Blogging Roller

Leo got a cheapo CD player for his 5th birthday so the kids asked me to burn some CDs for them to take to the beach this week. I told them that I'd do it if they each type a list of the 20 songs they want and send it to me via email. Alex (10) and Linus (9) took me up on the offer. Working independently and combing through my ~3300 song iTunes collection here are the two lists they created:

Alex's picks birdhouse in your soul - tmbg day tripper - beatles dear god - xtc dead - tmbg Outta Mind (Outta sight) - wilco somebody to love - blues brothers king of all of the world - old 97s book of poems - old 97s whistling in the dark - tmbg all alone in the supermarket - the clash come together (come to-get-her) - beatles let it be - beatles free fallin' - tom petty generals & majors - xtc get the clone troppers - dad Istanbul (not Constantinople) - tmbg nasty zoo - dad Outtasite (outtamind) - wilco respectable street - xtc hey jude - beatles

Linus' picks Birdhouse In Your Soul - They Might Be Giants Day Tripper - The Beatles Dear God - XTC Dead - They Might Be Giants Outta Mind (Outta Sight) - Wilco Somebody to Love - Blues Brothers King of All the World - Old 97's Book of Poems - Old 97's Whistling In The Dark - They Might Be Giants The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead - XTC Hearing Aid - They Might Be Giants Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles Hot Cha - They Might Be Giants Letterbox - They Might Be Giants Mr. Me - They Might Be Giants Octopus's Garden - The Beatles Particle Man - They Might Be Giants Soul Man - Blues Brothers They Might Be Giants - Flood We can work it out - The Beatles

Indoctrination complete, right? Obviously they're more than heavily influenced by my vintage musical tastes at this point, but it's still interesting what they picked. I'm not that much of a TMBG fan and they really zeroed in on Flood. Dear God is also a pretty interesting choice. And it's also telling that 9 of the 20 picks are the same (I rearranged the list to highlight that); obviously these guys hang out together 24x7.

This week in Roller Strong, I've got some status on the 4.0 and 3.1 code bases and note about Roller Weblogger vs. Roller Planet.

Development continues on the Roller 4.0 code base, but we're essentially feature complete and focusing on minor improvements and bug fixes. Allen worked to clear bugs and improve bootstrapping. I worked to update Roller's Atom protocol (APP) implementation to use the final APP namespace URI and to pass Tim Bray's latest Ape tests. I wrote up my <a href= "http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/entry/atom_protocol_exerciser_ape_setup">experience with Ape here on my blog.

At Sun, we've been testing the new Roller 4.0 "EZ install" work and doing some additional work to make 4.0 even easier to install in Glassfish. Manveen Kaur created a Glassfish Update Center Module for Roller that automatically downloads and installs Roller with almost no user-interaction. She wrote up instructions to help others <a href= "http://weblogs.java.net/blog/manveen/archive/2007/06/creating_a_glas_1.html">create and <a href= "http://weblogs.java.net/blog/manveen/archive/2007/06/testing_your_up_1.html">test Glassfish Update Center Modules.

We're also preparing some 3.1 fixes. All of the <a href= "http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/roller-dev/200706.mbox/%3c8fb9ac720706302051n59e525d0ua850e48ba5b2a62a@mail.gmail.com%3e">issues reported against Roller 3.1 have been fixed and we're just about ready to make a fix release, which we'll call 3.1.1.

And finally, a note about the project. Since 3.0, we've reorganized the Roller code base to reflect the fact that Roller is not just a blog server. Roller is a project that produces both a blog server called Roller Weblogger and a planet server called Roller Planet. For example, the Roller interface is gone and replaced with Weblogger for the blog server and Planet.

Using the word "Weblogger" reminds me of an unfortunate incident that occurred back in 2002. Not all of my Roller memories are pleasant ;-)

Roller Strong Disclaimer: this is a personal blog and I do not speak on behalf of Sun Microsystems or the Apache Software Foundation.