Posts from February 2004
Personal Information Portal
As ‘buzzword’ as that sounds, that’s basically what I’m building for myself. It’s got an integrated bookmark manager, basic email features, news aggregation, calendar, file management, plus to-do list and sticky notes (via web-form or email thanks to the power of blosxom!).
It’s framed like crazy, but will include some cool DHTML tools and things to make it easier to use and more friendly. I’m basing as much as possible on XML/XSL as well, so that is proving to be interesting. I already have a basic version of the sticky notes and to-do list features working (ugly, but operational) and that’s using XML and XSL exclusively (coming from a blosxom backend!)
I hope to build it so that it’s easy to add new tools/features into it, and that it can provide a useful point for me to start whenever I get online, since it’ll be accessible from anywhere, and have access to most things I need!.
Blank File Bug Fixed
I’ve finally figured out a bug in the current development version of webpad that meant once in a while I’d somehow overwrite a file I had previously been working on with a blank file.
Turns out that it was because I was reloading webpad in a window which I had previously used it, so the session (containing filenames etc) was still active. When webpad loaded, it was triggering the ‘save’ operation, and saving the now-empty main window as the file I was previously working on. All I’ve done is make it so that you can’t write a blank file now — if you want to delete something, you should be using the delete operation in the file dialog anyway.
One step closer to release! Blogs are still a sticking point tho… how/what to support on Blogger.com/MovableType is the thing holding me up. Complete blosxom support is already in there, and works wonderfully – I’m using it to maintain my blogs and website. The Blogger Atom API sounds really ugly and excessively complex, but I’ll let it stabilise a little more and then have a proper look at it I think…
API Problem Fixed
Thanks to a suggestion from Bill, I found the problem that AvantBlog has been having when attempting to authenticate with the Blogger.com servers… basically they moved their servers!.
As Robert discovered in this post, the server that responds to API requests moved from plant.blogger.com to www.blogger.com, so basically I was posting authentication requests to a server that didn’t exist. This has been rectified now and it appears to be operating properly.
Enjoy your blogging folks 🙂
Problems with Blogger.com
Something appears to be wrong with Blogger‘s API server, so AvantBlog authentication is very touch-and-go. I’ve modified the program slightly so that it reports properly when it can’t connect to their server, so at least you’ll know what’s going on. Also, on suggestion from Ron, I’ve added a ‘Try Again’ link so that you can log out/log back in again and see if their servers are responding properly.
This problem appears to have been happening for the last couple days at least, so let’s just hope that Blogger sort it out soon. I wonder if their fancy new Atom API is going to be any more reliable?
File Append Function
Here’s a useful function that I wrote for PHP – it just opens a specified file and appends a string to it. It’s very good for logging things.
<?php
/**
* @return boolean
* @param $file FileNameToWriteTo
* @param $string StringToWriteToFile
* @desc Writes specified string to the end of the file with a linefeed attached
*/
function file_append($file, $string) {
if (is_file($file) && is_writable($file)) {
$fh = fopen($file, 'a');
if ($fh) {
fwrite($fh, $string . "\n");
fclose($fh);
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
} else {
return false;
}
}
?>
You might want to consider making the fopen() flags ‘ab’ for binary-safe (now reccommended on php.net) and also changing the ‘\n’ part to the appropriate line-endings for your operating system (\n = *NIX, \r\n = Windows, \r = Mac).
BlogLines Is Cool
Have I mentioned BlogLines.com? It really is a cool service, and what’s more – it’s free.
BlogLines is an RSS aggregator; don’t let that big name scare you – basically it allows you to get content from a bunch of sites, organised into your own directories and catgories, all in one place. It’s perfect for keeping up to date on news, reading your daily blogs, or perhaps receiving certain types of updates and things like that.
There’s not much I can say, other than it’s a very well-made system, it’s entirely web-based (so you can access it from all machines you use) and it has some great features which make managing your feed subscriptions really easy. Check it out and see what I’m talking about.
If Not For The Blogs
webpad development is coming along very well, and the UI is streets ahead of version 2.0, with a collection of really useful little extras, some great new features and some bits and pieces that just make life a lot easier while using the program. If it weren’t for the blogging functionality, I’d be this close to releasing a beta version of 3.0 Personal Edition.
Incidentally, adding the functionality for the fantastic blogging application, blosxom was completely trivial, care of it’s wonderful use of the file system of the server that it’s hosted on. In effect, blosxom blogs within webpad are represented as alternate home directories, and use all the same file access operations as the normal server actions do – excellent!
Check it out and get yourself a copy of blosxom if you’re running a blog, it’s the best thing out there if you don’t mind a bit of hackery and custom mods 🙂
Starting Assignment 3, So Here’s Number 2
Assignment Two involved writing up a basic project plan for migrating a retail company to the Internet, to use ‘e-tailing’ for the fictional product — windowsill protectors. These were to be sold in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and there was more of a focus on the financial side of things, analysis of sales volumes, ROI and things like that. I don’t have a mark back for this yet, so I don’t know if it’s actually a very good example of what they were looking for on this one 🙂