Springland has been already conquered, despite the fact that I totally forgot about this blog thing.
Things have been proceeding in my life like crazy. I don’t even know who I am anymore 
But I have written lots of programs in Spring and Maven. I have not yet, however, used Spring RC to develop rich client applications.
And oh, I am using “blogo” for posting this entry.
Posts Tagged ‘blog’
Springland Conquered
08
May
THE Blog Client for Mac?
21
Sep
The past few days have been a very critical time for my blogging experience. I have been trying different blog clients for Mac, and I was slowly, albeit surely, coming to the conclusion that there is no good blogging client for Mac. On my Windows 7 PC, I used to blog with Microsoft Windows Live Writer. It actually downloaded my WordPress blog theme and let me type as if I was writing on the blog itself. It could add annotations, had plugins to provide Wikipedia quick-links, and in short, anything I would have wanted from a blog client. So, when I started my search, the standard was set pretty high.
Here is a list of all the different applications I’ve tried on my Mac:
- Ecto: didn’t even come close to satisfying me. The WYSIWYG editor was buggy and annoying. And I really didn’t like the UI.
- Qumana: Didn’t support online drafting, had no way of inserting multi-media content, and didn’t provide a friendly user-interface.
- MacJournal: didn’t do me much good, as a blogging client. As a replacement for my note collector software (OneNote on Windows) it did great. But it’s lack of support for correct media uploading left me disappointed. Sure, I could configure FTP access for my website, but that would have required tweaking the user permission settings from the server side and I wasn’t going for that.
- Blogo: it was great. Except it didn’t allow me see or edit WordPress pages. Also I had some problems uploading. The UI was awesome. I particularly loved the Fullscreen view which allowed me to write without being distracted by everything else.
- MarsEdit: MarsEdit wasn’t that much better than Blogo; but it currently is my editor of choice. It allows me to do most of the things I used to do with Windows Live Writer and the UI isn’t bad. There are currently no uploading problems and the spellcheck works just fine. It also has a Preview option, much like Windows Live Writer.
Well, that’s it for now. I hope by reading this you can save some wear and tear – and some bucks of course 
.
Going Mobile
19
Jan
WordPress Mobile Edition is cool tiny utility that allows you to redirect your mobile visitors to a shiny, new interface which incorporates easy navigation and good looks in a simple UI.
As I’m personally using this plugin, I won’t hesitate to recommend it to anybody who wants their blogs to be compatible with mobile browsers. And remember, the issue here is not merely compatibility, but rather the ease-of-use.
Good luck to you all!
My Technorati Claim
25
Dec
Okay, that was fast. Technorati evaluated my blog and told me to put this unique “claim ID” in a new post, to show that this blog is indeed where I write: “2RQ4XA7A32AX”
Now, I’m gonna see what’s next after pushing the big, old, “Verify Claim Token” button.
Technorati Membership
25
Dec
Technorati is a place in which you can share your blog with the world and make the world be aware of what you write. I was reading the MSDN Blogs feed and stumbled upon this blog by Seth Eliot, which mentioned becoming a member, and I thought why shouldn’t I also do that?
So, I started a user and filled in a new claim, and I’m currently waiting for them to give me further instructions after an evaluation of my blog.
Changing the host
22
Nov
Yesterday I decided to change my host. So, I bought a tiny 512MB account. This one has a cPanel installed, and they allow me to have custom “php.ini” files[1]. Also, in this cPanel I have access to the PEAR mod-installer module.
But, alas, I forgot to backup my images along with my posts, so, right now, none of my previous posts has any images.
I might be able to get around it once I go to my work. My hope is that since I’d viewed my blog from there, I might be able to extract the images from my cache.
Anyway, I also still haven’t launched the projects’ sub-domain, so right now, I don’t have anything.
But all in all, I’m pretty happy with my new host, as my blog seems to load a lot faster from their servers.
Zoundry Raven: A Blog Client
13
Nov
Hi there.
This is my very first post from a stunning tiny – okay, not so tiny – tool named Zoundry Raven.
System Tray
One cool feature of this program is that it lets you minimize it to your system tray, and post to your blog directly from there.
Media Storage
Right now, I am trying its different features. It’s really cool and even allows you upload your post attachments to a multitude of different upload repositories – like Flickr. It also allows you to define your very own FTP server.
Spell Checking
Also, it has a native spell checker. You only have to select your desired language – if available – and allow it to download the dictionary.
Offline Content
It can manage your posts very well, and also builds a tag cloud based on your posts. While still in beta, it shows a promise of becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Rich Toolset
It also has a toolbar which makes it very much suitable for writing to WordPress weblogs.
Image Editing
It also allows you to seamlessly create thumbnails for any image you insert. A lightbox can be set to be automatically inserted into your posts for these images – however as I already have a lightbox plug-in installed for my blog, I have not put this feature into test.
Here is a preview of its automatic thumbnails:
XHTML Editor
In the XHTML tab at bottom of the screen, you find yourself face-to-face with a neat editor, which in addition to source code highlighting, features an HTML code completion toolbox.
What it lacks …
What it lacks right now is the possibility of writing an excerpt for your post. Also, sometimes it stills shows you that it is still in beta. For example, if your connection goes jerky while it is uploading a picture, it will not complaint, it only adds a messy URL to your images source attribute.
Also, when you send a task to the background, you won’t have it in sight any more, and to make sure it has finished without problems, you have to use the application’s main menu. In this regard, I would prefer something like what Eclipse does with it’s background tasks.
What’s more, as a tool designed for hardcore writers, it should put more use into the keyboard. I really don’t know why these UI engineers are so afraid of giving out a lot of shortcut keys.
Conclusion
Otherwise, I can say I am pretty excited to be posting to my blog like this. However, one thing I’m a little concerned about is the subtle way in which the homepage states the possibility of this utility becoming a shareware. On the "Software" section on Zoundry’s website you can read:
Raven (new and still free!)
It might be a misunderstanding on my part, but hey, I’m kind of paranoid about this stuff!
PS: After restarting the computer, something rather strange happened. Raven wouldn’t start and I had to reinstall it. Right now I’m not inclined to reboot again just to check if this is a real bug or not, but if I find it to happen again, I’ll report the incident here.