November 4, 2002

Change is a constant …

I’ve been updating the template for the site so that you don’t have to scroll horizontally to read an entry. I hated that bit about the template but it took some reworking to get that the way I wanted it to. It still might not work properly for you and if so, let me know.

I was talking to Jen today and realized that she could post here too since Moveable Type does allow multiple users – so now it’s become *our* blog instead of just mine :p I don’t know how often she’ll be posting here but you can expect several posts a day from me – at least till the novelty wears off <vbg> After that, who knows? I still haven’t had time to look into the Moveable Type, Grey Matter, Blog et al client that I have been talking about but I know it’s possible now since I did have time to look into the MT documentation. So it’s just a matter of time as to when the client arrives …

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Posted by Fahim at 2:30 pm  |  7 Comments

Solipsistic – what the heck is that? :p

Now I meant to write about this today anyway but then Jen went and asked me about it in a comment – but then again, we are like that in that we think and say the same things a lot of the time … Anyway, before I get distracted, back to what I wanted to say about the name of the site … The name has to do with my weird crazy ideas about reality – I sometimes wonder if the world around me is an illusion that I’ve dremt up and I am the only real person and that’s where the name comes from since Solipsism is (according to the dictionary)

  1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.
  2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality.

Anyway, that explains the Solipsistic part (but we’ll probably go into my idea and theories about reality more some other time :p) and the Meanderings is just because I ramble on and on about so many things …

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Posted by Fahim at 9:00 am  |  8 Comments

I like Moveable Type for a lot of reasons – I like the spiffy interface, I like the standard template which looks elegant and is yet simple, I like the fact that it can be accessed from anywhere and I like the fact that multiple users can post to the same blog. But there are also many things that I don’t like about it – I don’t like the fact that you have only a few HTML code snippet buttons (bold, italic and URL if I recall correctly) and there is no way to assign custom snippets so that I can add my own frequently used HTML code to buttons instead of typing it out all the time; I hate the fact that there is no spell-check or thesaurus; I don’t like it that all my entries, site settings and templates are on a server and if the server goes down or is shut down, I lose all my entries and settings; I don’t like the fact that I can’t post the same journal to multiple sites and so the list goes on. I guess in choosing any software, you sometimes have to weigh the pros and the cons and decide what is really important to you to get a certain job done. But if you are a coder, you also have the option to write a new app of your own that has all the features you want or to code an enhancement for an existing app that will do what you want :p

Now, I already have a blogging application out there and I certainly don’t want to write or maintain a server-side blogging utility like Moveable Type or Grey Matter. But … what if it is possible to write an application which will connect to a Moveable Type, Grey Matter or Blogger blog and allow you to post entries and to retrieve existing entries to be stored offline? This will give you a system which will have quite a bit of the missing features that I talked about *and* give you the flexibility of posting from anywhere as long as you have web access. I have been giving this matter a lot of thought and I think the idea is worth exploring and so I intend to do some research to see if it is possible. I know it should be eminently possible with any blogging utility that supports the Blogger API but I am not even sure that Moveable Type or Grey Matter do support the Blogger API.

I have actually been thinking of a plug-in based blog management system which will allow a user to add a plug-in for any blogging utility of their choice and be able to connect to that particular blog and post their entries or to synchronize their entries. This way, you will always have a backup offline be able to recover fast from any disasters. Not only that, you will have a tool which allows you to compose your entries offline (with a lot of bells and whistles such as a spell-checker) and then go online only to post your entry. Of course, all of this is still in the realm of conceptualization since I don’t know if any of it is possible but let’s see where it goes …

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Posted by Fahim at 5:15 am  |  4 Comments