I’ve decided that it’s time for me to move on to hobbies that don’t involve computers, namely rock climbing. Maybe I’ll post some more in the future…
I’ve halted all programming projects. Sorry. If you use any of the code that I’ve released, don’t expect any updates.
If you want to rock climb in the Berkeley area, give me a holler.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve probably noticed that this site has been experiencing a lot of downtime in the past few days. My server hosting provider has recently installed a new firewall, which has been randomly blocking incoming Internet access. While it appears that they have finally been able to take control of the situation, I am greatly disappointed by their slow response time and their lack of communication with their customers.
I’m currently searching for a better VPS hosting provider. Any suggestions?
I’m officially back home.
Unfortunately, this also means I’m back to my super-slow-stuck-in-the-middle-of-nowhere Internet. To those who’ve recently commented on my blog, I’m sorry about the delay in moderating your comments — with only one phone line, I can’t use the Internet too often to check this site. My lack of a dedicated connection also means I won’t be able to reply to comments nor post updates as frequently as I do when I’m at school (rather ironic, isn’t it?).
To those that have arrived here as a result of a search for some UC Berkeley related thing, I’m more than willing to answer your questions. Either comment on an appropriate post or, if none exists, on this post.
I’ve just finished some intensive tweaking of the Cold Ray Hosting servers. I was able to reduce the memory used by Apache, our web daemon, and MySQL, our database daemon. By reducing the memory used by each daemon, I was able to release memory to other active processes.
The immediate benefit of my tweaks is a more responsive server, as evidenced by the faster loading of this blog. Furthermore, I’m confident that the optimizations will result in greater server stability and uptime.
I’ve been using this PHP script to generate the daily “Links” posts from my del.icio.us links. Although the script works, it has some annoying bugs. For example, if there are no links for the day, it’ll still make a post which I have to manually delete. Furthermore, it’s written in PHP, a language I haven’t gotten around to learning, so I can’t fix or maintain it.
I decided to re-write the script in Perl, a language that I’m much more comfortable using. And so, I present my Daily del.icio.us Links Script for Wordpress. The code is pretty self-explanatory, and there are a few variables you’ll have to set.
Once the configuration variables are set, just add the script to your crontab — it should run once a day, around midnight, GMT time. It will use Net::Delicious to get a list of your del.icio.us links, filter out the links that don’t match the current date, create a nifty HTML version of your links, and post them to your Wordpress blog. If you’d like to see a sample of the output, click here.
Enjoy.
Note: It has come to my attention that del.icio.us now offers a service that does pretty much the same thing as my script, automatically. Natalie Downe has posted instructions on her blog for how to get the service to work with Wordpress blogs. If you want more control over your posts, though, I still recommend my script (OK, and maybe I’m a bit biased 
).
Wordpress 2.3 Support: Thanks to everyone for bringing the WordPress 2.3 incompatibility to my attention. I am no longer an active user of del.icio.us. However, I do plan on releasing an update to my script that will provide support for the latest version of WordPress sometime during my Thanksgiving break. In the mean time, Edward de Leau has modified my script to support WordPress 2.3 and added some other nifty features.
Features:
Changelog:
gmtime and localtime. Thanks squish!Versions:
As of this post, I have officially moved this blog to Wordpress.
I successfully imported all of my entries from MT (including comments and trackbacks), and I’ll be verifying all links this week. With a little bit of mod_rewrite magic, I was able to provide support for my MT Permalinks, so there shouldn’t be a sudden rise in 404 errors. I’ll hopefully get all the kinks, if any, worked out in the next few days.
Those familiar with Wordpress will notice that the current layout is not the Wordpress default; I’m using the “Shocking Blue Green” stylesheet by Chris M. I’d appreciate any comments regarding the new layout - I chose it because it was simple, elegant, and used the same colors as my previous layout.
I’m sure Wordpress will prove to be a superior ‘publishing platform’…
P.S. Now that I’m at home for the summer, I’m stuck with a single phone line and 56k dial-up (provided by the world’s best ISP, AOL). I also plan on being occupied with the launch of my hosting company. Consequently, I probably won’t be able to make a daily post to this blog. Sorry.
It seems that Mark Pilgrim has joined the Movable Type exodus. Mark’s latest post highlights a point I tried to make yesterday: closed-source software is evil.
I’ve installed a test installation of Wordpress at http://test.evilcoder.com/wordpress/
So far, Wordpress seems to fit my needs. Installation was a breeze. Wordpress has a very clean interface and comes with some nifty default plugins. I was able to import all my entries from Movable Type, but I don’t think TrackBacks got imported correctly.
I’ll post more about Wordpress as I get more time to try all of its features. But now, more studying for my finals…
I never thought I’d have to say this, but…
I hate Movable Type. With the release of MT 3.0, Six Apart has unexpectedly announced new licensing. A free license is still available, but it limits individuals to one author and three blogs. A “Personal Edition” license is offered at the introductory price of $69.95, and it supports 3 authors and 5 blogs.
I understand that Six Apart needs to be profitable, but these changes in licensing were totally unexpected. It would not be so angry if they had announced these changes well in advance. I have been waiting for MT 3.0 for a long time, and I’m disappointed that it had to be released under such circumstances.
Mena has defended the changes by stating that they will prevent MT from being exploited and will encourage people to develop tools for it. If that truly was the case, Six Apart would have been better off releasing parts of MT 3.0 under the LGPL and the core under the GPL.
Nevertheless, I should have seen this coming. I’m a huge OSS advocate, and one of the greatest features of OSS is that it prevents vendor lock-in. If a vendor suddenly decides to change their licensing, the software can be forked, and a new project can be started under the old licensing terms. The recent X Windows licensing dispute is a great example of this flexibility. However, MT was never OSS, so this is not going to happen.
I know that I could have switched from MT to another program at any time, but I had never expected such a dramatic change in licensing. I feel as if this sudden change was planned; Six Apart would allow people to become accustomed and even dependent upon MT, and then they would start charging for it. This sounds wildly reminiscent of the business tactics of a certain Redmond-based corporation. Anybody remember when they were giving out copies of Outlook?
Well, this means the end of my relationship with MT and Six Apart. After finals, I will begin transitioning to an OSS alternative.
Goodbye, MT.
Over the course of the last week, I’ve made some changes to my blog. These changes include:
A new CSS stylesheet: As posted earlier, I’m currently using the TypePad style from Movable Style. Although some people have expressed their dislike of the color scheme, I think it’s nice. I also like the layout. I’ll continue making minor tweaks to this stylesheet until summer, when I’ll replace it with my own, custom, stylesheet.
A clean MT install: Since I’ve been experiencing minor difficulties with MT, I decided to recreate the blog with a fresh install. My MT problems have since stopped, but I ran into two minor issues during the install. Initially, I was not able to restore my entries using MT’s import function. After much troubleshooting, I figured out that the import file must be saved in Unicode. In addition, I forgot to save my link list. Consequently, I’m slowly rebuilding the list of the links on the right side of my blog.
“Cruft-free URLs“: Following Mark’s excellent guide, I’ve changed my archive URL format. Each entry’s Permalink and archive file is now based upon the entry’s date and title. I believe that this system makes much more sense. However, in changing my URL format, I’ve broken many links. I hope this is only a temporary problem as people update their links and as search engines refresh their indexes.
I plan on making more changes to this blog in the near future, especially in regards to accessibility. Just wait and see.