AK's weblog

golbikiw 0.3 is available for download. This version now features almost all features you know from other weblog software, like

• a posting archive


• categories (golbikiw even allows a posting to be of more than just one category)


• a permalink for every posting


• the wiki functionality, where every article is assigned a WikiWord, and where WikiWords insides articles are expanded


• a search function


• an RSS feed


• posting, editing and deleting articles

What is still missing is a comment function. I'm sure that will still take some time, as I don't really need it right now.



Now that the main work for golbikiw has been finished, it is time for a little summary: first of all, I never thought that writing a weblog software would be that easy. The Ruby language, a few well-designed classes written in it that do the weblog's core parts, Ruby HTML templates and bits [;-)] of Ruby glue code made everything really smooth. During development, I fell into a few Ruby traps (like in Java, variables are only references to objects), but all in all, development went great. It's also interesting what sloccount thinks about golbikiw:

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC)                = 473

Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 0.09 (1.09)

 (Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4  (KSLOC**1.05))

Schedule Estimate, Years (Months)                         = 0.22 (2.59)

 (Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5  (person-months**0.38))

Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule)  = 0.42

Total Estimated Cost to Develop                           = $ 12,310

 (average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).

SLOCCount is Open Source Software/Free Software, licensed under the FSF GPL.

Please credit this data as "generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'."

Of course, these numbers are ridiculous, as it took not 1.09 person-months, but something like 3 persons-days. And it cost me not US-$ 12,310, but exactly US-$ 0 (well, except for electricity and food, and my time, but that would have been spent even if hadn't written golbikiw).


I think, writing free software definitely makes me happier person. I can feel that, now that I again accomplished a project that is (IMHO) not only interesting, but could also actually be useful to some people.

golbikiw 0.2 is available. This version features WikiWord detection and linking, permalinks and several bugfixes (including the bug that ate all characters but [a-zA-Z ] in the subject).



I have to admit, I never thought it would be so early with the integration of the Wiki functionality. But hey, the sooner, the better. And I never thought that it would be that easy. Now, there are only two more features on my TODO list that I want to address, and that is comments and setting categories for each posting.

Today I released golbikiw 0.1, the very first version of my very own weblog software which will act as a framework for my experiments with weblog concepts. You will need at least Ruby 1.8 to run it, because the CGI module of Ruby 1.6 behaves completely different to the one from 1.8, and it seems a bit buggy, too. You will probably have to adapt all the *.cgi files, because they point to /usr/local/bin/ruby as interpreter in the shebang path, while on most Ruby installations, the interpreter can be found in /usr/bin. OSX users need to install Ruby 1.8 by hand, because even OSX 10.3 ships with Ruby 1.6. Additionally, you will need the html-template module from the Ruby Application Archive.



After extracting the package and adapting the shebang paths, you have to make sure that the entries subdirectory is writable to the user under which your webserver runs. That's because golbikiw is solely based on flat files. All the configuration files can be found in the conf subdirectory, and should be fairly self-explaining.



Version 0.1 is likely to be buggy in some places, so if you try it out, and see some bugs, please report them to me.

Today I had a (IMHO) simple but good idea on how to combine weblogs with wiki systems: every weblog entry also represents a wiki entry. Whenever you post a new entry to your weblog, the software assigns a wiki name to the entry. This entry is then available just like a wiki entry, and these entries can be referenced with this wiki name from inside the weblog, which makes it not only a weblog, but also a wiki. And since I liked the idea, I decided to implement it by myself. Yes, currently, I'm creating my own weblog software. Unlike the other common weblog systems, my system -- which I called 'golbikiw', which is 'wikiblog' reverse -- is written in 100 % pure Ruby, uses Ruby HTML templates (just like Perl HTML templates) and doesn't need any database. Yes, you read correctly, it doesn't store anything to any database. All the entries are managed with the help of the operating system's file system, where one file represents one entry in the weblog.



Currently, reading and posting works, I still need to add some kind of authentication and functionality to actually edit and delete entries. And timestamps should be shown for each entry. And I have to resolve some bug something (Ruby? Apache? The browser?) seems to eat special characters like '?' or '!' in the subject when trying to post anything. And as soon as this is done, I will do the first release.

"möchtegerne indy" writes in this discussion:

nämlich genau die leute, die open-posting am liebsten aussschalten wollen, sind es meist, die mit open -posting kaum umgehen künnen.

(rough translation: namely exactly the people who would like to have open-posting switched off are those who can't handle open-posting)



Yes, a lot of people cannot handle open-posting: Indy.at is flooded with tons of crap articles with stuff that absolutely nobody is interested in and which has virtually no political relevance (except for the people who read Indymedia). Several anarchist, marxist, communist, left-liberal, whatever splinter groups fight each other, insulting each other and blame each other to be antisemitic or supporting Imperialism or whatever. During these "discussions", a lot of people shout for moderations, which is nothing more than censorship.



But IMHO, the major problem of Indymedia is not that people want to have open-posting removed and replaced by some censorship system. The greatest problem is open-posting itself. FAQ question #10 on Indy.at describes what is done with fascistic, racistic, antisemitic, homophobic, sexistic, whatever articles: they get hidden, and a special page has to be visited so that these articles can be reached again. The problem I see in this rule is that it biased against fascistic, racistic, antisemitic, ... articles, and such a system shouldn't really call itself "open posting" or "open publishing". Yes, "open to everything", except for articles with the content mentioned before. Don't misunderstand, I oppose these kinds of articles, too, but censoring away certain content is not what I would call "an open system". It is not freedom of speech. My understanding of freedom of speech is that everybody should be allowed to say what they want to say, even if discriminates against somebody or groups of people, or if it infringes the society's ethical rules.



The way Indymedia handles freedom of speech reminds me of the George W. Bush's (in)famous saying "there are limits to free speech", when some comedian made jokes about him during the 2000 president election campaign.

Today, my brother found some old "Bravo Hits" CDs from 1994 and 1995. So I took them and listened to a few tracks of it. The 80s are dark ages regarding popular music, but to be honest, the 90s weren't any better: so much crappy music, it's really awful. Especially that techno stuff. Really bad sound, and totally callow compared to today's electronic music. And just like today, 99 % of all "artists" were one-hit-wonder losers.



But then I found one thing that highly amused me, namely in the "Bravo Hits 11" booklet: the whole booklet was dedicated to some mystical thing called "the internet" that had something to do with computers and world-wide communication. Two pages were made to explain the most important buzzwords and phrases, but see below for some examples (sorry, it's in German):

Web Page - Eine Seite im World Wide Web. Ungefähr so groß wie Dein Computer-Monitor, kann Texte, Bilder, Töne und Hyperlinks enthalten.

Netscape - Mit dieser Software macht das Surfen durch das Internet [...] besonders viel Spaß. [...]

That was almost 10 years ago, and (in some way, fortunately) they couldn't predict many important developments of the internet, e.g. instant messaging, weblogs, the spam problem, P2P, ...

Yes, those were the days...

According to the Celebrity Log, Marcelo Tosatti has accepted the invitation to Linuxwochen 2004. IMHO, this is really great news, since Marcelo is a person that can tell a lot about the internals of Linux kernel development for sure (he's maintainer of the 2.4 kernel series).

Since today, I'm a proud owner of an SGI Indy. AEC threw out a few, and thx to a hint from OJ, I was able to grab one including a 20" CRT display plus keyboard and mouse for a mere EUR 100,-. I immediately installed Debian over it, with the help from this nice mini-HOWTO. Right now, the base installation is done, and I'm currently upgrading to Debian Testing, then XFree86 will be installed. Unfortunately, the disk inside the Indy has a size of only 1 GB, with 150 MB spent on swap (the machine itself has only 28 MB RAM :-/). But Debian is small enough to fit on this hard disk.



What I really like is the Indy's nifty boot monitor (graphical! you need a mouse to do anything!), and Linux's frame buffer, which currently runs at 1280x1024. This is especially nice on the 20" display. As soon as I'm finished with installing Debian, I will try to do some benchmarks, and then (for the first time) play with dietlibc on another platform than i386.

Gerald Venzl wants to see his name in this weblog. Gerald, here we go.

Windows Solitaire's random number generator is fun: start Windows Solitaire, press the F2 key and keep your finger on the key. What do you see? Yes, you will get a new deck only every second. What does this indicate? Most likely that Windows Solitaire's random number generator is initialized with the current time (with a granularity of 1 second) every time a new game is started.



Disclaimer: I am bored, because I finished my programming assignments for today, and I have absolutely nothing else to do (except for reading weblogs and playing Windows Solitaire).

This article describes how to make your applications for the Nokia Series 80 mobile phones IPv6-capable. IPv6 is supported by the new SymbianOS 8.0 network stack. Series 80 is e.g. the Nokia 9210, which of course doesn't yet support IPv6, but the newer models will. This absolutely makes sense, and I hope it will give IPv6 a higher acceptance. And, of course, mobile phone providers wouldn't have to use 10.x.y.z IPv4 address spaces for identifying mobile phones anymore.

$ echo -en 'GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n' | nc www.cisco.com 80 | head -6 | grep Server:

Server: Apache/1.0 (Unix)

$

See here: "MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE (HLN) - A Memphis woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with an iPod."

Also see the related news below the picture: "Get great deals on the new Apple iPod mini. Starting at under $250"

Today I got my Apple Newton MessagePad 120 via snail mail. Regarding the size, it's about 10x20 cm big, so it is indeed big compared to today's PDAs. So far, all I was playing with was the handwriting recognition, and boy, it sucks planets through straws. You need to write every word letter by letter, and wait in between it recognized the letter, then it works pretty OK, but as soon as you write faster and not as proper as before, handwriting recognition produces nothing but bullshit.



The other applications on the Newton are pretty much standard, the usual stuff like notes, contacts, calendars, etc. Unfortunately, no games. But still impressive for that time (the Newton that I own is over 9 years old). It even features a PCMCIA slot, and a 2 MB "flash storage card" and a fax modem card (9600 bps were with the Newton. It also came with some spreadsheet applications, but I didn't have time yet to try that out.

Yes, I was bored. To death, almost. So, instead of killing myself out of boredom, I decided to draw something with Windows Paint (I was forced to use Windows XP, and playing solitaire all the time makes me even more bored).