maniacal rage

Yesterday, I upgraded this site to SimpleLog 1.1—a process that's remarkably simple (no pun intended) and works really well. It's amazing to see how many little changes I made between the two versions and just how much more efficient the app is now. Especially when writing posts.

For instance, if you compare the post form from 1.0 with the post form from 1.1, you'll see that 1.1 definitely drives more toward the app being all about writing and less about the clunky details of maintaining a weblog (note that the content preview is still there in 1.1, it just isn't showing because there's no content yet in that post). Then, of course, if you look at the post form from 1.1 fully expanded, you'll see that all of the options you want are there, they're just hidden by default to make you focus a bit more.

The difference between the two designs already feels significant to me. Writing this post seemed easier without all the static.

We're in release candidate testing of version 1.1, and it should be released to the public next week. Shortly after release, I'm going to set up Trac and SVN publicly so people can track changes from this point on.

If you're not a licensed user of xPad, you might want to check out macZOT! today, since xPad is currently on sale for $2.99.

I've been pouring most of my free time into SimpleLog 1.1, which is nearly ready for release. Remember all that talk about it being a pain to upgrade from 1.0? Yeah, well, you can forget that. I've written a few rake tasks that take care of all the hard work for you.

In fact, you won't really have to change anything when upgrading (unless you've made modifications to files other than the views, like adding features to controllers or such).

The process will be as such:

1. Place a rake task called simplelog_themer into your current SimpleLog install and run it. This will create a theme from your currently customized views, change configuration references to the new preference methods, and even convert image paths to relative in your CSS and JavaScript.

2. Copy that theme, config/site.rb and config/database.yml from your current install to the new SimpleLog version directory.

3. Replace your current install with the new version entirely.

4. Run rake simplelog_upgrade

Then you've got a fully-upgraded install of SimpleLog 1.1, and you can go and customize your preferences (now in the admin section, and includes many new prefs), including selecting your theme (which will be aptly titled OnePointOh). You can also choose from the two built-in themes (a new default theme has been added in 1.1).

I'm hoping to release version 1.1 as early as next week, as soon as we finish testing (I'm currently making sure the app works in postgres and sqlite). It's been a lot of work, but the app has really been shaping up the last few weeks and I'm excited to release it.

The remainder of our photos from France are now available on Flickr, which includes the shots I took at Omaha Beach and Pointe Du Hoc, as well as Le Mont Saint Michel.

Paris was fun, but there was something extra nice about our first european roadtrip, and I'm looking forward to doing something like that again soon.

I've uploaded about half of my photos from our trip to France to Flickr. The thing that's holding me up from finishing is the only application I use on a regular basis that isn't yet universal—Keyword Assistant. And it's not even an application, it's a simple iPhoto plugin that makes adding keywords to photos quick and painless, and then FlickrExport converts the keywords to tags when I export to Flickr.

It's killing me not to have Keyword Assistant. I've sent Ken an email or two inquiring about release timeframes, et cetera, but I haven't heard back. This functionality is very important to me, and I'm willing to pay for it.

If someone wants to create a similar plugin for iPhoto, you've got one licensed user waiting in line. And Ken, if you release a new version, I'll gladly send you some money!

I've been working on SimpleLog 1.1 for a few days now, and I'm getting close to releasing it for testing (see more on that below). What started out as a simple (no pun intended) update turned out to be a fairly massive one—in addition to moving preferences into the database (and also creating a preferences page in the admin section), fixing issues for Window users, and simplifying the post form, I've also put a basic theme system in place, based on the theme_generator Matt McCray wrote and released.

Don't get nervous—it's not a theme system in the sense that you need to learn a new language or any of that. Everything is exactly how it was, it's just easier to modify your site because all the layout/views/javascript/stylesheets/images for your site are in one place.

The good news is that this means future upgrades will be easy to manage—you'll simply overwrite all of your SimpleLog files and then copy your "theme" back into the themes folder.

The bad news is that upgrading from 1.0 to 1.1 is going to be a pain for some people who have customized views and such. Not in the sense that I've switched to a template system, but more in the sense that the move of the configuration to the database required that I change a lot of the references to configuration in the views. Also, I've changed nearly every other file of the package with this change.

So it might be a bit of a pain.

But it will be worth it—this version of SimpleLog will effectively future-proof adding preference features (right now, if I add a preference, you'll have to add it to your customized site.rb file by hand when upgrading—yuck!), and make it easy to upgrade without having to recreate your views. Plus, down the road, you could share your SimpleLog templates as well.

And hell, this is only 1.1. There are plenty of other little things coming after this release, but the pain is necessary to make the system better.

I'm going to be in need of some testers again for 1.1. I'd love it if you only contact me if you're sincerely interested in testing SimpleLog—you'll need to at least install it and let me know how it goes. Interested individuals should send an email to garrett at maniacalrage.net with the subject "Test new SimpleLog."

Update: Have enough testers now, thanks!

I've been receiving lots of great feedback about SimpleLog, and I've been working on the next version a little here and there. Time has been tight since I got back from vacation, but I should be finished with a new version in a few weeks.

Some things planned for the next version:

• Database-agnostic
• Preferences (now stored in config/site.rb) will be in the database and managed in the admin tool
• Little bug fixes (mostly for Windows users)
• Tweaks to the post admin tool to make it even simpler

Keep your feedback coming, and be sure to let me know if you're using SimpleLog on your site. I'm compiling a list of active sites and will link to them from the website soon.