a fair few nice Mason techniques including attributes and methods.

And just to get you off my back, I know I should have been writing tonight for NaNoWriMo, but I just felt like a night off!

Labels: mason, nanowrimo, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2006-11-11 01:37 (5 years, 3 months ago)

kapiti.geek.nz Random Blog Gets an Archive

I've just added support for an archive so that past articles are now browsable.

Once an article has dropped off the front page, it really can't be accessed from this site :-( but only from external links to it.

So, a monthly archive is now available from the left menu.

The CMS also has support for yearly and daily archives as well as monthly ones, in fact, you can put any date and time interval you like (so long as Postgres likes it). Of course, it is restrained by the front end rather than the back-end, so you can't just go making up dates.

As an example, for October, you'd use 2006-10.html and for today you can use 2006-10-29.html.

Enjoy.

Labels: archive, kapiti-geek-nz, fli

Inserted: 2006-10-29 00:32 (5 years, 3 months ago)

Things I still need to do on Trackback

After adding trackback to my blog code, I haven't yet enabled it. And I still need to add some trackback code to the admin side...

...tsk tsk.

I really need to get to it, though it has been a mad week or so back in New Zealand. This weekend, I promise.

Oh, and the other thing I need to do is add an archive for my blog...bugger. I really shouldn't think about these things 'coz otherwise I'll just find more and more things that need to be done.

Labels: trackback, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2006-09-27 19:57 (5 years, 4 months ago)

Trackback Now Added to Site

So I did it on Saturday and had to wait until Tuesday evening to deploy.

As you know, my server hosting company took the Mick and had routing problems for 4 days. It's hard to go over and fix it yourself when you are in New Zealand and they are in Denmark,

Anyways, now that I have access to my server again (and hence my web admin, my email, my SVN and other stuff) I have updated the site to add trackbacks.

Currently, the DB changes have been made, the site calls the Perl Modules at the backend to display the trackbacks, the admin displays and audits them, so the only thing left to do is publish the trackback link for each entry...

...but I'm going to use this \[p]{trackback form|http://www.reedmaniac.com/scripts/trackback_form.php} first to test it all out.

Labels: trackback, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2006-08-22 23:48 (5 years, 6 months ago)

My Navigation Kinda Sucks

After reading an article on "Web Navigation", I realise my fundamental flaws in my site's design. An update to be scheduled soon I think.

The article in question is \[p]{Where Am I?|http://alistapart.com/articles/whereami} by Derek Powazek. Even though there are some obvious points in there, it's amazing what you forget, don't think about or just plain ignore.

Whilst reading through the article, I kept referring back to these pages on kapiti.geek.nz. As it turns out, I need to update a few things:

  • whilst I tried to provide some sort of "Where have I been?" using the stacked menus of the left, it fails miserably
  • the breadcrumbs (which I must admit, I've always liked) have a "Navigation>>" line above, but nothing happens in there - why?
  • the original design also had the above menu options highlighted when you were in that section - I didn't do it
  • and I am lazy since I don't un-link the links for the page I am currently on

So overall, I give myself about 4/10 and a note from the teacher which says: "Andrew must try harder and not let himself be distracted by others talking at the back"!

Labels: web-design, kapiti-geek-nz, usability

Inserted: 2006-08-18 00:04 (5 years, 6 months ago)

My New CMS is Coming Along Nicely

After a fair bit of work over the past month or so (since when kapiti.geek.nz started), my new CMS is starting to take shape.

Today, I finished off adding the content managed pages as seen in the (sparsely populated) Software section.

The best thing about the new Content type though, is that it fulfilled all of the criteria I want for all the new content types which I will be adding to it. So far, the Blog type (which is used for /random) is mostly there but doesn't quite fit the abstraction I want it to. The DB class is fine, but the display pages are lacking since I'd written them for this site before I wrote them for the CMS.

On the other hand, I wrote all of the display code for the Content type before I wrote anything for this site and it turned out well. Out of the box, the CMS will support 'text', 'code' and 'html' types - weird I know but it proves the concept. Despite this, I assign my pages a content type of Phliky then, in kapiti.geek.nz, I override the display of that particular type and don't have another jot of work to do :-)

Inadvertently, though I guess I am inclined that way, this new CMS pretty much follows the MVC pattern. I'm not always sure that this is necessary but once a project starts getting big, then it's the best way to go and hopefully this one will get bigger.

As an example, the database interface code is written in Perl modules. The admin interface (which could be termed the controller) is written in Perl/Mason and is a part of the CMS code. The View pages have default versions in the CMS code, but can be overridden with the website pages, which is the technique I used to display a phliky type in the content pages. This approach seems to be the way it turned out and the way it will continue to move forward.

Oh and by the way, I haven't yet worked out a name for it. At the moment, the working title is Fli since it is a play on Fly and hopefully should be really fast. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

Labels: perl, mason, cms, mvc, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2006-08-13 01:20 (5 years, 6 months ago)

Google Sitemaps is Slightly Suspicious of Me

I submitted a sitemap to Google Sitemaps and confirmed that I owned the site. But wait, what's this obscure request...

To try out \[p]{Google Sitemaps|https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login}, I firstly had to prove that I was the owner of this site. They gave me a URL of the form http://kapiti.geek.nz/google################.html where each # was a number or letter.

A while after I put the page on the site and Google had verified it, I looked in the server logs to see at what time it had been requested. Immediately after the page was requested, another request for the page http://kapiti.geek.nz/noexist_################.html was also there, which obviously gave a 404.

I think they are being slightly suspicious of servers which return a page for any URL requested which I guess is what the noexist request is to stop. Anyway, that kinda made me smile thinking that my server was doing the right thing.

As for the Sitemap itself, well I used the Perl Module \[p]{XML::Mini|http://minixml.psychogenic.com/} which is quite nice in a funny way. I thought that this Google Sitemap Generator would be good for a module, so I looked on \[p]{CPAN|http://www.cpan.org} - lo and behold, there already is one by \[p]{Jason Kohles|http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Google%3A%3ASiteMap&mode=module}.

Ah well (but that's a good thing).

Labels: perl, google, xml, kapiti-geek-nz

Inserted: 2006-08-12 15:58 (5 years, 6 months ago)

Site Admin Almost Complete for kapiti.geek.nz

After a short while playing with kapiti.geek.nz, I've pretty much done all the admin interface now.

You might have noticed over the week or so, I have done two main things: (1) I broke the posting of comments on the blog entries, and (2) I added a random quote to the top right.

Well, I've fixed the first and am now using the new admin interface to manipulate the blog and its entries. I also have an admin section for the quotes and for the (RSN) content managed pages.

I'm doing it all in such a way that if I want to re-use all these modules in a future project, I can and do so quite easily. This site is a DAMP site (of course), and after a while playing with different websites, I know what I want, how to do it and most of all, be consistent in my approach. This way future additions are easier.

At first, I wanted the administration to allow many users, with different roles and access permissions, but there are many \[p]{CMS tools|http://www.cmsmatrix.org/} out there which do all this - and they are huge, both in function and form.

My plan is to make something a lot smaller and allow any user to change anything. This means there will be the abilty for many people to log in, but no access rights or roles need to be assumed - everyone has the power to do anything. It will be ideal for personal sites and for small to medium businesses. Even so, I have ideas about how it could expand to fill in all these things, but I'm trying to repell them since that will ruin the overall plan - to keep it small.

Eventually, I will get everything together and release it on this page, but not until I have a few different content types and a consistent approach. There are other things on the way but I won't promise too much for the future.

Look out though for some recipe pages over the next week or so :-)

Labels: cms, kapiti-geek-nz, damp

Inserted: 2006-08-12 01:31 (5 years, 6 months ago)