Shifting Bits

Tonight I released/open-sourced ShiftingBits. This blog is still on WordPress, but I believe I am close to having the all the features I need/require to make the migration possible.

I pretty much stole a bunch from Brian Rosner’s oebfare code base so if any of it looks familiar, that’s where I copied a lot of this from. Thanks, Brian!

If you are wanting to move from a WordPress blog to your own Django-based site, you might be able to save some time with this blog engine. This is exactly the path I am taking.

I am using:

• mootools 1.2 — JavaScript library awesomeness
• blueprint — CSS framework
• wmd — Live markdown preview for comments
• prettify — Really cool syntax highlighter

Feature Summary:

• Basic blog post mode driven using generic date based views with redirects so that the WordPress url date format (numbered month versus the prettier and django default of short month name) get mapped properly so that none of your links break.
• WordPress to Django Migration Script
• Tagging via django-tagging
• Comments via the new django.contrib.comments and using the live markdown preview editor, wmd.
• Full RSS feeds (both latest feeds and by tag)

Left to To:

• Implement an XML-RPC interface that Mars Edit can communicate with.
• Add Google Analytics
• Clean up CSS so that the templates look better.
• Handle Trackbacks/Pingbacks

This is the code that I am planning to use shortly here at paltman.com, including the css/templates. I would love to hear feedback from the community on the code and/or approach taken.

I am previously stated my desire about rebuilding Shifting Bits into a Django-based blog, but it has been really slow going due to other time commitments.

Over the weekend, I started cutting out a fresh new template and a migration script to get my data export from WordPress into my Post model (borrowing heavily from Brian Rosner’s oebfare — why invent when you can steal).

Here is a preview of what is to come, hopefully sooner rather than later:

I was pretty pumped to get the invite from Trey Piepmeier tonight about trying to start a local (Nashville, TN) Django meetup/group.

If you are in the area, head on over and sign up!

Makes me a little nervous thinking about it…

I have started a new app over on github called django-aws. It’s pretty bare bones right now but wanted to announce it earlier rather than later as I am hoping to:

• Get some folks who might be interested to help me out.
• Get some eyeballs on it for recommendations for how to (or how to not) do certain things.

I would appreciate any feedback or help that I might be able to scrounge up! This app will have a strict dependency on boto which is a really cool project provides the de facto way for interacting with Amazon Web Services in the Python language.

I tweaked some of the slowly completing pyphanfare library and added a sample script that demonstrates how to use what is complete in the library to list all of the images/videos you have every uploaded to your account.

My plan with this functionality is to write a script based on this sample to backup all files to my S3 account and maybe upload them to flickr as well. It’s about 10GB worth of media, so I’ll need to run it in the cloud (EC2) somewhere.

I am not a huge fan of McCain as a politician, but you just can’t compare his character and integrity and courage with that of Obama:

I thought this was hilarious:

This video is a powerful example of one father’s love for his son as well as a picture of God’s love for us.

The race the father and son are participating in this video is one of the toughest and most grueling that exist — an Ironman Triathlon — 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer) swim, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride, and ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon.

The story of Dick and Roy Hoyt is inspirational to say the least. They have been racing various events, including the Boston Marathon, for almost three decades — nearly 1,000 marathons and triathlons over the course of 28 years.

It was recommended by doctors that Rick, who has had cerebral palsy since birth, be institutionalized. His parents refused and has since gone on to graduate public high school, earn a degree from Boston College, later helping Boston College develop a computer system, called “Eagle Eyes” that helps people like himself communicate through eye movements.

I and a host of other folks have been waiting anxiously for this merge for a while now. Excited to see it happen tonight.

Good job, Brian Rosner et al.