Blogging Roller

I wonder when that RSS feed repair-man is going to show up? Blogging Roller has been "awaiting repair" for quite some time. Hmm... maybe I ought to fix it myself. Apparently, I only need to add a polling element.

I think Russell has some good points in his rants about JSP tag libs. One of the design goals of JSP tag libraries was to help get code off the page - to separate business logic from presentation. If you start doing general purpose programming with JSP tags you are going to end up with the same sort of mess you would have with lots of Java JSP scriplets all over your page.

But I think Russell is wrong about JSP tag library portability. There are plenty of portable JSP tag libs out there from open source projects and payware products alike. There is no reason to use a tag lib that will tie you to one app server. However, the learning curve involved in mastering a tag lib can be a drag on developer portability.

Russell, I think you are really ranting about JSP in general not just JSP tag libs. Velocity might be a better choice for you (and for me), but I believe that if you are going to be using JSP then you should be using JSP tag libraries as well. With some forethought you can avoid writing lots of general purpose programming logic using tags. Your tagless JSP code in MiniBlog and SimpleWeb looks pretty nice, but I have seen what JSP code-on-page can degenerate into and it is not pleasant.

Everything I read on the web is potential blog material and I find I am reading much more and chasing all kinds of ideas a lot further than I used to [...] The last few years of the Internet bubble were riddled with people trying to make money on stuff that should have been someone's hobby. Maybe the core of blogging is this way. Maybe I should be thinking about what social changes blogging causes and what new businesses this enables or makes obsolete? Addicted to Blogging, Joi Ito

Joi is an interesting guy: a technology exec and investor who has been involved in online collaboration since well before the early days of the web. He has written for Wired, spent time with Timothy Leary, and was named one of the 100 Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He has been writing for the web for a long time and now he is blogging (with Movable Type no less).

I had a pretty gloomy day at work today and I don't really feel like discussing anything even remotely related to enterprise software. So, here is something completely different.

Lance Lavandowska and Simon Stewart have been working on making Roller compatible with PostgreSQL and HSQL-DB. Their changes are now in Roller's CVS, Roller now works with those databases, and the Roller build process now generates database create scripts for PostgreSQL, HSQL-DB, and MySQL databases. Thanks guys! I think we are just about ready for Roller 0.9.5.

eWeek reports that Sun will be adding 18 new modules to the open source Netbeans IDE. I wonder what they are doing for Struts support.

Among the 18 new modules is one that features support for Java Data Objects, which is a Java technology for mapping entities in relational databases to Java objects. Another is a module for Java 3D support. And a third is support for the Apache Struts framework, which is a technology built on top of JavaServer Pages that enhances productivity for Web application developers, the company said. Other modules include a Support Interface Module, a BugSubmitter module, an audit module for defining best practices, a metrics module for analyzing source code, and an XTest module for providing performance and API compatibility tests.

Anthony Eden has some thoughts on Roller improvements. Most of his suggestions should be added to the Roller roadmap.

Also, Ovidiu Predescu recently wrote up a wishlist for a weblog tool which should be considered as well.

I noticed a large number of hits coming into my site yesterday morning and again this afternoon. After taking a good look at my logs, I figured out that the surge was coming from a local software company where a friend of mine works on network management and monitoring software. Turns out, my friend was testing against my site and artificially inflating my numbers. This explains why I was temporarily more popular than Ray Ozzie and running neck and neck with Mike who had a link from Winer yesterday.

I took the GPL licensing quiz and only got 6 of 9 correct. Like Joe Gregorio, I'm pretty leary of the GPL. I think GPL/LGPL has its place, but as a developer and consumer of open source software I prefer to have fewer restrictions on my freedom. I guess that makes me a naive sucker ripe for corporate exploitation and/or a corporate parasite who wants to steal your code. [Found via Bitworking].

Cookie Culture covers his 10 top comedy albums. This brings back fond memories of listening to the "comedy hour" on WQDR years and years ago. My favorite routine was Bill Cosby's "you broke the bed" bit on the Brother Russell album.

InfoWorld is reporting that BEA will be working together with local Raleigh software developer Redhat. Details are sketchy at this point, but it appears they will work on optimizing BEA's "fastest JVM for the intel architecture" JRocket Java VM for Redhat Linux.

Internet.COM is reporting that local Raleigh software developer TogetherSoft is buying WebGain Studio and Visual Cafe from Webgain. Visual Cafe is in good hands.

Russell Beattie has released <a href= "http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/index.jsp?date=20020813#20020813023656"> SimpleWeb, an open source Wiki written in Java.

I've browsed Russell's MiniBlog code and the code for SimpleWeb. I don't really like lots of Java code in JSP pages and there are very few comments in his code, but there is something special about Russell's style. Russell calls it his keep-it-simple, just-to-get-it-done style. He keeps dependencies to an absolute minimum, uses the power of JSP code-on-page to his advantage, and writes code in a clear and easy to follow style. Even if you don't use MiniBlog or SimpleWeb, they are nice code examples to have on hand.

Hey!, that is my Relay-IRC client running inside the IntelliJ IDEA IDE. What the hell is going on! Here is a screenshot on Mike Cannon-Brooks' site.

The write-up on the IntelliJ site is correct, Relay-IRC is one of those ghost projects. I had so little feedback on Relay-IRC that I eventually lost interest myself. If you are interested in working on (or even taking over) Relay-IRC please let me know.

<a href= "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596003285/002-2189911-3107222"> <img border="0" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10" src= "http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0596003285.01._PE_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg" alt="O'Reilly Struts book" /> I've been using the review copy that was posted on The Server Side for quite some time. From what I've seen, this book is going to be a valuable resource for both Struts newbies and veterans.

Looking at the list of Roller users on Anthony Eden's Roller-based site, you can see that XDoclet, WebWork, and JBoss guru Rickard Öberg has a Roller-based blog. Coolio!

Matt is finding that the current release of Xdoclet can't handle the new Struts 1.1-beta features. Since we are trying to use some of those cool new features, Roller will probably be riding on Struts nightlies and XDoclet CVS builds for a while.

Matt also tracked down some mailing-list emails that indicate that both Struts 1.1 and the next release of XDoclet should be coming in the next month or so.

It is the first Sun system to feature the company's own enterprise-ready Linux operating system, known as Sun Linux 5.0, which is based on the 2.4 kernel and optimized for a 32-bit x86 system. eWeek: Sun to Ship Solaris 9 for Intel Servers

Matt Raible is on a mission to make Roller XHTML and CSS compliant. He has already gotten far enough to make his own weblog XHTML compliant and is now turning his attention to the Editor GUI. I'm enjoying this as an educational experience. Soon, I'll know enough to fix the Blogging Roller template, I don't think it even certifies as HTML.

Craig McClanahan explains why the database-pooling jars are needed on the Tomcat common/lib classpath and can't be packaged in the Roller WAR file. He also suggests a possible work-around.