Blog changes

I've been working out some legacy code from the Subtext days, trying to remove stuff that was cluttering up the code. I also made my feed standardized RSS 2.0 instead of the bastardized approach I had originally taken. If you're using an RSS reader, the feed location is http://blog.robballen.com/feed.rss and no longer http://blog.robballen.com/Rss.aspx. Please update your bookmarks appropriately. If you're having any issues, please let me know.

posted @ 2/9/2010 8:56:54 AM | Feedback (1)

To do list

My home grown blogging platform, Ansible, has been churning along just fine. Now that I have a decent job where I'm coding a lot more, I've not really had the need to do extra curricular activities at home, and Ansible has take a bit of a back burner. Alas, there are still several things I really need to do. First, I need to complete the transition to LINQ as well as using the Entity Framework. I'm partially there, but the code isn't in a decent state right now. When I switched servers, I once...

posted @ 12/29/2009 4:08:28 PM | Feedback (6)

Wonkiness

Yes, I know the blog is having issues. I'm migrating to a temporary, virtual server so I can install a new one. Probably do this all night long. Bear with me. Update - Servers have been moved, databases restored, and it looks like we're back in business.

posted @ 11/18/2009 6:41:29 PM | Feedback (2)

Search and ye shall receive

Finally, after lots of bitching by you people, I've implemented search. It's not Google quality, but it should suffice for now. If you have any problems with it or suggestions, I'm all ears.

posted @ 9/27/2009 11:17:08 AM | Feedback (3)

Hot topics

Well… Hot categories, at least. Updated Ansible to make the categories for each post clickable. Because I could.

posted @ 9/26/2009 7:29:48 PM | Feedback (2)

The Great Database Shuffle of 2009 is over

Uninstalled & reinstalled locally on my desktop, realized I was missing a step, did it again. Moved the databases local. Pointed the web server to use the desktop databases. Uninstalled from server. Reinstalled using the correct settings (minus naming the $#&@* thing correctly, but hell…). Restored the databases to the server and pointed the websites to use that. Everything seems copasetic. I now have full text indexing available and will be implementing basic search hopefully within...

posted @ 9/22/2009 9:13:53 AM | Feedback (0)

Comments left to myself

So, in the Ansible code, I have TODO: comments. Prefixing a comment in C# with //TODO: automatically puts it in your task list. Very handy when you know you're doing something naughty but don't want to go make a task out of it. However, it helps to occasionally check the comments section to remember to do things. I mean I just saw some comments about things I shouldn't have done and I think "I wrote that? Why?"

posted @ 9/18/2009 9:24:04 PM | Feedback (1)

Zombie no more

Got SQL Server 2008 Express up and running. Had to go in and putz with the registry to get Windows to realize "Oh… you really DON'T have SQL Server Express 2005 installed!". Once the registry was cleared, I was able to reinstall 2008 with no problems. The backups I made immediately before hand imported just fine. Still trying to learn how to implement full text indexing so I can start on a search system. I also installed express on my desktop, so now I can not only develop without...

posted @ 9/17/2009 11:14:57 PM | Feedback (5)

*Ping*

So, I'm working on implementing pingbacks in Ansible. So far, this is the trickiest little part of the blog engine so far. First, I have to send pingbacks. Each time I create a new post, I have to parse all the code for links, cue them up, then try to ping each one. This means following the link, scraping all the HTML, and looking for the pingback URL. This can be in a <LINK> tag or included in the header. I'm stuck right now as to how to handle post updates. I tend to fudge things up...

posted @ 8/16/2009 9:50:38 AM | Feedback (0)

Yeah, I broke it. So what?

Odd. Tested something. Worked on the local box. Pushed it into production and Ansible takes a dirt nap. Turns out, you can't cast a NULL into a boolean. Even if it works for some odd reason on your local box. Just updated the blogroll. Better sorting, and I can indicate who I've actually met. Now it's lunch time.

posted @ 7/2/2009 11:54:01 AM | Feedback (4)

Watch what you say

By popular request, comment preview has been implemented. Take it for a test spin and let me know if you have any issues. It's all AJAX-ified to try to make sure the comment is as close to what would be posted as possible, so there could be issues with certain browsers. I admit 'testing' has been "push debug, write a comment, aaaaaaand seems to work for me". If you have bugs, don't forget to let me know your browser / OS etc. Thanks, Management

posted @ 6/17/2009 10:23:58 AM | Feedback (11)

New, magic feature

Dunno why I thought this was an important thing to do, but to your right, there is a button that says Random Post. Guess what happens when you click it?

posted @ 6/5/2009 8:14:25 PM | Feedback (5)

Test for echo – New Feature!

Thanks to everyone who commented on subscriptions. I spent the past few hours working on the system, and now you can subscribe to a particular post and get notifications when comments are added. Still need to write the code to allow for notifications of updates, but it's almost time for bed. So, please do me a favor. Subscribe to this post and let me know if you get emails regarding updates. Let me know if it shows up in your spam folders (gmail is notorious for blocking stuff). Feel free to...

posted @ 5/29/2009 9:40:36 PM | Feedback (24)

Pervert feedback loop

My Recent Searches gadget on the side bar was having a negative affect, I think. When perverts would do some sort of search that, due to my nature of using 'loaded terms', would land on a totally unrelated post, my system would link that post with those search terms. The page would be crawled, and I think Google was starting to rank those results higher than necessary. It's like I was Google-bombing myself. I noticed today that there were some pretty illegal searches going on for underage...

posted @ 5/29/2009 3:46:24 PM | Feedback (4)

Wouldn't you like to know

So, the other day I was carping about Haloscan's horrific email notification system and remembered that email notification was something that was lacking from Ansible and that 6 or 7 minutes of intense work would remedy that situation. Before I put my code into place, I wanted to ask you, my loyal and totally awesome readers, your opinions on my plans. Each email will have the same formatted subject line to facilitate organization [Sharp as a Marble] New comment on Title of Post Now, while...

posted @ 5/27/2009 1:40:19 PM | Feedback (12)

A note on that little email field there

Thanks for leaving a comment. If you'd like me to be able to respond directly back to you, leave a real email in the field marked 'email'. The only place that data goes is in the email notification I receive letting me know you commented. If you don't want me to be able to respond, don't fill anything out at all. Putting crap in the middle of the address does nothing to stop spam bots since they don't see 'em anyway. Just an FYI

posted @ 5/4/2009 3:51:42 PM | Feedback (8)

New Ansible thingamabob

One of the more interesting parts of my day is to look at all the search terms that people use to find me. Sometimes they're scary. Sometimes they're just weird. Either way, you can see the last 5 on the right as well as the posts they link to. It's things like that that happen when I'm bored.

posted @ 4/27/2009 1:22:54 PM | Feedback (2)

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