Older blog entries for dyork (starting at number 468)

Amusing Video Tutorial: Let’s Suck at Github Together

If you want to learn more about using git and Github, or are a fan/user of git/Github (as I am) and want to pass along a video tutorial for others to see, you may enjoy this episode from Chris Coyier entitled “CSS-Tricks #101: Let’s Suck at GitHub Together“. As you can tell from the title, Chris doesn’t mind poking some fun at his own abilities – and his own aversion to the command-line and preference for GUI utilities.

For me personally, I’m rather “old skool” and typically prefer the command-line, but I appreciate that many people don’t… and I enjoyed Chris’ entertaining episode. Sure, as some commenters noted, there were a few minor inaccuracies/faults… but overall it did the job well in helping introduce people to what git and Github together can do. I can’t embed the video here, but if you click on the image below you’ll be taken to his site where you can view the episode…

And if you are over on Github, you can follow me there as github.com/danyork.

Syndicated 2011-09-07 20:56:34 from Code.DanYork.Com

Want To Help Guide Git’s Development? Take the 2011 Git Users’s Survey!

Do you use the git version control system? If so, do you wish it worked a bit differently? Or did you find it hard to use in some way? If you don’t, did you try to start using it and found it difficult to understand?

If you are a git user in any way (or are trying to be), the Git community is LOOKING FOR YOUR INPUT in the Git User’s Survey 2011 at the address:

http://tinyurl.com/GitSurvey2011

As the main page of the Git community wiki asks:

Please devote a few minutes of your time to fill out the simple questionnaire; it’ll help the Git community understand your needs, what you like about Git (and what you don’t), and overall help us improve it.

The survey runs from now through October 3rd and the results will be posted on the Git wiki.

Being a git fan and user I did complete the survey which, true to the notice, did only take a few minutes to complete. As more of a “casual” user of git in that I use it for a variety of projects but don’t live in it as a full-time developer might, I actually found the survey quite educational in that I found names of a whole number of projects I want to explore.

If you do use git and have a few minutes, the folks behind Git would love your input!

Syndicated 2011-09-06 11:39:48 from Code.DanYork.Com

oXygen’s Excellent Example of a Release Timeline / ChangeLog Page

As I was recently downloading a new version of the excellent oXygen XML editor (which I used to write my “Migrating Apps to IPv6” book for O’Reilly), I was struck by how great their “Release Timeline” page is. It’s truly a thing of beauty. You can easily see release dates for every major release going back to the beginning of the product (well, okay, they’ve collapsed some of the early 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, etc. releases) and with a single click on the release number can see the release notes for that particular version.

Kudos to the oXygen team for making it so easy to get to this kind of information!

Syndicated 2011-08-23 15:54:47 from Code.DanYork.Com

Node.js Knockout Contest Coming Up August 27 – Will You Compete?

Do you know Node.js? If so, have you thought about joining the Node.js Knockout contest starting on August 27th?

It’s basically a 48-hour contest to see which team can create the most awesome Node.js application, as decided by a panel of judges. The contest rules explain all the details and as I write this post there are 321 teams entered in this year’s event. Teams can be virtual – and some are gathering in various locations around the world to hack in the same physical place. There is apparently still room to sign up, although it’s closing soon (8/20).

While I’m not personally joining this year, I’m looking forward to seeing what these teams come up with. It should be fun to see!

Syndicated 2011-08-12 14:09:14 from Code.DanYork.Com

Dulwich – a native python way to access Git repositories

Ever wanted to manipulate Git repositories directly in python? Well, okay… I haven’t really myself, but in writing about Google Code’s support for git yesterday, I noticed that they are using Dulwich, a native python implementation of git. Rather than wrapping command-line git with python scripts, Dulwich is a python module giving you direct access to a git repository. As shown in the Dulwich tutorial, creating a new repo is simply this:

>>> from dulwich.repo import Repo
>>> from os import mkdir
>>> mkdir("myrepo")
>>> repo = Repo.init("myrepo")
>>> repo
<Repo at 'myrepo'>

Once a repo is created (or you connect to an existing repo), you can do what you would do with git at the command line: adding files to the repo, committing files, and changing files.

While I don’t know that I personally will use this… it’s very cool that Dulwich is out there for python programmers who want to interact with git repos. Very cool to see!

Syndicated 2011-08-02 11:49:16 from Code.DanYork.Com

Google Code Now Supports Git for Hosted Projects

Being a big fan of Git for version control, I was very pleased to see the announcement last week that projects hosted at Google Code can now use git in addition to subversion and mercurial (see also Google Code’s GitFAQ). I had looked at hosting projects on Google Code in the past, but chose not to specifically because git was not an option. While I personally am quite happy using Github for project hosting, it’s always good to see other services supporting git:

Way to go, Google Code!

Syndicated 2011-08-01 20:18:13 from Code.DanYork.Com

Mac OS X Lion is now in the App Store – are you upgrading?

It’s here! Now available in the App Store…

Are you upgrading today? I’m going to wait a bit on my corporate MacBook Pro to make sure all the apps we use are compatible with Lion… but I’m thinking my home iMac is definitely getting the treatment today…

How about you?

P.S. TheNextWeb folks came out with a nice summary of what’s new in Lion.

Syndicated 2011-07-20 13:17:44 from Code.DanYork.Com

Code.DanYork.com Now Running WordPress 3.2.1

In addition to being where I write about programming and other developer topics, this site is also where I test out new WordPress releases before installing them on other sites like the Voxeo blog portal or the Voice of VOIPSA site.  This site runs on a WordPress Multi-Site installation, although there aren’t many sites here (another one is my new IPv6 book).

This past week I installed WordPress 3.2 (followed by the 3.2.1 bug fix) and I have to say I am quite impressed with the back-end changes described in the announcement.  Some of them are just minor little nuances… the changes in the typography, even…   it just feels snappier and faster.  If you run a blog on top of WordPress, I have to say that 3.2 is definitely worth a look… I’m loving it!

Syndicated 2011-07-19 23:45:47 from Code.DanYork.Com

The FCC … on Github??? and releasing a WordPress plugin???

I love being surprised… did you know that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is making code available as open source over on Github? And that FCC staffers have released a WordPress plugin?

I discovered this via a tweet from someone that brought me to the “Official FCC Blog” and the July 6th post, “Contributing Code Back: FCC.gov’s Open-Source Feedback Loop,” that outlines many of the contributions they have been making.

As a long-time open source advocate, I’m thrilled to see the FCC doing this. It’s great to see them on Github – and it’s great to see them giving back to the WordPress ecosystem.

And I love that they end the post asking readers to fork their code and contribute changes back!

Great to see – and kudos to the FCC “new media” team for getting involved in this way.

Syndicated 2011-07-14 03:25:03 from Code.DanYork.Com

Calipso – A Content Management System (CMS) Written in Node.js

As a writer of online content, I’m always looking at what is new in the world of content management systems (CMSs), and I was intrigued to see that there is a new CMS out based on Node.js called Calipso (and with the brilliantly simple url calip.so). Here’s the description:

Calipso is a content management system (CMS), based on the NodeJS server.

Due to the asynchronous nature of NodeJS, it seemed like a good idea to try to build a CMS made up of modules that could execute asynchronously in a non-blocking way.

This is the start of that journey, we are in the early days, so be patient, but feedback is always appreciated!

The site itself is of course built using Calipso and demonstrates some of the capabilities. Alex Young over at the DailyJS JavaScript blog also wrote a detailed code review of Calipso that gives a good sense of its capabilities. The code itself can naturally be found on Github for those wanting to dive into the source code itself.

While right now I will stick with WordPress as my CMS for this site (primarily because I barely have enough time to write, let alone work on the backend of the site), it’s good to see someone working on a Node.js-driven CMS and I’ll definitely keep watching its evolution. Cool to see!

Syndicated 2011-06-17 13:18:27 from Code.DanYork.Com