It’s been a while since I last posted on my blog. The “downtime” had several reasons:
- I participated in Googles Summer of Code this year and was quite busy due to that (blog post for that is on its way).
- I didn’t want to use Wordpress any longer.
I never planned to quit blogging completely because there’s always stuff coming to my mind that I want to make accessible to a wider audience. So now I sat down and worked on a new blog using Zine. Zine (formerly known as TextPress) is a python-powered blogging application similar to Wordpress. It is quite easy to write plugins and themes for it and since I use to program in Python I chose this awesome (but not yet released) piece of software. I didn’t migrate my old postings over from wordpress (although there’s a converter) because I want to change my style of writing a bit (e.g. no smileys anymore). Any link out there pointing at my old blog will be redirected to this very post. If you want some old posting, just contact me by either mail or comment. I keep the database alive.
As of that, I also changed my hackergotchi since the old version somewhat resembled a criminal. (Just in case you were wondering who I am.) I have to thank my fellow student and friend Alvaro for spending several hours with me, testing his new camera and producing the photos.
The new blog is dressed in a theme that I wrote, supported by my buddy Arne. Thanks so much for providing the graphics and coming up with the basic layout idea! (I cannot count the many days of work he put into that. I owe you a beer.)
Expect postings from me at a much higher rate now. I’ll try not to flood planet ubuntu too much, though. (Due to excessive testing there should be no remaining bugs, but one can never know for sure. If you notice anything, please drop a comment to this post.)
| 5 comments | Sep 6, 2008 9:23:00 PM | maintenance, planet-ubuntu, zine |
I’m happy that we’ve finally finished the space station :)
Thanks for the relaxed collaboration, looking forward to our next projects.
Greetings
First, welcome back to blogosphere!
then, few questions! 1) In your opinion, would Zine be a good project to watch and fiddle with to get more accustomed with Python and learn it at the same time for someone who has some previous experience in coding with Java and PHP, but can’t really claim to be a coder? 2) You’ve not migrated your old entries from WordPress to Zine, but is it possible?
Thank you for your answers!
Hi Miia, depending on what skills you already have, there are different things you could do. Zine is certainly a nice project and the codebase is quite readable. It is really easy to write plugins for it, so I suggest starting with that. If you go to [0], you can take a look at the code and clone it to your local disk. There are some plugins you can take a look at, like “Eric the Fish”, which is a plugin especially written for demonstration purposes and thus excessively documented. You can also check the #pocoo IRC channel on freenode if you have any questions. Note, however, that the software still hasn’t been released, but that will soon change. 0.1 is on its way. (There is also a more elaborated developer documentation that can be generated from the code. If you are interested, just ask on that channel and we will help you get started.)
As I mentioned, I didn’t convert the postings because I want to change my style of writing a bit (and because I don’t think they are too important). There is an importer for Wordpress and Blogger, however (more to come).
[0] http://dev.pocoo.org/projects/zine/
regards
Welcome back :) (not that I remember you from before, to be honest). I love your space-station theme though!