wonkablog

I migrated the packages website to a new server this weekend, and so far I'm really glad with the setup. I originally planned on having the whole thing setup in a short time, but I went with a different web server setup this time around. Instead of using lighttpd for the server, I went back to apache, but this time with mod_fastcgi to run PHP. From what I've read, PHP doesn't like threading too much, so running at as CGI instead should avoid any possible headaches. We'll see. So far, the site is far more responsive than everything else I've tried, so I'm happy.

I feel bad about how things have gone so terrible since the initial launch of the site. I really was not ready for the massive load, and my interim solutions were just slow and clunky. Hopefully things should be much happier now.

There's still a lot of silly bugs in the code that I need to fix. I just found another one this morning where the caching is breaking if you change your architecture selection around. Oy. I'd like to get to them, but I've been pretty swamped for time lately, between starting a new job this month and dividing my remaining time doing consulting work for two other companies.

Having a break from it though has been kind of good. I've already thought of a few optimizations that I can throw in there that are kind of like, "well, duh" type stuff I can't believe I didn't think of. For example, one way that I check to see if an ebuild is new is to see if the file mtime has changed. I don't know why it never occurred to me to just read the Manifest file and see if any of the hash sums have changed. That'd save me a lot of time.

I've been poked a few times about getting the code in a live repo somewhere, too. I guess that's coming soon, assuming I can get around to it. Personally, I don't like the idea of doing it when I *know* my code is in some ugly stages, but whatever. I need to learn how to setup a git repo anyway.

Oh yes, that reminds me. I also moved all the Planet Larry stuff onto the same server. Everytime I poke at the site, all I can think about is how much of an overhaul the whole thing needs. I'm totally embarrassed that I haven't even switched over to using Gravatar yet.

My goal is to ditch the planet software and write my own software to pull in the feeds, drop them in a database, and have the whole thing searchable. Then build a user admin section as well so users can manage their feeds themselves, and stop waiting on me. I'm planning on making that my next project, once Znurt gets to a better stage of stability.

Right now, though, I just did some minor tweaks. I got rid of the subdomains, and all the other projects on the site that I let atrophy, so planet is just available now at http://larrythecow.org/

No es completo, porque no tengo las traducciones por las categorias, pero basta para anunciarlo a lo menos: aruajo me ayudo (o sea, el hizo todo) y traducimos znurt.org a un locale en castellano.

El sitio esta aqui: http://es.znurt.org/

Translation: I'm all out of cookies.  May I date your daughter?

Even though I'm not nearly finished with it, and I didn't get all the stuff in that I wanted, I decided earlier this week to do a feature freeze and push the site live as soon as I could, just to give myself a break.  So, without further ado, znurt.org is now live.

You may or may not know, but Znurt is the name of another Gentoo mascot of ours -- he's the little UFO / whatever flying around that you can see on Gentoo's homepage.

I'm not real sure what else to say about the site, other than it's been a lot of work, and I'm really proud of it.  If I had any idea of how many hours it'd take to put together, I never would have started on it, that's for sure.  I think it's safe to say I've put in at least 200 hours working on it in the past 2 months or so.  I think it's turned out really well, though.  It's a far better improvement over my old packages site which was thrown together quite hastily, and the code was pretty nasty.  This time around, everything is object-oriented which made it really go by quickly.

I've tried to put in some of the best features for launch as possible, but some just had to make the cut due to constraints.  The ones I really wanted was a page for new ebuilds, and a chance to have a feed of those, and customized by arch.  Same for new packages as well -- a view for each arch.  The new packages section almost got cut completely, though, because of some issues I ran into at the last minute, but fortunately that one made it.

I'll still be adding more stuff, but probably not at such a clipped pace as I have been for the past month.  You can track the planned features I already want to implement here.  If there's other ideas you have, let me know, and I'll see if I can get them in.

Which reminds me, I'd like to give a huge shout-out to all the beta-testers that helped out with the site development.  Every single person that got involved had a unique idea or perspective that I hadn't even considered, and it really helped clean things up quite a bit.  Thanks, guys, I owe you one.

I hope you all enjoy the new site.  Please contact me about any bugs you find -- hopefully I didn't miss any obvious glaring ones.  Also, if there are any XML wizards out there, I'd really appreciate some feedback on the Atom and RSS feeds, in case I missed something.  Not really a strong point of mine.

The thing I like the most about working on the site is it really revitalized my interest in Gentoo, and working on the project as a whole.  I had been losing interest in it for a while, but I realize now that that was partly fueled by my slip-shod attempts at user websites (planet included).  Taking a weak thing and making it strong, though, has really helped to push me in the opposite direction, though.  Not to say I'm going to make a career out of Gentoo development or anything, but it sure does help fuel my passion when you have some work you can be really proud of.

In fact, working on this has inspired me to do a rewrite of Planet Larry as well.  Writing the XML feeds wasn't nearly as difficult as I imagined, and though I don't understand them too well, it's definitely something I'd like to learn more about.  So, I'm going to ditch the planet software we are using and write my own, and finally give Planet Larry some features and love that it really needs.

Oh, also, there's a twitter feed that I use just for the website development, if you want to see what I'm working on, there.  Have fun.

The new Gentoo packages website is coming along quite nicely, and the old one was taken down (again).  The feedback from the testers so far has been invaluable, and I wanted to publicly thank them for their help.  The craziest part of it is that I've gotten so many good ideas and feature requests, that taking the site live is going to be pushed back a bit while I implement all the new changes.  I had originally hoped to have it online last weekend, but now, I have no idea!  I'm thinking it might take all this week just to get the new stuff in there.

The new design is in place, though, and it looks awesome, in my opinion.  I can't wait to show it off.   Right now, only the testers get to see it -- if you'd like to do some as well, just lemme know.  In the meantime, here's a little preview:

Now who is that little guy?

I've also got a Twitter feed set up now where I'm sending updates about the site progress, if you're interested in following.

I would cover a list of new features again, but this time I think it's embarassingly short since I've been just fixing bugs for the past few days.  I did get really basic RSS feeds added, but that's about it.

Here's some of the planned new features, though:

• display changelog with syntax highlighting
• display ebuild source inline
• show use flags, dependencies, reverse deps on ebuilds
• show open bugs on ebuilds (thanks to Mike for his help on this one)
• RSS feeds: new packages, version bumps
• Compact, verbose views
• Text-friendly design, for CLI browsers (elinks, etc.)

Like I said, no idea how long this stuff is gonna take, but it should make the site much more friendly and usable.  Yee-har.  Lemme know if there's something else you'd like to see, and I'll fit it in if I can, and it's reasonable.  Thanks, guys.

So, the word on the street is I'm jobless ... and that's true.  I got unexpectedly laid off last Friday along with a bunch of other people at work.  In looking for work now (systems admin and/or web development, here's my resume), I decided the best place to start was to get my portfolio back online so I can actually show companies that I'm capable of doing.  What that means is, the packages website!  Whee!

I have been working on this thing almost non-stop all week, because this site is by far the most complex one I have going for me.  Well, that's a personal project, at least.  I forgot how much work goes into this thing, as I've still got small laundry list of to do items.  But!  The good news is it should be ready and online really, really soon now.  Hopefully this weekend if I can squeeze more blood out of me.

I got to see the new design this morning, and I gotta say, I am absolutely floored by how amazing it is.  My brother-in-law was kind enough to do an original design for the rewrite, and I gotta say ... it's just spanky.  I love it.   He also redid the design for Planet Larry if you want an idea of his skill level.  Thanks, David!

Anyway, I'm not gonna open up the site just yet, but I do wanna start getting a list compiled of people who are interested in doing some beta testing for me.  Just send me an email if you'd like to help out.  It's not really a big deal if you wanna do it -- I just need you to poke around, use it like you normally would, but (and this is important) actually send me feedback about any bugs you find or suggestions you have.  Lemme know.