Archive for July, 2008

I just finished meeting with Jeremy Orem and Mike Morgan and we have a plan that will result in launching the new MDC on Thursday, August 14th.

This should give MindTouch time to fix and test the tag import problem, as well as for IT and webdev to finish tests.

I’m very excited that we’re getting so close!

So the rockslide has thrown a wrench into the works here. Dan Portillo is totally on it, and the buses toward Vancouver have already been rescheduled.

The down side is that instead of leaving the hotel at 7 AM Friday, now I’m leaving at 11 PM Thursday. Oof.

There’s a bug in Bugzilla for this.

Friday will be an extraordinarily long day.

Still, this summit has been very interesting and I’m getting a lot done here. That aside, though, I do look forward to seeing my daughter again.

I’m sitting in on the Thunderbird UX session at @moz08 right now, and I’m quite pleased by what they’re showing here. Sounds like the user experience is going to be vastly improved.

I’ve also noticed that my biggest gripe — that selecting text and choosing “Reply” still quoted the entire message instead of just the selection — appears to be fixed. Yay!

With a little help from the kind folks at MindTouch and our rockin’ dudes in IT, we got a couple of glitches fixed in our MindTouch Deki configuration. The correct editor is now being used, so it looks rather nicer than it did before.

In addition, we’ve enabled extension support while editing, which means, for example, you can select a code sample, then choose a transformation such as “syntax.javascript”, which will apply JavaScript syntax highlighting to a code sample.

That will be a huge win for us, especially since it adds line numbers which will make it easier to reference code lines from within the body of an article’s text.

Check out our test server and see what you think!

In related news, I’ve just finished doing my presentation covering the rationale behind our transition from MediaWiki to Deki, as well as a demo of the wiki and a discussion of features our users would like to have. I’ll share that information in this space as soon as I turn my notes into something legible.

Over the last few days, I’ve been experimenting more with iPhone programming. It’s an interesting experience. The tools are almost but not quite extremely elegant; there are a few kinks to work out yet.

However, I was able to toss together a simple UIWevView based browser in about 20 minutes, including back/forward, refresh, and stop buttons.

That’s pretty good.

Now I want to write a more complex app. I have one in mind and am reading up on the stuff I need to know to make it happen. As is usually the case when learning new coding technologies, there’s a tendency for my enthusiasm to write something “real” to outpace my skill level.

I’m sitting here at gate A30 in Atlanta’s airport, waiting for my flight to Vancouver. It’s already been a long day (or so it seems). I was on a trip last week, from which I got home at around 8 PM last night. Then I was up at 3:15 this morning to catch my flight out from Knoxville.

Ouch.

I expect to cower sleepily in my room mostly this afternoon, to try to get a nap in before the reception tonight.

I’m looking forward to the presentations. I just wish we’d been able to get the new MDC launched before my session demonstrating it. However, we at least have the test server up, so we’ll just use that.

Note to self: when finished upgrading WordPress, check to be sure you re-enable the spam filters. Oops.

I have tickets filed in Bugzilla to get a new skin update installed and to pull the latest Deki code from MindTouch.

This will fix a few bugs. Key among these is that the edit button will be visible if you’re not logged in, and the More options menu will be available as well, showing the items that are accessible if you’re not logged in. This will help make the site more usable for people that aren’t logged in, and will better advertise its wikiness.

I’m increasingly hopeful that we can roll out this month, at last.

Once these updates are installed, we’ll do a little testing, then it will be time to lock down the current MDC, pull the database, and send it along to MindTouch for a final conversion. Then we can install that database.

After installing the database on Deki, we’ll need to do a pass to clean up a few things; there are a handful of templates that will need some manual tweaking to make them work right. And I’m sure we’ll find conversion artifacts for a while. We’ll get them taken care of as fast as possible!

Got my iPhone on Friday morning, and it’s very nice. I’ve got a number of apps installed on it, and have weeded out a few I don’t care for already. The Scrabble and Texas Hold’em games are awesome, although Scrabble is a little bit crashy for me right now.

I’ve finally figured out why you see so many dweebs wandering around with their Bluetooth headsets on. It’s not that they want to look important… it’s that the hear is the safest place to store it when it’s not in use!

Sarah took only two days to decide she doesn’t care for her Pantech Duo, so it’s been returned, and an iPhone 3G (8GB) is on order for her. Hopefully we’ll have it by the end of the week.

Friday morning I plan to head over to the local AT&T store at around 6 AM to get in line to pick up an iPhone for me and a red Pantech Duo for Sarah. My instructions are to get her nothing if they don’t have that exact phone (red Pantech Duo) in stock.

I look forward to checking out the app store and seeing what kinds of stuff is available at launch time.

Once I have the iPhone, I have a number of auctions to start, including for my iPod touch. I’m debating whether or not it makes sense to upgrade it to iPhone OS 2.0 before I sell it, or to just leave it as-is.

I’ll bring my Treo along to the waiting in line so I have some communication availability. Might bring my laptop as well. We’ll see.