Websites

When I develop new websites, I hope to move to developing on PyLucid so I can start coding in python more than PHP.

Today, over lunch, I gave presentation/demo of Google Apps that I use, Del.icio.us, Assembla, and Facebook at JAARS.

I really enjoyed it! I looked at my watch when I thought I may have been speaking for maybe 15 minutes or so and realized it had probably been over 30 minutes! My presentation lasted about 45 minutes (including questions and comments from others).

Next time I'll hopefully remember to look at the audience. ;)

It was a great experience! Now I have more Facebook friends who work at JAARS. :)

At about 3:30pm today I suddenly remembered that I'd forgotten to eat lunch, a glimpse of how much I enjoy my internship here. ;)

From Scaling on EC2 « WebMynd Blog:

Google’s key breakthroughs were the Google File System and MapReduce, which together allow them to horizontally partition the problem of indexing the web. If you can architect your product in such a way as to allow for similar partitioning, scaling will be all the more easy. It’s interesting to note that some of the current trends of Web2.0 products are extremely hard to horizontally partition, due to the hyper-connectedness of the user graph (witness Twitter).

I was about to blog about wanting to leave twitter because of this on http://twitter.com/:

Twitter is currently down for maintenance to prepare for the holiday.

Then I remembered, I have website I maintain that are still down. It'd be hypocritical to criticize a website for being down when I have like 5-10 that I maintain that are down or having problems. I really should get to work on those.

By using my tags on http://del.icio.us/elijahlofgren/, wordle.net generated this interesting picture:

Running "top" I find that my virtual server with just 128mb of memory has 150mb of ram used by Plone. It's swapping: not good.

From: Plone system resources for a small site:

Plone and Zopes takes whooping 70 MB just to load.

I'm glad I've already decided to use CMSMS instead of spending extra time with Plone or another Python CMS. :)

Re: Poll: How Many Websites?

My old CMS (Plone) was just a disaster and I'm happy to be rid of it. The Plone management UI has a thin veneer that's friendly for entering and editing content, but if you want to go beyond that for customization and maintenance, you have to work with the underlying Zope management console which was the most cryptic thing in the world. I'm a professional software engineer with nearly 20 years development experience, and I found it difficult to work with.

Finally, Plone had performance issues, used too much memory, and some of its modules (news and events) were very inflexible and forced me to work within their limitations. Good riddance.

From: General thoughts on CMS and PyLucid

The reason I'm interested in PyLucid is that it is written in Django.

I've been administrating and using Plone for a year now. I think it sucks greatly, but the other free CMS's I've seen suck even more. What I'd like to see would be a CMS that offers the features of Plone (I mention below which particular features are of interest to me), but that is easy to understand, administrate, and develop. And be a bit lighter, of course.

As such, I think I'll give PyLucid a try before doing much more with my plone demo site

Why would I ever consider not using CMSMS?

1. I now like programming in Python MUCH better than PHP.
2. I want versioning and auto-save, but I don't want to do much more PHP programming (for fun, I'm fine with doing it for jobs) ;)

I really like Python so far (so much so that I may want to use python instead of php for most stuff). :) I want versioning for my website (so I can revert any page edit). At work they are switching to plone-based sites. Trying out plone 3.1 should be fun. :)

More about plone: What is Plone? — Plone CMS: Open Source Content Management

Google Summer of Code 2008 is on!. :)

They start accepting applications Monday, March 24th which is later than last year. However, I'll probably know by then whether I've been accepted as an intern with JAARS. :) If I don't get a position with JAARS, I'll probably apply to GSOC again.

Just wanted to let ya'll know that I've made commenting on my blog work again. My webhost had changed something that made the image captchas stop working, so I've switched to a math one. ;)

I'm mentioned in 2 of the blog posts on SilverStripe CMS - Blog.

Looks like exciting days are ahead for SilverStripe. I can hardly wait to get back into SilverStripe coding. :)

An article about SilverStripe CMS mentions me. :)

From SilverStripe - Open Source CMS Has Support From Google:

Another interesting thing about SilverStripe is that it recently got support from Google, in the form of being a part of the Google Summer of Code project (although in this part of the world it was a Winter of Code!). Summer of Code is a program that Google ran this year, to bring together "900 students and nearly 1500 mentors across 90 countries to contribute to over 130 different open source software projects." SilverStripe was given 10 programmers, who helped to develop SilverStripe features and enhancements. One of those students was Elijah Lofgren, from Deatsville, Alabama. Elijah kept a journal of his work with SilverStripe as part of Google Summer of Code. In his wrap-up post, he wrote:

"My 2007 Google Summer of Code Experience has now come to a close. It’s been great! I’ve learnd a lot about AJAX & PHP5 and have thoroughly enjoyed making improvements to SilverStripe. :)

I spent approximately 50 days on SilverStripe work. So with about 300 hours, it comes out to about 6 hours a day. :) If you are interested in reading my entire work log (warning, quite long!) see: /silverstripe/logs/silverstripe-google-summer-of-code-2007.html"

I've disabled comment moderation. Now you guys can interact a bit more on my comments section. :)

Hopefully I won't get any nasty comments. They were mainly on my /bible/ and other pages though, I think this blog is pretty safe. ;)

I've been taking more pictures today and look forward to uploading them tonight. :)

Data Structures was good this morning. Our in-class activity was creating a binary search algorithm with a partener. Coding with pencil and paper without the use of Google was hard. It seems hard to think about programming when I'm not alone at the computer. ;)

I'm having a good day. :) Only 1 more class: Physics II. I won't have Physics Lab since it is the first week. :)

From the 3.5 minute: Video: RSS in Plain English

I'm going to talk about two ways that you can keep up with what's happening on the Web. There's the old slow way - Boo. Then, there's the new and fast way - Yay! Here's the difference between the new and the old way.

A big thanks to Anna for allowing me to help her set up Google Reader. :)

By reading How to Backup a Blogger Blog I found out how to easily back up a blogger blog, and best of all, how to subscribe to the comments feed of any blogger blog. No more missing out on comments. :)

I created the Flash Tutorial shown on the Making free tutorials and demos with Wink entry of the SilverStripe blog. :)

I think seeing the clusters on left of Clusty Search » "elijah lofgren" is interesting. :)

We've reached the half-way point in the Google Summer of Code and SilverStripe is showing some of the progress their websites (My work is featured in #3 Usability Improvements):

1. Google Summer of Code Fruit #1 - FlickrGallery
2. Google Summer of Code Fruit #2: Internationalisation
3. Google Summer of Code Fruit #3 - Usability improvements
4. Google Summer of Code Fruit #4: Image editing tools preview

Lydia told me about GodTube.com today. She heard about it in Sunday school. Thanks Lydia!

GodTube.com was started by Chris Wyatt. More info: Student Profile: Chris Wyatt - Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS)

Some good stuff I've found there:

• Godtube.com Featured on ABC NightLine News
• Godtube CEO on Fox News
Does Anybody Hear Her- Casting Crowns
• DC Talk - Jesus Freak
• Are you ready?...A Must see...WOW!
• Superchick Video 'We Live': Great Message. Note: Some people just have different hair styles. ;)
• Letters from War by Mark Schultz: It's amazing how much more powerful a music video is than just a song.
• 8 Reasons I Don't Share My Faith
• Line Backer Evangelism

In an experiment to fix SilverStripe CMS Usability Issue #13 Important Buttons Not Noticable Enough, I tried adding icons to them.

When I asked for feedback on this change, Will from the SilverStripe Development Team responded:

... I think the idea of icons is nice but that space could be better used. If you clutter that area up with icons it might get a bit busy and reduce readability.

He pointed me to Using Icons for Web Site Navigation — a Waste of Time?.

I've learned that icons on buttons and around links are not always a good thing.

RE[4]: Stop calling anything "bloated":

Dude, you tinyurl'd a PDF document...at least give us some warning!

In reference to a link to Why Userspace Sucks—Or 101 Really Dumb Things Your App Shouldn’t Do:

I intend to show by example numerous applica- tions doing incredibly dumb things, from silli- ness such as reloading and re-parsing XML ?les 50 times each run, to applications that wake up every few seconds to ask the kernel to change the value of something that has not changed since it last woke up.

Quite cool: Google Experimental search

I liked this one: "elijah lofgren" view:timeline

One that I thought of: space center view:map

Nifty stuff.

Good stuff: W3C adopts HTML 5

Pretty cool:

• Map-making: So easy a caveman could do it
• My Maps

Here are two visitors that came to my website today:

2007-04-06 13:59:46 via rcn.com visited /about/about-me/blessing-of-the-day/ from Google search: "don't attend a christian university".

2007-04-06 14:10:11 via 153.20 visited /writings/letourneau-fall-2006/intellectual-cornerstones-paper/ from Google search: "set goals to glorify god"

I hope my website had a positive impact on those people. :)

I've looked through a lot of potential Google Summer of code projects and have decided that these 3 are the ones that I am most interested in:

1. CMS Made Simple - I'm most interested in "Simple, Custom WYSIWYG" or "WebDAV Integration"
2. SilverStripe - My second choice after CMSMS. Most of the projects sounds doable and somewhat interesting.
3. Boost - I could probably manage to do "X, Y (& Z?) Plotting Graphs from C++ Containers in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Format". If I thought I could find a good design I could maybe do "GotBoost? Website"

I can't wait until 7pm, when the list of organizations will be announced. I sure home CMSMS makes it in. :)

Update: - This one might also be interesting, I've wanted to get into KDE work for a while: Alternative Solution for Kexi Forms Using PHP.

Very interesting: Linspire's New Partnership with Canonical and Ubuntu.

Also CNR.com:

Utilizing 5 years of CNR development in one-click software delivery, CNR.com will provide a standardized process for finding, evaluating, installing, and updating desktop software for the most popular Linux distributions, both Debian and RPM based.

I'm very glad to hear that Dojo is being split up to make it more lightweight. :) It was a little hard to know what to cut out when I was trying to integrate it into CMSMS. Sounds like the next Dojo version will be much more modular. Read more: Dojo 0.4.2 and beyond.

API Support Engineer - Atlanta:

You will be responsible for interaction with, and support of, third-party application developers, and will work closely with Google's Product Engineering teams. The ideal candidate loves troubleshooting challenging issues, participating in developer communities, and has strong AJAX web application development, as well as Java programming experience.

I just got into AJAX over Christmas break, and it was fun! :)

Software Engineering (Georgia - Atlanta):

We need world-class engineers to join our engineering team in developing our next-generation search engine and related technologies. We're working on problems in a number of areas, including cutting-edge information retrieval algorithms, scalability issues related to dealing with huge amounts of data and a rapidly increasing user population, and a variety of novel search features.

Sounds fun!

Software Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Code high-volume ad delivery software using primarily C++ and Java
• Create web applications using primarily PHP Implement web interfaces using XHTML, CSS, and Javascript
• Build report interfaces and data feeds

Requirements:

• B.S. Computer Science or related field
• Expertise with C++ and/or Java
• Knowledge of perl or PHP or python
• Knowledge of relational databases and SQL, preferably MySQL and Oracle

I know PHP, XHTML, CSS really well. I just learned some C++ last semester. I'm learning Java now. I know Javascript pretty well. I think I'm well on my way to a decent job. :) (I just need to get this English paper done ;) )

Required Watching for Anyone who is reading my blog:

• Time will Tell
• Ice Cream Money
• Nick Cannon: Can I Live

Not required (but super funny):

• Girl in human sling shot
• The Dangers of Sleeping in a Chair

Go to http://strandbeest.com/ and click on "film". Then click on "Windows Media" next to one of the movies. The first and last ones are pretty cool.

Daniel, a floormate just showed them to me and I thought I'd pass it on.

Pretty nifty. Sounds like a very good idea.

"... the new PayPal Virtual Debit Card...generates a virtual card number every time you shop, everywhere you shop - so you never have to give out your credit or debit card number again...get all the convenience and security of PayPal, with a special advantage: Now, you can pay with PayPal anywhere MasterCard is accepted online."

Read more: Paypal Virtual Debit Card beta out at WebmasterWorld.com

I plan to switch elijahlofgren.com to being hosted by Navigator Internet Solutions. If that goes well, I will probably switch the rest of the domain that I manage during Thanksgiving break.

The reason for this is the terrible reliability of my current web host.

Because my webhost has continued to have a problem with all imcoming mail being rejected and returned, I look into other options for mail management. I signed up for Google Apps for Your Domain and pointed my MX record at the Google domain using Cpanel. Now all my email goes through Google's servers instead of my unreliable cheap web host. It's nice to be finally able to receive mail again after 2 days.

A quote posted in the Google Forced to Remove Data topic on WebmasterWorld.

The Social Security numbers and test scores of 619 students at public schools in Catawba County, N.C., were available online via Google's search engine until Friday, when the company complied with a local court order to delete all information about that county's board of education from its servers.

It wasn't Google's fault though. Google's crawlers cannot enter passwords. The software used to store the document containing the Social Security numbers and test scores was written incorrectly which allowed the Google search engine just to follow a link which probably had a password embedded in it which was probably posted by a student who was not careful enough.

People need to stop blaming Google (and other search engines) for this type of stuff. Google only indexes stuff that is publicly available. People should be careful to take steps to keep search engine robots from indexing sensitive content. Noindex tags and robots.txt files work great for this. Even better would be making the login system more secure by removing the ability to login via a URL by only accepting POST variables and not GET variables.

Hopfully this will serve as a warning to other people to prevent this from happening in th future. Will it happen? Most likely not, people make stupid mistakes.