I’m getting ready for the public release of Bloo. This is now the main image on the wiki too.

I’m not a graphic artist, so a question to my three readers: what do you think?

OK, these notes are a bit late. But what the hay.

Here is a summary of the new features and other whatnot I built into the latest version of Bloo. Altogether there were 41 discrete changes made, all worked on in timeslices measured in minutes, or, as I like to put it: “in my copious free time”):

Major changes:

1. Lots and lots (and lots!) of internal reorganization, optimization, bug-fixing, etc.

2. Rewrote the Lists package. So much on a blog is composed of Lists – the quotes, blogroll, system settings, etc are all stored in Lists. My first implementation of Lists was too clever by half (that’s my way of saying it stunk), so I re-wrote that puppy!

3. Now the comment author’s name is a link to their url if they supplied one.

4. Now all the overlays can be loaded by files. Contain your excitement everyone! Heh – actually, I know no one cares but this is huge for the way Bloo works and was another step in my evolving understanding of how I want to do Overlays. One of the more notable features of the planned public domain release (if I can get it done in time!) will be the ability to pretty much change everything about the way your blog appears, on the fly, while still being able to get back to what you had before if you screw up.

5. The Menus in the administration part of the blog (the part you never see 🙂 are now displayed based on your security role.

6. Came up with the concept of Event handlers for a SnapOn. Strap on your Nerdvana helmet, everyone, because this one is huge! The point of it is to allow the developer to enhance SnapOns without the SnapOn’s knowledge, and without recoding it. Now you just attach events to it. For instance, the Gravatar enhancement is an onDisplay event attached to the CommentsDisplay SnapOn – whenever you display a comment it fires this event ot modify the comment display so that the author’s gravatar (if one exists) is shown. I actually turned this off last week (my Gravatar bugged me plus the way I formatted the comments looked like poo) but I may turn it back on if my new Gravatar is now available. Will check after I finish this post. These event handlers, by the way, can be turned on and off on the fly.

7. Now when a draft post is saved as public, the date of the post changes to the current date. This is done via an onSave event handler.

8.I implemented an easy way to do RI constraint checking. If you don’t know what this is, trust me, it’s cool.

9. Created the aforementioned Gravatar onDisplay event handler.

OK, this doesn’t look like much, I know – but there was a lot of great setup for the future done in this release. Some of these enhancements were major re-writes, but it was worth it. More is coming.

I’m currently doing a full code review, and gearing up for the next release. The public domain release is scheduled for February 28-March 2, so I’m getting stoked.

And then I’ll wait for people to start using and extending Bloo. And wait, and wait, and . . . well, we’ll see!

Watch me for the changes . . .

The release notes will have to wait until tomorrow.

My apologies to my three readers, who I know have been simply frantic to read the release notes. 🙂 It’s just been one of those days.

A great day, though – we met up with the GAP (Graduates and Professionals) class that we will be shepherding starting next week. It’s a great group!

Just a quick update: I haven’t been posting a lot on the development of Bloo but I have been busy on it, as time allows. Version 0.18 is almost done, and it represents a ton of enhancements and improvements to the internal workings of Bloo. I hope to release it soon.

The bigger plan: Sometime toward the end of February I hope to take Bloo public domain! This effort will include at least a modicum of documentation, an install program, and other necessities. I will also be starting up a developer’s blog, and asking for help from any object-oriented PHP devs out there who want to feel that cool Bloo vibe.

My ultimate goal? I dunno. I thought recently that if there’s ever a time when a dozen people I don’t know are happily blogging with Bloo I’ll feel like it’s arrived.

Good things are coming. Watch me for the changes . . .

Happy New Year, everyone!

In honor of the new year I’ve come up with yet another theme. It’s called “Bloo Burst” and if you haven’t already selected a theme this will show up as the default. If you aren’t seeing it, select it from the dropdown in the navbar.

Since I’m not loaded with tons of graphic-design creativity, you might notice that this theme is sorta familiar looking. Hey, I’m trying. hopefully when Bloo is public I’ll find someone more artistic to create some really dope themes for me 🙂

Regarding Bloo version 0.18 – it’s coming, and it’s got a lot of big changes in it. I’ve been enjoying working on it. We’re getting closer, my friends.

Happy 2006!

Watch me for the changes. . .

In the spirit of the season I’ve created another Christmas theme. It’s called “Christmas Star” and it is the default theme for the next few days.

If you already have selected a theme you won’t see the new one unless you select it from the “Select Theme” dropdown in the navbar.

Merry Christmas everyone. The King is born!

In the spirit of the season I’ve created a new theme called Bloo Christmas. It will be the default theme for the rest of this month. If your current theme isn’t a Christmas theme, it’s probably because you’ve chosen a theme already sometime in your long association with this blog :-). You can pick the Christmas theme if you like by selecting it from the “Select Theme” dropdown in the navbar.

One other minor change: I created a new SnapOn called PostDateCalendarPageDisplay. It is only active in the Christmas theme and is used to display the little “calendar page” date on the posts. This SnapOn inherits from the PostDateDisplay SnapOn that is part of the base set of SnapOns for Bloo. I shamelessly ripped this nice little date display idea from the excellent Pursuing Holiness blog.

Merry Christmas!

For those of you with an inner geek: I installed a Wiki for Out of the Bloo this weekend. You can get to the wiki here.

What’s a wiki? It’s a dynamic documentation space that will allow me to quickly and easily (in theory) document the Phoo and Bloo projects as they develop. This is a crucial step toward releasing Bloo into the public domain. So I’m getting closer.

Wizatch me for the chizanges [wiki-wiki-wiki]

Bloo version 0.17 is finally released! Well, “released” is a strong term as I still continue to stingily keep this code out of the public domain. I still have those last few bows to tie on the top before I’m ready to open the kimono (plus, I have a wiki to setup).

This one has a lot more internal/behind the scenes improvements than external improvements. Here is the list of what’s been done:

• Fixed the RSS feed so that it would translate those funky Word characters correctly
• Developed a Quotes package. This page has the Quote of the Day snapon (QOTD) enabled. There is also a Random Quote snapon I wrote – they both inherit from a common object and just vary the quote selection algorithm. I love quotes!
• Created an extension architecture. This is for snapon packages considered outside the base product. Right now the Quotes package and the Bible package (which gives you the verse of the day snapon in the navbar) are in the extensions area.



Me and my doppelganger De

feeling the wind in our hair

(note: not really)


• Did a lot of enhancing to the “Lists” package. An example of a List is the bloogroll, for instance, or the quotes. The Lists package gives a common set of snapons for maintaining lists. I added a lot of flexibility to the lists, allowing for dynamic overlays and snapons in the maintenance area. I know, that probably makes no sense. You’d have to see it – but let me just say that I’m definitely feeling the wind in my hair now.
• Multiple bloogroll categories: Now the bloogroll can be grouped into multiple categories. I’ve added an “LJ Friends” category where livejournal bloggers I know now find their home in the Bloogroll. If you ever want to gain some hope for the future, read those!
• Now all the blog settings are stored in a list, rather than in a configuration file. Again, this is behind the scenes, but it really makes maintenance a lot easier
• Finally, I rewrote the security module. Originally Bloo implemented a “levels-based” security ala WordPress or B2. But I’m not completely satisfied with that method. I wanted something more flexible, so I’m now using Role based security. Each user of the blog is assigned a role – and roles can contain privileges for other roles, etc. It’s a better security method, imo, and I’m glad I got that in now, rather than later. That’s one reason (excuse) this upgrade took so long

Well, there you have it. Bloo version 0.17 is now live. I look forward to getting started on the next incremental release.

Watch me for the changes . . .

Bloo version 0.17 is [almost] deployed. There are quite a few changes in this version and I’m having trouble with some of the security settings (comments aren’t working at the moment, for instance. D’oh!)

But for now I need to go watch Blake totally dominate in soccer (seriously, this kid can play. Ok, I’m his dad.) So I’ll be back later to do the final fixes to get this version solidified.

Watch me for the changes . . .

Update: Found the problem with comments. The new security worked a little bit too well.