Planned Spontaneity

I have recently been inspired by Eric’s “blog-a-day” posting. While I don’t think I have the discipline (or the time) I figure I can at least to “blog-a-month.”

Blog Software
I have been running this website for a while now. I have come to a realization that an upgrade is needed. The real question is, how?

I like WordPress. I really do. I have made several custom blog software projects and at the end of the day I still like WordPress.

That said, I always find myself lacking. I’d love to post more information on here, but at the end of the day, I just can’t devote the time to it. Those that know me, know that I am always looking for a better piece of software. It is probably what drove me into the field. I’ve talked in the past about making a “bliki” (Blog + Wiki) but the idea always seems to come up short. I figured I would post about it and then come back in a month and see what I ended up doing.

The contenders are:

• WordPress
• Easy to use
• Low overhead
• iPhone app for mobile posting
• Good documentation
• Doesn’t capture ideas wells (without category explosion)
• Nice templates
• It is written in PHP…
• Ikiwiki
• Flat file
• Revision controlled
• Custom input / output formats
• I’ll have to work at making it look decent
• It does store ideas in a decent way
• OpenID support
• It is written in Perl…
• MoinMoin
• Same features as Ikiwiki but in Python
• No OpenID support
• Looks decent
• Write it myself
• Exactly what I want
• Poorly documented
• Requires me to not be lazy
• Bugs

Synchronization
While I am on the topic, I’ve read a few different articles about how people use technology. Three really struck a chord with me, Tim Bray’s post on how he uses his Mac, Joey Hess’s post on his revision-controlled home directory and Scott Scriven’s post on his Subversioned home directory.

MobileMe
I was using a Subversion controlled home up until July when I started my trial of MobileMe’s iDisk. While the rest of MobileMe has been ok, iDisk has been a resounding failure and it actually managed to erase some of my documents. In an interesting twist of fate, Apple’s Time Machine completely ignored backing up my iDisk.

Now I am thinking about switching back. The problem is that the main reasons I left Subversion are still there:

• No GUI visualization (ala TortoiseSVN)
• No offline commits
• No “branch” support (school mode, work mode, personal mode, and combinations thereof)

Git seems to do everything I want, but the problem is that it reeks of being a fad. I’m interested in putting my source code in something I can use and share with others for a long time. Subversion is easy to use and share. Beyond that most of my complaints are already well documented.
Where you come in…

I beesech you, all three of my readers, please comment. I’d be curious to know what you think.

Very rarely do I get to blog about things of real importance. My constant struggle to find the right email system, programing tricks, and occasional operating system things occupy the majority of my writings.

This post has to do with a video that has been running around the internet the past few days. For those not deeply entrenched in computer science circles, you might not be aware of it. The video is the last lecture given by Dr. Randy Pausch, a 45 year old Computer Science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Pausch is a pioneer in Human-Computer Interface (a field that includes virtual reality). Unfortunately Dr. Pausch has terminal pancreatic cancer, a disease he has been fighting for the past 2 years. He wanted to give one last lecture as his farewell to CMU (and the entire Computer Science community).

The video is a bit long (just under two hours) and it requires Flip4Mac to watch on Apple computers. I sincerely believe that it is worth the time.

Links :

• CMU Last Lecture Webpage
• Google Video Mirror
• Dr. Randy Pausch’s webpage