Friday, 24th February, 2006

6am. Can't Sleep.

tranniefesto code tech

Head buzzing with the residue of a succession of increasingly bizarre dreams — each one slightly more implausible than the last. I think, actually, that might have been the first time I've ever had to apply Godwin's Law to a night's sleep — by the time I'd had a dream with Nazis in it, I figured I should probably get up.

(Seriously — full on Hogan's Heroes-type dream, with Hitler in it and everything. There was even dancing girls, and dress-makers, and a boat, and a castle, and swimming. And I was probably dressed as a girl for part of it.)

The other reason my head is buzzing, is because I can't stop thinking about Things Id Like To Do™. I've been internally lamenting the functionality and structure of this weblog for quite a while now — and I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking that the only real way to make any kind of progression with it (towards what I want it to be) is to start again from scratch.

Usual caveats apply: I'm not a programmer. I've never really even read a book on programming properly and I don't ever sit down knowing how something is going to work — I just plough straight into it and see what comes out the other end.

Every time I look through the code — whether it's to debug something, or to try and add something else to it — it always amazes me just how much of a muddle it is. There are snippets of stuff that have been in it since October 2002 — some of which aren't even used anymore

Things That Are Pissing Me Off About It

1. RSS
   My RSS feed sucks The first time I tried to implement it, I got a load of complaints from people, sick to death with getting notifications every time a new comment was added, or every time I juust tacked a quick quip at the end of something.

   I'd had a long conversation with Mr Betteridge about the pros and cons of having the whole article in the feed — as opposed to having just a snippet. And on the whole, I agreed with him that it's much more useful to be able to get a whole post in your aggregator. I personally hate it when I have to click through a link just to find out that it's just a short splurge...

   But I can't quite think how to implement something like that. I can't think how the model of RSS-publishing fits in with the way I do things. I don't write self-contained posts, I waffle in circles.

   RSS feeds fit very well into a publishing model of weblog, but they don't fit a conversational model.

   I'm going to have to think long and hard about this one.

2. Editing
   I was very proud of myself when I switched from using a database to hold each entry over to a plain-text-file approach. It meant that I could interact with the raw source in a much more intuitive way — using vi and BBEdit to write and edit stuff, rather than messing around with SQL stuff.

   I also loved the way it felt much more raw — it felt more true to a UNIXy way of doing things. I could throw little sed, grep and awk scripts around to achieve things, and I dunno, it just felt conceptually better.

   Equally, I'm rather pleased with some of the things I've written to squirt stuff into the blog — I can send emails to it, push stuff in from Flickr, um, thats it actually

   But the one thing I can't do effectively and elegantly is edit the thing.

   True, I can dive into vi, or I can launch BBEdit — but I always run the risk of borking things and losing comments, if I happen to be editing just as someone's leaving one.

   What I'd like to be able to do, is edit it straight in the browser — click on a paragraph and have it turn into an EditInPlace thingumy, or be able to drag a comment down a bit, stuff like that.

   I'd also like — maybe — to make the structure a bit more similar to other blogging tools, so that I can use things like MarsEdit or integrate better with Flickr's "Post To Weblog" thing.

3. Blogroll
   Apart from the fact that somehow my 'Reading List' seems to be borked, I'm not liking it one bit. In fact, I'm not liking most of my sidebar — to the point where I'm wondering whether or not I should have a sidebar at all.

   Quite some time ago, I had a notion in my head that it would be more elegant to hard-code a blogroll into the weblog itself — so that just mentioning someone would cause a link. I half-arsedly impleneted it (eg. Miss K), but never really stuck to it.

   Actually, thinking about it, that should be an easy one to sort out. The problem I had was that sometimes I wanted to be able to refer (for example) to a "Mike" other than "Mike" — so I couldn't just use a bog-standard piece of regex.

   What I need, is a cunning piece of syntax Something like ^Mike — or maybe Mike&, seeing as effectively, I'm forking off into the background...

4. Links & Pictures
   In a similar "I hate my sidebar" way, I don't really want a list of del.icio.us links there. I want them integrated into the general stream of things. I don't like how they're essentially duplicates of my actual del.icio.us links.

   Same goes for my Flickr Photostream. What's the point of having them there, in the sidebar, and in the main body?

   With the pictures, I'm increasingly unhappy with the way I link to my stream, rather than the individual photograph — and it's only laziness on my part that I haven't used the API properly.

   With the links, it's only because I've never really found a good visual way of embedding them.

5. Design
   Speaking of "visual", I've been trying — for a good few months now — to redesign this thing. It's cute (IMHO), but it's not quite right. I've been playing around with more 'minimal' designs recently, but I'm finding it really hard to keep that sense of personality as I do so.

   April was talking a while back about an intrinsic link between the visual elements of this weblog, and the person I am (just tried to find it, but couldn't — it was something about talking to me in a club one night and being able to see a pink background to everything I was saying)

   But part of me wants a white background :unsure;

6. Attention-span
   See, this is the problem I have. I start off writing about things, brimming with ideas and thoughts that I feel Need To Be Shared™. But half-way through, I find myself flicking through my own pages trying to find a quote or something, and I get totally side-tracked.

   And lose the thread.

   Which is why, a lot of the time, things that I write end with a whimper rather than a bang.

   Or even a joke.

Woah — That's Not Good

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

The result of me clumping around my attic, on my bedroom ceiling, yesterday

Jacket

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

In my defense, I know I haven't done my CBT yet, but the only other jacket I've got to wear that's remotely suitable is a £5 bargain basement girls' fake-leather thing that I've worn out a few times

My Life As A Cliche

photo

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

And here was me going to try and cut down a little...

Sad Sad Sad Sad

macs collection

You know that 192.168.0.0/16 photo set I have on Flickr? The "Meet the family" one?

Well, prompted by various "I've got X Y and Z Macs" comments on this poll on http://www.macosxhints.com I was tempted to blow my own trumpet a bit and post a list of all the Macs I've got — and what system is running on each.

See, the photo set is just the ones that I have switched on all the time — there are many, many, many more up in the loft

But I've lost count — and lying on my sofa is not the best place to investigate. So, if I'm at a bit of a loss for things to do tomorrow, I'm going to go up there and catalogue them

Bet'cha looking forward to that aren't you?

Jon Hicks

Bugger — that means I have to do it now .