August 2006 Archives

So here's a short recap of what I was doing in summer:

• The basic idea of the novel is actually down now. I've written a really nice outline of what stuff the book should have.
• A lot of discussion with friend on viability of certain ideas. Specifically, how using certain might make me look like a howwible geek. which isn't all that bad because I am a howwible geek. =)
• Got bored and started working on a Battle for Wesnoth campaign. Basically, the campaign will cover the stuff that the book will not have time for.
• Some silly sketches I did while I was not in the right place to write.

Well, let's see how well this blog can be actually updated. =) Anyway, as everyone can see, the site is pretty quiet. I'm busy working on new stuff, everyone else is busy ignoring me. I'm just a little bit worried about being left alone. After all, I'm not really promoting Avarthrel stuff too much. I'm actually a little bit worried about getting any publicity at all: After all, there's not that much good stuff out there. Actually, that's one of the thoughts that have been on top of my head lately: fame coming, and people being ill prepared for that. This is how ideas come...

Well, basically, I'm moving this blog to Hobix. Typo was really complex beast to deal with when upgrading stuff. This thing is hopefully less so. The following will deal with the strange, complex process of moving my Typo weblog to Hobix. After that's done, I'll tell you why I did this.

• 15:44: Whoa, Hobix apparently actually works. Writing a converter for Typo sqlite to Hobix was not that difficult, and I guess the fact that both use Redcloth helps greatly.
• 16:01: Basically, can't display comments without displaying comment form. Well, it's not like anyone would have commented anyway... =) But at least the blog functionality is there and permalinks aren't too broken.

Okay, now, why Hobix instead of Typo? Basically, Typo is a very nice blogging software, but it has one annoying side: Complex dependencies, complex installation when you don't have a RDBMS at hand. Hobix, on the other hand, does not need a RDBMS, stuff is stored on a textual format where conversion is never a problem, and I can just post stuff on webhost with rsync. Typo is also a complex software that I may sometimes need to rush to fix (they just said Rails has a big bug...), while Hobix generates static HTML. Doesn't get much simpler than this!

Hobix also seems to handle multiple blogs easier, especially since I created my Typo blogs wayyy back when Typo didn't support multiple blogs. And I'm not sure how to figure out Typo's multiple-blog feature now, either. The thing is, stuff is just easy with Hobix in this regards.

Also, the YAML format is pretty cool too. Since this stuff is plain text, finding related stuff, fixing stuff up, and so on are much easier.

Hobix is basically Blosxom on steroids, and using a really nice extension language too.

The only problem is that there's no comment feature. (Hobix does support comments, but needs stuff on the webhost to do that.) Also, there's no support for posting APIs. (Who cares, when I can post with XEmacs? =) But I think the good sides far outweight the bad sides.