Rex Flex

If you visited earlier, you may have noticed the theme was being modified. For now I’m going to keep it with this theme until I get the one I’m working on completly finished. I’m just about done with it, so be on the look out.

I’m really liking wordpress, it’s very easy to create a new theme and manage everything within my blog. With starkBlog I would have to go in and edit some source or something of that nature, which wasn’t too bad as long as you knew php (helping to code it didn’t hurt either). Using this really makes me realize that starkBlog has quite a ways to go before it can even compete. All of the “big bloggers” are using web applications such as wordpress, movable type and all these other huge projects, that starkBlog is just too small for them to even think about switching. There are so many features in all these big applications that starkBlog can’t even compare.

Today I went into the DPS (Department of Public Safety) to get my five year driving record to get my first ticket dismissed. It’s weird I have to go get a five year driving record when I’ve only been driving for about two and a half years. It says that I have no convictions, which is a little weird because of my speeding ticket, but I’m not complaining. Tomorrow I’m going to run over to the court and get my ticket all taken care of, a full four days in advance I might add. I need to get on the ball with things, I have a report due for class in about six and a half hours, that I haven’t even started yet. I think I’m going to write it on the Mona Lisa, but I’m not quite sure; it’s for humanities.

I’m going to be working on getting the comments moved over sometime this weekend. I’ve got so much going on lately that I’m not even going to be able to think about it for awhile. My girlfriend is getting cable, so I need to go over there and setup her network maybe sometime next weekend, because I’m such a nice guy. We chatted for about three hours tonight, well me and her mom chatted for about two hours tonight about what all she’s going to need to setup the network and we chatted for about an hour. It’s a simple wired network. I’ve never dealt with a wireless network and I’ve heard a lot of bad things (Jon) so I figured a wired network was the way to go.

Anyway, I’m going to get started with my project, so I’ll talk to everyone later.

My check sent to DreamHost has finally cleared, and the hosting has been setup. You can now access my site from http://rexflex.net. I’m planning on importing all of the old news from starkBlog into the new blogging system (wordpress). I’m going to go with wordpress for all my real blogging while starkBlog receives some more work. When starkBlog is suitable for everyday use, I’ll then import everything I’ve entered in wordpress thusfar, back into starkBlog. You still with me, here? Anyways, wordpress has several advantages over starkBlog, obviously, it’s more mature and has many more options. I don’t plan on hanging starkBlog out to dry, though. You can see all the latest developments at http://stark.rexflex.net/ as soon as I get it all setup.

It’s almost 4:00AM and I have a huge economics final in about six hours. Please excuse my while I go crash.

Well, I just now added a small feature to starkBlog. I added the “categories” section on the links to the right. It took me about 15 minutes, but it felt really good to program some PHP some more and make (some) progress with starkBlog. I haven’t been updating the CVS like I should, and I’m going to regret that. It seems that CVS has fallen behind a bit. It’s not that big of a deal since nobody else has been programing starkBlog except for me. Roo has been too busy with his own software for his third year project, it’s called Blog Tools and it’s a very neat piece of software. The best way I can describe it, is like LiveJournal. I have a really good feeling that it’s going to take off. If you want to help him out and test it for him so he can get all the kinks worked out before he has to turn it in, sign up and shoot him an email, I’m sure he won’t mind ;).

Anyway, I’m going to goto bed. I have to get up early tomorrow morning and go take some quizzes for my humanities class… Later.

If you visit my blog regularly (I can pretty much garuntee you, you don’t) then you’ll notice that I’ve added a few ads on here. Click on the ads and make me some money… please? Also, someone referred me to a cool site where you’re able to make some money by opening a browser window and letting it auto-refresh pages for you to look at. Basically you get $.45 for every hour the window is opened, and you get “raises” every now and then, upto $.75 an hour. If you’re interested, you can sign up here.

I’ve been updating the way starkBlog works a little bit. Instead of storing the username for each post, it stores the user’s id. This will allow for users to change their username from time to time, if they so feel like it.

I’m working on support for multiple categories, but it’s easier said than done. I have the table all setup to do this, I just need to code the admin panel and the display page to be able to use it. The release of starkBlog 0.4 will probably be awhile, as we’re constantly adding new stuff to it.

Personally, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to do the starkBlog updates because I’ve had to fix a few of my friend’s computers. I installed Gentoo on Jonathan’s computer, but I had to install it on the hard drive from my computer. This caused a few issues, but I had to do it this way because his computer wouldn’t boot from a CD, for some odd reason. I got it all done, put his hard drive back in his computer, but it wouldn’t load gentoo because the hard drive in his computer was /dev/hdc. I switched it to the Primary Master, and it wouldn’t even get past the hardware detection at boot. I went into the bios and it was defining what each of the hardware connectors were. I set them all to automatic, and it worked perfectly. Now I just need to setup his wireless lan, which is a hassle because it uses an external usb antenna.

The other computer I’m trying to fix is Robert’s, another friend of mine. He wants Windows 2000 installed, but for some reason the Windows 2000 install is seeing massive hard drives (2×80GB drives) when he has a 30GB drive and a 4GB drive. I have no idea what’s up with that, but I’ll look into it a little bit later.

Another project I’m working on, the Poipu Package Management Center is coming along pretty slowly. Mainly because I’ve been either busy with school, work, girlfriend, friend’s computers, watching tv, or sleeping. I’m going to get on it though dooky, I promise. Goodnight everyone.

Comments have been implemented in the ‘vanilla’ version of the starkBlog source. It’s available in the cvs tree for all who want to check it out. I will be redoing some things in the Administration Panel to get things a little more organized before the release of version 0.4. Also, I’d like to get a section in the Administration Panel to moderate the comments before the release of v0.4. Please be on the lookout because I may just decide to stay up one night and code it.

You all can thank Roo for the comments. They were implemented on his blog but could not simply be commited with the current cvs tree. This is because his version of starkBlog is so different that it would have messed up the cvs tree seriously. I spent last night adding the comments into the Vanilla source. Please check it out. If you have any questions, email me, or leave me a comment. ;)

I just added the option to create categories for different posts. This will make it easier to sort / search through posts later on down the road. I hope you like it, roo isn’t going to be able to work on starkBlog for awhile because of school. I haven’t been able to work on it a whole lot recently for the same reason. I also have work, but we haven’t had too much to do lately so I’ve been leaving early. I have to write the first paper for my english class this weekend, that should be pretty fun… ;)

Whew, this bloging script is coming a long very well. Thanks to Roo, who’s been working on this like a pervert at chucky cheese. It’s coming along very nicely, notice all the nice changes to they layout, and the admin panel has been spurced up very nicely as well. If you’d like to send article links to your friends, you can now send them the permalink url, instead of the blog url. This will keep you from worrying about the article getting lost at the end of the page. I hope you take the time to sit down and give starkBlog a try.

starkBlog has recieved a new developer just in time for the release of starkBlog 0.4. His name is Nilesh Ashra, but you can call him roo. starkBlog has also recieved a channel on freenode, please join irc.freenode.net #starkBlog. The new features in starkBlog 0.4 include an admin panel that allows you to create/edit posts, create/edit users, and has a small, but very useful access level feature. The four access levels created so far include, Administrator, Editor, Poster, and Banned. Administrators have control over every aspect of the system (obviously). Editors are allowed to edit other people’s posts, but are not allowed to create new members. Posters are only allowed to edit their own posts, and banned users are not allowed to do anything. Another thing that has been created with starkBlog 0.4, is a new look, thanks to roo. This project has come a long way, it’s new site is http://starkblog.sf.net/ so please give it a look. I think it’s definatly something worth looking at.