February, 2005:

On “Amy’s”:http://slash7.com/ advice, I’ve created a feature list for my first “Ruby on Rails”:http://rubyonrails.com/ application. At this point, it doesn’t really have a name, but, feature-wise, it will eventually (though not in this release) fulfill the goals I had with Inklog.

h3. Release 1.0

* Articles
** Drafts
** Tags
** Comments
** Text based URLs

* Comments
** Generic Implementation allowing any model object to be commentable
** Threaded
** Cookies to remember user information
** Email based notification
** Threaded (Parent/Child relationship)

* Links
** Tags
** XML Feeds

* Authentication
** Single User setup
** Authentication is either required, or it isn’t

h3. Release 1.1

* Tags
** Generic Implementation allowing any model object to be tagable
** Auto creation
** XML Feeds
** Text Based URLs

* Publications
** Used to make Articles into a collection
** XML Feeds
** Text Based URLs

* Articles
** Associated Publications
** Associated Media Objects
** Tags

h3. Release 2.0

* Media Objects
** Used as Base Class for Image Objects

* Images
** HTML, JPEG, and PNG versions
** Dynamic, cached resizing
** Tags

* Galleries
** Used to make Images into a collection
** XML Feeds
** Text Based URLs

* Forum
** Used to make a collection of Comments
** Text Based URLs

What do you think? Too many features? Not enough?

For those of you that don’t know, “TivoHME”:http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/ is, basically, an SDK to allow developers (or enthusiasts) to provide services to TivoHMO. However, most enthusiasts are most likely not programmers, and even less likely Java programmers. Luckily, with Jython, they don’t have to be — they can use Python instead. At least one person has “successfully used Jython with TivoHME”: http://jacobian.org/recipes/archives/2005/01/31/python-on-your-tivo/. This could be quite fun.

Anyone who closely follows “Rails”:http://www.rubyonrails.com/ development has been suffering some serious shock and awe lately. At least for me, one by one, every complaint I’ve ever had about Rails (during those times when I’m being really nit picky) is being solved in the core.

Just last week, “Routes”:http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/archives/2005/02/15/routing-now-available-in-beta-gems/ were added, removing the need to deal with mod_rewrite or ugly URLs. Along with this came the ability to place models and controllers into modules (implemented as real Ruby modules). Both of these features are something I had attempted to hack into the core myself and decided to try again later when I had a better understanding of Ruby.

Today, I hear that Rails will have “real components”:http://www.hyperionreactor.net/node/41. While DHH may be more inclined to write low-level task specific code there are many of us (myself included) who aim to write software that will all but *require* the end-user to edit and customize it. Components were yet another feature that I was working on adding in myself and it’s quite nice to see this in the core.

If Rails’ Routes would support arbitrary characters as a separation indicators within the path, as opposed to just the forward slash (this would most likely mean a RegExp based implementation), and the ActiveRecord support allowed for a clean way to specify different database connection information for each model (if desired), I think I would be out of “feature requests” entirely.

Excellent work is going into Rails, folks. Whether you know Ruby or not, I strongly urge any web (or webservices, thanks to the new ActionService Controller) developers to “check it out”:http://www.rubyonrails.com/.

It’s one of those mornings where i wish i could be anywhere but here. I’m in sore need of a distraction.

It’s not really a “Flickr”:http://flickr.com/ problem. It’s a problem with the reaction to Flickr. Not even that, really. Sites are popping up all over the place doing interesting things with “tags” and images and blog postings and links and everything else under the sun. But, most of these services link directly to Flickr, or “Del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/, or whatever ONE service it is that handles the data they are trying to provide. But that means that, if you don’t use that particular service, then your images aren’t included when all of these other services do interesting things with them.

What we need is a service like “feedster”:http://feedster.com/ (or maybe feedster itself) to extract “tag” information from the feeds it indexes. Then, with this service actively indexing all of the Flickr feeds, and all of the Delicious feeds, as well as blog feeds and lots of other kinds of feeds from various sites, we’re able to get a much greater supply of information when we try to find things tagged “hotdog”, for instance.

Furthermore, in the same way that tags seem to work being governed by the public, each feed item could be categorized into a type (link, image, article, etc). With types and tags being indexed along side content from feed publishers around the world, the data becomes much more useful, and, despite how great a service like Flickr is, people aren’t forced to use it if they want to be “in”.

Just a thought.

This is all the algae that grows under the outside stairwell at work. You’d think they’d try to clean it… but no.

Hurray for coffee. And for new camera phones.

I think I’m going to start using “Flickr”:http://flickr.com for image posting — mostly random moblog images, though I may include some photography in the mix in the future. Of course, I don’t particularly *need* to use Flickr, as I have plenty of software to handle those tasks already and, even if I didn’t, I could write my own. But, Flickr promotes community, and community is a good thing. And, since their API is so fluent, it’s just as easy to access them as a datastore instead of handling it all myself.

At first, I’ll probably just use their service standalone. Eventually, I’ll add a “Recent Flickr Images” box on my site. Then, I’ll add some code to allow the Flickr content to appear inline with the rest of the content on this site.

Of course, at this point, I have no Flickr contacts. Are you a Flickr user? If so, let me know so I can add you. Or just add “me”:http://flickr.com/photos/revjim/.

With this approach in mind, I believe I’m going to start relying a lot more on other web services to handle various aspects of my site. Some things, of course, I’ll handle on my own. And integration will always be key and solely left up to the code running this site. I can use “Delicious”:http://del.icio.us for links (which I do now, though they aren’t really “integrated”), “Flickr”:http://flickr.com/ for Photos (in the works), and LiveJournal:”http://livejournal.com/” for the quick and dirty, off-the-cuff ramblings throughout the day.

Are there any other services on this great web of ours that I might find useful?

The biggest problem with all of these services is that, if you use *their* administration interfaces, you are only capable of receiving an update by “pull”. Unless they implement XML-RPC/SOAP/whatever callback notification (which would be GREAT), the only other option is to duplicate their administration interfaces in my own code, and use their publishing APIs to integrate into their site.

Anyone know of a better way?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve provided you with any juicy information revealing the intimate details of the mundane events in my life. I understand many of you suffer severe withdrawal in this condition, so I’ll attempt to give you the drug you need now.

First of all, the photoshoot with Erica went great. No, I don’t have any of the images ready yet. Yes, I’ll show you them as soon as I can. No, you can’t have a sneak preview (except you, John). This shoot was especially fun because a vastly different approach was taken than what I normally use. Instead of trying to preplan shots and ideas… Erica and I worked together before-hand to select, basically, props, and nothing more. Then, when she showed up, we put those props in to use in as many ways as we could come up with. Some of the ideas were down right silly and not really of any use. But, they led to more creative and interesting ideas. Some of the shots just turned out poorly. Entirely my fault. Others look absolutely fantastic. I believe I’m going to use this same approach to my next couple of shoots and see if I see similar results.

Secondly, *KIM WILL BE HERE TOMORROW*. Weeeee! I know, I know, Kim is Jess’ friend a whole lot more than she is mine and, in truth, I don’t really know her all that well at all. But, what I do know about Kim suggests that the more I know her, the more I will like her. How can you *not* like someone who would be willing to spend hours pacing the parking lot in a figure-eight with some strange man she doesn’t know (… me …) just to help him calm his nervousness. On top of that, Jess loves her very much, which means a lot in my book. Finally, I love playing “tour guide” and “host”. So, all in all, I’m quite excited and am sure we’ll have a great time.

There’s been a bit of a commotion at work. I can’t really say much more than that I am more afraid that I will lose my job now than I ever have been before. I’m always willing to entertain new job prospects. So, if any of you know of a company, or represent a company, needing a web programmer, web designer, systems administrator, application designer, photographer or janitor in the Dallas/Denton/Fort Worth area, please, let me know.

I’ve been offered the opportunity to author a few chapters in a book about the Smarty templating language. I’ve accepted that offer. Now, I just have to actually write them. Having never had anything published (aside from this ego-ridden self-publication we call a “blog”) I’m a bit intimidated but am looking forward to the experience. I’ll give you more information when I have it.

I had a great time Friday night at the Mardi Gras party thrown by a few friends. Justin and I took the Karaoke stage and sang “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls as we usually do. I think I’m getting better at tuning out Justin’s higher part so that I can hold my lower part without drifting into his. Normally, Justin would be a good person to ask that very question to but I can’t think of a time that we’ve sung that song together in which we were both entirely sober. Jess partook (partook… is that a word?) in the Mardi Gras madness and flashed John several times for a few strands of beads. I’m still a bit upset that she was only willing to flash them to me one at a time in a secluded corner, but John gets a full on view in front of lots of people. I’m her husband, I get priority, damn it! Of course, since I saw a few other girls offering the same tokens of appreciation at various times during the evening, I can’t complain too much. Ashley agreed to a photoshoot in the next couple of weeks. Then again, she was drunk. So, we’ll see if that holds up now that she’s sober.

I think that about sums it up, so far.

You happy now?