Older blog entries for boog (starting at number 7)

I've decided I should get involved with Advogato so more, so I'll be updating my diary more in future.

At this point though, I just want to say I've bit the bullet and actually learned how to use vi. It's weird for a geek to say he only just learned vi, but I just never got around to it, preferring other editors. Now I've learned it, I can't see myself using it all the time, but it definitely has some advantages with its dual command/input modes.

It's got to be better than pico at any rate ;-)

15 Oct 2003 (updated 30 Aug 2004 at 00:47 UTC) »

Well, it's been a goood nine months since I last posted! The aforementioned open source project came and went. Quite a few sites ended up using it, but many switched to a rival system after a period of inactivity.

Unfortunately, and I'm sure many of you can appreciate this, 'real life' work that pays the beans for the rent and the food usually has to take priority over the pet projects. One such project being a Web hosting reviews site, although it was a fun bit of XHTML related consultancy.. I'm trying to mold myself into the shape of an XHTML zealot who gets paid big bucks to convert existing sites into XHTML.. small steps.. small steps..

Also developed a site for a loose leaf folders & binders company in the UK.

I do have plans for new projects though, some involving FreeFilter, in a round about way. And XML-RPC has become a new thing of mine.. yeah I'm years behind the times, but hey!

I have also become interested in wikis over the past few months, and I think I can see a way they can adapted to become a lot more useful. Perhaps I could turn my twist on wikis into the next 'blog'. :-) Anyway, that's about all.. will post again soon!

Believe it or not, the day is coming. I will be releasing my first major open source project! What is it? A community posting and discussion system. But this is no regular PHPBB or forum...

It's called FreeFilter. You might be aware of a popular community site called MetaFilter which gets a lot of good press because the interface is simple, not over technical, and let's people get on with the talking and posting, and not the administration.

FreeFilter is already running at http://freefilter.bigbold.com/ and you can sign up, post, or either post as 'Anonymous Coward' if you don't want to join.

Initial testing has been going really well, and I'm looking forward to using this for a few community sites I have dreamed up. Hopefully other people will have even better ideas.

The code is written in Perl using MySQL as the backend. Has a generic template SQL file to import to get the database in order, and is really quick to set up. 99% of the layout is controllable from the database and CSS files.

Haven't done any high traffic testing yet (although if I launch a good community hopefully it'll get some!) but am serving a few hundred pageviews per day so far without problems.

There are 101 things to do, things to be added, and lots of tidy up, but it's working so I thought I'd get it up ASAP. The source code will follow when I reach a 0.1 version stage in the next week or two. The code needs a bit of cleaning up.

Anyway, if you have comments, do let me know!

Oh, and it's not as if I don't post anything at all, it's just I have a personal weblog over at boog.co.uk/log as well.

In other news, I'm developing a special tracking system with someone which should plug a certain unfulfilled niche in the market. But I can't say too much about that yet. Not open source, but some of the libraries I'm writing to support it probably will end up being so. (XML access modules, etc)

I don't seem to have enough time to participate here much, so I just drop in from time to time with what I've been working on, etc. This time I wanted to be totally unoriginal and continue to do the same.

Several months ago I really got into virtual machines. The experimentation was fascinating.

Being a Perl nut, I started there and wrote a complete machine, which taught me a few tricks and filled me in on most of the theory.

The biggest problem was that register based VMs were rare, and primarily used in emulation. Newer VMs like the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) are stack based, and I just don't see the fun in that.

I bought 'Virtual Machine Design and Implementation in C/C++' as soon as it came out, and it turned out to be an engrossing read. I even reviewed it and was published on Slashdot for the first time. It was great to see people learning about this interesting branch of Computer Science.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to spend on many projects, but if I did, I'd definitely have my head deep into the new VM Parrot, being primarily developed as the VM for Perl 6.. but which will also be the target of numerous other languages, like Ruby. Check those guys out, they're doing some great work.

The only new-ish site I have out is the London Airport Transfers site but this is tied in with one of my other clients, and is primarily for search engine experimentation, and the initial results are pretty good.

I'll try to be back here sooner than I usually am! Rock on and keep the open source flowing :-)

Hi there folks, been working on some sites. Like these:

A Radio (wirefree) Rural Security Systems site.., as well as The Motorola Radio Hire Company site.. and Cannon Cars. Wow, lots of radio stuff in common there :-)

People are looking for a certain type of data on the web.. articles. And they can't find them as easily as they'd hope.

Search indexes and engines aren't really suited to finding - just- articles. They find pages or sites, but the best data unit for professional information on the web is 'articles'.

I'm proposing a site which specifically deals with articles as search objects rather than sites or pages. From my initial market research, something like this which is unbiased and non-commercial could be a major hit. I'm going to continue further with my inquiries and make a prototype.

Of course, all free and any source will be open! I'll post more as I get closer to a result.

Hi. I'm Boog. I've just spent 12 hours solid programming writing a content system which, at the moment, looks VERY similar to Advogato. However, that's just the design templates. I needed a very simple and clean design to use for development.

Basically it's just a community content system, i.e. where anyone can contribute, and admins have to authorise (or delete) stuff which accumulates in the message queue. I am going to be releasing it as free software. It's as powerful as NewsPublisher or NewsPro already, and with all of these extra features, even more so.

I look forward to participating in the Free Software forum, although my software doesn't quite come under Debian guidelines!

You can try out my system at BigBold.com if you want :-)

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