The comprehensive Django blogging solution that Bruce Kroeze and gang have been working on, Banjo, has been released in Beta on Banjo’s website here. Even in the short time I’ve been watching Banjo’s progress I’ve seen it come a long way, and I don’t see it slowing down any time soon. Watch out, Wordpress.
Banjo playing on a server near you
August 5th, 2008 § 0
Goodbye Del.icio.us
August 3rd, 2008 § 0
Not sure when this happened because I don’t use Del.i—excuse me—Delicious anymore. That’s right. Yahoo! bought Del.icio.us a while back and has now released a new design and many new features but most notably: they took away the dots. The once witty del.icio.us domain utilizing a .us domain now redirects to Delicious.com.
The new design and features, however, are great. Good going Yahoo!! (two exclamation marks because Yahoo! already has one in it 
)
I’m a Django Developer…and I use Wordpress
August 3rd, 2008 § 8
Wordpress is powered by PHP. Lots of it. Generally Django/Python developers like myself have a vendetta against PHP for some reason. I suppose it’s because they find Python so much more efficient, and PHP is incredibly hard to get complex projects done with. Personally, I don’t have a problem with PHP. I don’t use it anymore (two years, cold turkey), but I’m not altogether against it either.
But since I’m a Django developer, why am I using Wordpress for my personal site? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Sure I could easily develop a blogging solution in Django. There are so many of them. Bruce Kroeze and gang are currently working on a pretty promising looking Django blogging all-in-one solution called Banjo. But still I have opted to use Wordpress simply for this reason: it’s developed. PHP usage aside, Wordpress is a great app that makes blogging extremely simple to do. I could spend—even in Django—several hours developing something of my own that compares to it, or I could just embrace it and use it to simplify my life.
I choose Wordpress.
The easy way to move an iTunes Library to a new computer
August 1st, 2008 § 0
This used to be a hard thing to accomplish. I would copy my entire iTunes folder, complete with XML Library files to another drive for backup, then put them back on the new computer careful to put them back in the same exact location they were before. This worked, but it was tedious. The last time I reloaded my MacBook I noticed a new feature in iTunes.
I’m not sure when it appeared, but in the File menu there is an option which says “Back Up to Disc…” When you click this you are presented with a dialog window:
Insert a blank disc (CD or DVD, I assume) and click “Back Up”. iTunes will then save everything to your disc(s)—including playlists, play counts, podcasts, and videos.
Restoring a Library
To restore a library, simply insert your iTunes backup disk while iTunes is running and iTunes takes care of the rest. Please note you will have to authorize the computer to play anything purchased from the iTunes Store.