Archive - Jul 2008
July 3rd
Drupal Upgrade
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/03/2008 - 15:16Okay. So, I finally got around to upgrading Orient Lodge to Drupal 6.2. The migration went fairly well, however the theme got a little messed up and I still need to tweak that. I had to make a few changes to a few blocks, change a little specialized PHP code I had written and so on.
Right now, the OpenID module doesn’t seem to be working right. I’ll try a few more things on that as I have time. The FriendFeed functionality that I added needed a little tweaking, but still seems to work. However, you should be able to add comments in FriendFeed and see them here. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a little time.
I’ve added Disqus comments. They seem to be working. I haven’t done a lot with Discus, so it will be interesting to see how that works.
The Spam module that I was using for Drupal 4 does not seem to be working for Drupal 6, so I’m going to have to be a little more vigilant than I had been. However, I have added Captcha and we’ll see how well that works.
With Captcha added, I’ve also opened things up for anonymous comments. We’ll see how it goes. I expect people to comment, the way they would comment if they were sitting with me in my living room. If anonymous people cannot respect that, I will turn anonymous comments back off.
I’ve also turned on the Service Links module so you can recommend my blog posts on various sites. The Service Links module supports lots of services. I’ve only turned on the few that I’m most interested. However, if there are other services that you really like, let me know.
With all of that, I never did get back to working on laconi.ca That will have to wait for another day, since now, I need to get offline for a little family time.
Recreational Hacking: identi.ca laconi.ca xmpp OAuth OpenID OpenSim and Drupal
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/03/2008 - 09:56Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time writing some programs to interface a financial model written in Matlab with a Microsoft SQL database. It has been interesting work, and there are lots of interesting things yet to be done with that. However, during this, my unread emails have piled up and the list of new technology to explore has been expanding rapidly. So, with any luck, I’ll spend a bit of today doing some recreational hacking.
At the top of my list is identi.ca. Identica is running laconi.ca, an open source microblogging system based on a lot of cool standards like XMPP, Oauth, and OpenSim. I set up my identi.ca account yesterday, and have started trying to see if I can get a laconi.ca server running on my Linux box today.
So, why do I care about identi.ca? Edd Dumbill has written a very good post about Why Identi.ca is important. So, my first comment, is “yeah, what Edd said.” Dan York also wrote about it, The real meaning - and power - of identi.ca (a.k.a. open source Twitter) and pointed to Dave Winer’s excitement about identi.ca and Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post.
So, let me add a few additional thoughts. As Edd notes, it is still version 0.4.1, so don’t expect it to have as much functionality or reliability as even Twitter or Plurk. On the other hand, if open source developers go wild with it, expect it to leave Twitter and Plurk in the dust.
To me, there are is a very interesting parallel between Second Life and OpenSim and Twitter and Laconi.ca. The new open source version is getting kicked around and has great potential. For that matter, OpenSim and Laconi.ca are both kicking around using XMPP as part of their interaction. Hmm. OpenSim and Laconi.ca integration. That could be cool. As an aside, I have been getting emails about connecting old MOOs to Twitter, but that’s a different subject.
So, I’ve started installing laconi.ca on my Linux box. I’ve hit a few snags. It needs a Validate.php file, which I can’t find. I know that Evan is swamped, so maybe I’ll bug him later.
Laconi.ca also uses OpenID. I’ve been running OpenID for Drupal on my blog for a while. It hasn’t been too reliable, but I’m running an old version of Drupal. Between the desire for a more robust OpenID for Drupal, the desire to add Disque to Drupal and a bunch of other things, it is probably time to upgrade Orient Lodge to a newer version of Drupal. Maybe I’ll tackle that.
One thing that is still coming in Drupal is support for OAuth. Laconi.ca uses OAuth. Hmm. At some point, I want to tie my Drupal sites to my OpenSim sites and my Laconi.ca sites. That ought to be fun.
Meanwhile, also on my technology play list is twine.com and SecondBrain.
So, I’ll complete a few tasks around the house, check to see if identi.ca is stable after the latest upgrade and then start a fun day of recreational hacking.
July 2nd
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 07:39
July 1st
More on Xenia
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 13:59Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. As the month of July starts, I worry about what and how much I’ll write. I’ll be on vacation. Will I manage to keep my blog up to date during that time? What will happen to my traffic?
I imagine that I’ll have some posts, pictures of Fiona playing in the ocean, or perhaps simply of the waves crashing. Yet I won’t be interacting substantially on the Internet and that will take a hit on the materials I have to work with.
Yesterday, I wrote about confronting the blank page, and my friend Lars pointed me to a couple of articles in the Financial Times of London. One article was about Bloggers bringing a new reality for politicians, where politicians need to be careful about honestly presenting who they are, lest an unscripted moment derail them. Yet perhaps this isn’t a new reality for politicians. Perhaps this is returning us, back to the old reality for politics. We need politicians that are going to be real, authentic, not only when they are in front of a camera, but are authentically presenting their views all the time.
The other article was about one-time online outsiders going mainstream at Personal Democracy Forum. This reflects something I’ve written about from time to time here, and one of my big concerns. As the one-time outsiders become insiders, will they continue to talk with those on the outside? Will they build bridges where bridges have been missing? In a phrase, will they practice the ‘xenia’ that was talked about at ‘Sharing the News’?
It turns out that this lack of xenia is not limited to the realm of journalism or politics. Today, I read a blogpost entitled Cliques: They’re What’s Wrong With the Christian Blogosphere. It has spawned quite an interesting discussion there. Perhaps it is time to queue up Dar Williams “Christians and the Pagans”.
