Blogging Roller

We had a nice lunch at Sarah's Empanadas. This month's new member is Bruce Loebrich. We talked about a number of things, including Joe's new Pamphlet software: a client side .Net-based blogger. I did not realize that Joe was already running his blog using Pamplet.

I found Russell's NoteBook via my referrers. His blog is powered by MiniBlog - which I'm guessing he wrote himself (?). It's a fairly full features blog application written in a single JSP file. It's not going to win any architecture prizes (an 800 line, single file JSP?) but it's cool none-the-less. Mike comments on Russell Beattie's MiniBlog

If you want a server-side Java-based blogger and you think Roller is over-architected and bloated, try MiniBlog. It is pretty amazing (and a little scary) what you can do with one JSP file.

If you want to read some fresh (and very funny) writing on the tired open source vs. the software industry topic take a look at Bruce Sterling's Contrarian View of Open Source. Also, Joel Spolski's Strategy Letter V is excellent (but not funny).

Anthony Eden of JPublish fame has gotten past the Roller install difficulties and now has a Roller based weblog called All Things Java. Update: I should have mentioned that Anthony is offering free Roller accounts at his site. He is a brave and generous man ;-)

LW James also has a Roller based blog and it is starting to show up in my referrer logs. That makes 4 Roller based bloggers including my own.

Matt and Lance have already been contributing Roller patches, diffs, and good ideas faster than I can process them. Now they have both agreed to join the Roller project. Thanks guys and welcome aboard.

I like Mike's response to my get used to it rant. I agree that open source (and the term open source itself) came to prominence during the dot-com times. But I like to think of open source as a way to license software and a way to share rather than a movement or a crusade to destroy capitalism in the software market. Sometimes I get the feeling that is what Dave thinks it is.

Also, I'm not sure open source is really eating Dave's lunch. He is competing with other blogging services and with content management vendors more than other blogging software packages. And, he has a easy and complete solution - you can be blogging in 5 minutes time and have a site for $39/year.

So, potentially you could make an argument that the open source thing is just screwing up all the revenue models and we aren't getting the advertising, because it isn't the best technology that always wins, it's who advertises more ... And in fact Bill Gates may be sitting up there laughing his butt off because the open source community is cutting the legs out from under all the R&D and promotion efforts of all the open interface strategies -- not open implementation, but open interface strategies. Scott McNealy, Interview excerpt in Open Enterprise Trends via Sam Ruby and Ugo Cei.  There is also a Server Side thread on this topic.   

Just what we need: inferior techology and more advertising. Thanks Scott. Open source Java  developers are not going to be goose-stepping along with the suits in Sun's and BEA's marketing department. Get used to it, open source is not going away - in fact it may be Java's only hope.

The date of the next Castor release has been officially set for Monday, August 12th. We are currently in a code-freeze - Keith Visco on the castor-dev mailing list.

I've spotted several Roller based weblogs in the wild, but I'm not sure I should publish links here because they all look a little experimental. UPDATE: Matt Raible has gone live with three Roller-based sites. Very cool. Take a look at the slick new theme and theme switcher he has designed. Nice work Matt.

BTW, imho, "open source" is a vestige of dotcom mania. Sure, you can do anything with free money, but that's over, for good (fingers crossed) so let's get real, okay? Thanks ... There's lots of work to do. In Washington they're passing laws that any developer, whether or not he or she develops open source, should be working to stop.They love Apple, but why - Dave Winer

Open source is not an exclusionary country club and it is not a vestige of the dot-com boom-bust, it is just a way to license software, and it has been around for ages.  Some folks use open source licensing as part of a business strategy, some use it because they want to improve the world of software, and some use it because they want to "give back" to the open source community. Get used to it, open source is not going away.

And on the second point: open source developers are going to work with anyone and everyone, including commercial developers, to fight against the crappy legislation that is currently being purchased by the entertainment industry. Why would you doubt that? Seems to me, most open source developers are also commercial developers.

Why is Dave so vexed over open source? Did open source software eat his lunch, pee in his corn-flakes, step on his blue suede shoes, or what? Somebody please explain. BTW, I do not consider myself to be an open source zealot. I believe that both open source and commercial licensing have their places in this world. I develop, use, and advocate the use of closed source software.

Last year during my family's vacation to Ocracoke, I wrote the first draft of the Roller article. There is not a whole lot to do on Ocracoke Island (which is exactly what I like in a vacation) and I had a lot of time during "quiet time" and in the evenings after the kids had gone to sleep. This year, we vacationed at Folly Beach outside of Charleston. We had vistors during most of our vacation, and we made several trips to Charleston.  So I had enough time to read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again, but no time for Roller development.

I took a laptop along with me on vacation and I'm glad that I did. Roller mailing-list activity really picked up during the week. In addition to the usual installation questions, several folks are getting serious about contributing to Roller development. Matt Raible contributed an XHTML/CSS based theme for Roller and some new Velocity directives for theme support. Bala Murali is studying the Roller architecture and is very interested in building an "enterprise aggregator" based on and integrated into Roller. JSP expert Lance Lavandowska has also expressed interest in helping out with development - once he untangles the crazy (and quite possibly too complex) Xdoclet web that I have woven.  I'm hoping all these eyes on the code and going to lead to some real improvements in the Roller code base and architecture.  I'm also hoping that some of these smart people are going to become Roller committers in the next month or so.

Dave is much, much smarter than me - a fact that will hit you over the head if you read this article he wrote on Roller for O'Reilly's OnJava.  Dave also sent along a link to another Java-based blogging app called CocoBlog (programmed by Ugo Cei)

Yes: I am incredibly intelligent, good looking, and also very modest  ;-)

Linus (4), Leo (1 month), and Alex (5) after a morning at the beach.

I'm posting this story because this August 2002 is the 10th anniversary of my hike to the peak of the Blue Mountain in Jamaica, West Indies. I wrote this up a week or two after the hike.

The most exhausting experience that we had during our year in Jamaica was climbing the Blue Mountain. Michael and Ingrid were visiting with us, so before we left home we stuffed our backbacks full of of cheese and tofu sandwiches, nuts, nutrition bars. We left Kingston by way of Papine and drove up into the mountains. It took about one and a half hours to get to Mavis Bank, a small coffee-town where a Land Rover was waiting to take us up the Whitfield Hall, the start of the climb.

When we arrived in Mavis Bank we drove into a small town center, complete with goats, chickens, a grocery store, a betting shop, and a Land Rover. A Jamaican immediately appeared, outside of the grocery store with a Dragon Stout in his hand, and told us to park down the road in front of the Police Station. After packing nine climbers, gear and two local idlers into the back of the open-top Rover, we were driven up a terribly rutted narrow dirt road straight-up to the Whitfield Hall lodge.

<img src="/images/bluemtn/whitfield.gif" alt="" width="350" height="272" align="right" hspace="10" vspace="10">Whitfield Hall is an old coffee plantation farm-house nestled in a grove of enormous pine trees half-way up the Mavis Bank - Blue Mountain trail. Nobody moved a muscle or said a word to us as we unloaded our few bags and chose a room; one with two bunk beds and paint peeling off all over the place. Two dread-locked mountain mamas seemed to be in charge so I bought a couple Red Stripe beers and Ting sodas from them and asked about a getting a guide. One of the ladies told me that she would tell her son, Merrick, to show-up at 1:30AM so that we could begin the traditional 2AM hike up the mountain.

After listening to the other guests blab until about 9PM, we were all able to fall asleep. I woke up about 1:30AM and the wind was howling outside the windows. I stumbled through the pitch-black house and found Merrick in the kitchen where he was trying to light a couple of gas hurricane-lamps. I asked him if his fee was $200J like it said on the wall; a bad haggling move on my part. He said "no man, me wan $250J." So I said OK, and in a couple minutes Andi, Michael, Ingrid, Merrick and I stepped out into the chilly night wind.

<img src="/images/bluemtn/clouds.gif" alt="" width="350" height="233" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10">

As we left Whitfield Hall and walked up the dirt road past the stands of Blue Mountain coffee, the full moon and clear sky gave the whole scene an other-worldly feel. We were not under forest cover yet so we could see the contours of the surrounding hills and the full length of the Yallahs river valley. Andi noticed a sign that said "6 miles to Blue Mountain peak." After 45 minutes of hiking we were no longer cold and we stopped for our first break. Merrick sat by himself about 20 feet ahead on the trail and he lit up a cigarette. We resumed the hike and soon the bright light of the moon was blacked-out by a dense canopy of trees, ferns and enourmous tree ferns. We started to rely on the tiny beams of our two flashlights to keep up from tripping over roots, rocks and puddles.

<img src="/images/bluemtn/clear.gif" alt="" width="360" height="240" align="right" hspace="10" vspace="10">We took one more short break before reaching Portland Gap, where there is a camping site, a cabin and a stand-pipe. The Grand Ridge of the Blue Mountains forms the border of the parish of St. Thomas to the south and Portland to the north, and the Portland Gap is the the place were the trail meets up with the ridge. We refilled our canteens, took another short break and hit the trail again. As we left Portland Gap, now on the northern side of the ridge, we could see that Portland was completely covered with clouds. I imagined that the clouds would linger in Portland until the heat of the dawn pushed them up and over the mountain and down into St. Thomas, St. Andrew and Kingston. I was hoping that the clouds would wait until we'd seen the view from the top before bubbling over. Merrick told us that he had only seen one clear day in five years of working as a mountain guide; not very good odds in our favor.

<img src="/images/bluemtn/highest.gif" alt="" width="241" height="350" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10">

As we continued hiking Andi and Ingrid kept on falling behind. Michael, Merrick and I would wait for them when we got too far ahead to see their flashlight. Once while waiting I noticed a star moving very slowly across the sky. "I think I see a shooting star, look at the way that star is moving," I said. "Thats the way the almighty works," said Merrick, "he is the invisible man." As we rounded a bend and returned to the south side of the ridge, Merrick pointed out the bright sea of lights of Kingston which quickly disappeared behind a cloud-bank. Then a little bit later, he pointed out the lights of the town of Yallahs on the south coast.

Hiking was becoming exhausting as we neared the peak. We switched-back left, right, left, right, left, right and left again forever. We all felt like collapsing. As the pre-dawn light grew stronger we could see the beautiful and unique vegetation of the high-altitude elfin forest. At about 5:30AM, we finally reached the windy, cold and foggy mountain top. Merrick shined his flashlight on the sign that reads "Welcome to the Blue Mountain Peak - 7402 Feet Elevation." Merrick told us "this is your destiny."

<img src="/images/bluemtn/ingrid.gif" alt="" width="350" height="239" align="right" hspace="10" vspace="10">It was so cold at the peak that the only thing that we wanted to do was to huddle inside the run-down concrete shelter. I never knew that it could be so cold in Jamaica, it must have been below 50 degrees fahrenheit. We ate the rest of our food. I gave Merrick a bag of Chippies, salted banana chips. We were cold and wet with perspiration and it was so foggy that we could not see a thing. Michael and I took a short walk over to the geodetic monument that marks the official peak. As we climbed the monument and clowned around about being the "highest men in Jamaica" the sun stared to burn through the fog. Michael ran back to the shelter to get Andi, Ingrid and Merrick.

We all gathered by the monument and we watched as the clouds parted on the south side of the mountain, so we could see almost all of Kingston. I had my binoculars and I could make out several buildings in the city, the Mutual Life building, the Pegasus Hotel and the Oceana Hotel. On the north side of the mountain we could see a giant cloud formation frozen in the glare of the sun, but it was below us because we were so high. According to Merrick, the clouds were blocking the view to Cuba. We were all enjoying the view, thanking Jah for our luck and trying to figure out why each of our shadows had a circular rainbow around it when the fog suddenly returned and the magnificent view vanished.

I think I figured out why it was hot, windy, and grumpy yesterday. I missed my morning coffee. I have no idea why my missing coffee makes my boys misbehave so.

After dragging the baby tent, two beach umbrellas, two chairs, and a screaming 4 year old back from a morning in the surf, I took a break from "vacation" to check my email. Jeff Duska sent me an email saying FYI, Blogging Roller is down (thanks Jeff).

I had a copy of Putty with me so I logged in to Kattare and started poking around. Everything looked fine and I could not figure out what could possibly be wrong. After looking at some impossible error messages, I deleted the Tomcat working directories. That fixed everything. I'm sure a Tomcat bug is behind this problem, but I haven't the time/motivation to figure it out now. Back to the beach.

I'm still working on bookmark import and related Roller enhancements. I'm almost done, but I probably won't be making a release in the next week because I'll be on vacation.

Today, I upgraded to Ant 1.5, Velocity 1.3, and Struts 1.1b1. Everything went smoothly, but I found that the Jakarta Commons jars that came with the Struts 1.1b1 release caused problems with Tomcat connection pooling. I don't have time to investigate this now, so I'm sticking with the old commons jars (which the Roller install places in $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib) for the time being. There are a lot of new jars, so be prepared for a big download if you do a CVS update.

I went to download Velocity 1.3 and was pleased to find Roller featured prominently on the Velocity website. Thanks!

Java Developers Journal is reporting that there is a big shortage of skilled Java developers. If that is the case then why have the recruiters been missing from the local JUG meetings for the last 12 months?