Category: Uncategorized

Building my own WordPress Theme Part 1: Tools and Setup

I’ve been switching between themes in the Background for quite some time now, but nothing really seems to satisfy my needs in respect of design and look and feel. So finally after having about 3 days of time on my Hand right now I decided to build my own theme from the ground up. There are 2 possible outcomes:

  1. I’m really happy with what I did and will use it from then on
  2. I will really learn to appreciate the work of other theme developers even more

So First of all I had to get a working environment setup. I did this on my Mac locally to get some quick testing going and also not to interfere with my Blog. Here is what I did:

  • Setup a local Worpress Installation using MAMP
  • Chose the Worpress Classic template for a start
  • Downloaded Espresso for CSS and PHP Editing
  • Got Cyberduck setup for later deployment

I already got some graphics build using Lineform with which I’m quite happy, and since they are Vector based scaling is not an Issue.

After all this Setup now it’s time to read some Documentation  

I’m going to keep posting ‘til this Theme is done or abandoned. Stay tuned.

Cryptr mentioned on the MacReview Cast

Thanks to Tim from Surfbits Cryptr has been mentioned on the MacReview Cast. Maybe some people will download and use it so I can get some feedback. I very happy that it was mentioned and now I actually feel kind of pushed to do some more developing on it, so be sure to sent your feature requests and comments. As a developer I have to say I really love how friendly the Mac Community is, and how welcome it makes me feel.
You can watch the Screencast on the Cryptr Log in small resolution or via this link in full resolution.

Use more crypto…

I simply don’t get it, there are like a 1001 simple ways to encrypt and decrypt files, which are really safe, and still nobody uses them. There are the times I get asked via EMail for passwords, or I here of really sensitive data getting out because, guess what I was laying there unencrypted on some network.

So maybe there are people who just don’t know what’s out there, so here is a quick roundup of what I use:

First of all there is Steel for storing my Passwords in a safe place, it’s simple light weight, and safe using the Blowfish cipher, which was among the finalist for the next NSA standart cipher. It’s just 9$, and of course there is always Keychain on the Mac, but I like to keep my Passwords (and more) in one easy to manage file, not bound to a build in app.

Second there is Truecrypt it’s great, it’s cross Platform (Win, Mac, Linux), and it works. It’s great for creating encrypted Images for syncing via the Internet, or to store all kinds of files. It’s been doing a great job for me since Version 4 and still is. Maybe a little over the top for sending just a quick file via EMail but great for your USB Stick or Web Space storage.

Third I just gotta promote my own Cryptr It’s for those times where you just need some fast way to encrypt a single file to send via EMail, or maybe some important Document on your Mac needs to be safe. It’s Drag&Drop Mac like and 100% safe using OpenSSL and AES 128Bit (for those who want to know ;) ).

So that’s it for me. Of course there is also S/MIME for EMail and such but thats a different story.

Blogo vs Ecto: Part 2

Blogo is missing one Important feature for me, maybe I just didn’t find it but not being able to edit the html with which a Image is Posted ist very annoying.

For me that makes the WordPress Plugin Lightbox, which shows Images in a Nice way, hard to use, and therefor Blogo not that useable for me either. In Ecto you can just edit those tags in the Preferences for each Blog.

So now its

Blogo 1 : 1 Ecto

Let’s see whats next.

Sugarsync, Dropbox, and others

I’ve been using Dropbox for quite some time now and been quite happy with it. What recently got kind of annoying to me that it is impossible to Sync folders besides the Dropbox folder, and also that, on another machine, I can’t select what to sync. Since I own a Netbook with only 8GB of Space (about 2GB left after OS and App install) it’s impossible to sync my Dropbox now, which kind of defeats the point of having it. So I was looking around and found a couple Products which seem to do kind of the same thing, but always a little different.

First there is ZumoDrive which looks great at first but sadly I also only Sync one “Folder” (actually it’s a Drive, but oh well… ), also I found the free 1GB plan to check it out to small, so I moved one. After all I seems to be a great product, it’s just not for my need.

Now I looked a Sugarsync, I’ve been intressted in it before, but back then they did not offer a free plan, so I decided not to try it. Recently they started offering a free 2GB Plan which I decided to try out, and it’s great. Sugarsync really meets my needs, you can specify Folders to Sync on every Machine, it’s even possible to do a quick edit from the Website by Downloading the file with a special Applet they offer which then syncs those changes back, great if your not at your own machine. I also works with my iPod Touch so I can at least view a lot of files on the go, great! I must say I really like Sugarsync, it works great an also offers Versioning for files (if you like) and a Webarchive which allows to upload file which don’t have to reside on any machines. Ok the Upload speed might sometimes be a little better, also the queue is not optimal in my opinion putting the largest file in the Back, but hey those are really minor issues and the Upload speed should be better on the paid plan also. The only reason I did not switch to the paid version yet it that I’m waiting for my Credit Card to show up.

Well that’s it for now. And check out Sugarsync

Trying out Flex – HgWatch

Since I recently noticed I can get the FlexBuilder for free as a Student, I just had to check it out. I really like Flash / ActionScript to build WebApps, it easy effective and feels more like “Real Programming” than building a Website. So to also build something usefull (at least for me) I build a little WebApp to check my Mercurial Repositories automatically so, if any of my Colleges pushes a Update I get notified quickly.

If somebody likes to check ist out you find the App under HgWatch.

Comments are welcome, I’m by now way an expert on Flex Development but it seems fun, maybe I port the App to Air someday.

Setup Mercurial over SSL with Apache

Since some of my SVN Repositories did not survive the last Update of the Database, and were really hard to recover, or some even needed to be recovered from older Backup, I decided to switch to Mercurial for all me Repository needs.

Looking around on the Web there a probably 100s of guides explaining the basics and setup, but actually None of them worked as a whole for me, so I decided to write down my experiences maybe they apply to somebody, and if not, at least it will be easier for me next time.

First of all thanks to the following Guides I got everything working:

Second I’m running on a Debian Lenny Server with all Updates until 5/5/2009, Mercurial is 1.0.1, Apache is Apache/2.2.9 (Debian).

Now a couple hints, make sure cgi is enabled

sudo a2enmod cgi
sudo a2enmod cgid

Now Setup a new Location for Mercurial like this one

ScriptAliasMatch ^/merc(.*) /MYREPOPATH/hgwebdir.cgi$1
   <Location /merc>
   Allow from all
   Options ExecCGI
   AuthType Digest
   AuthName “REPOSNAME”
   AuthDigestProvider file
   AuthUserFile PATHTOPASSWORDFILE
   Require valid-user
   </Location>

Now copy the file hgwebdir.cgi found in /usr/share/hg to the Repository Path and Setup a hgweb.config file in the same location to point to your repositories

[collections]
MYREPOPATH = MYREPOPATH

Now just the repositories need to be initilized in this Path

mkdir testrepo
cd testrepo && hg init

and the Password file has to be created

mkdir testrepo
htdigest -c PASSWORDFILE ‘REPOSNAME’ USERNAME

If you now add allow_push = USERNAME to the hgrc file for the repository you can push your changes to the newly initilized repository after cloning it.

Hope those hints will help, if not comments are welcome.

Windows 7 Release Candidate on Acer Aspire One A110

Since I bought my Acer Aspire One, I never was really sure what OS to put on it, I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Slackware, Windows XP but nothing seemed just right. Recently I downloaded Windows 7 RC and ran it in a VM on my Mac, and really liked it. Since it is supposed to run on Netbooks I gave it a spin today, and here are my thoughts:Build the Windows 7 Install USB Key using this Guide and it worked perfectly. All drivers work out of the Box, I got WLAN and Sound right from the first start, great improvement over the Beta, which was missing the WLAN drivers for the Acer. Since I’m running the SSD based Aspire one I was kind of worried that the 8GB might not be enough but there is actually about 700MB left after installing, and since I moved all my User Folders to an SD Card which is always plugged into my Aspire One thats actually not a problem at all.

One more nice thing, Areo works (after you turn it on) great! Actually the OS is snappier with Areo turned on than without.

So far I’m pretty happy going to explore the OS more soon, keep updating!

First Update using Sparkle

I just pushed my first update using Sparkle, it works like a charm. If you don’t know the Sparkle Framework, definitely check it out here . Integration in MacOSX is great, while from a developers point of view its great, too. I had everything needed Setup in just about 1 hour.

The only thing giving me headaches at first was that the downloader didn’t find my dmg file, and simply exited with

Sparkle Error (continued): file does not exists

The Problem was a % in the URL, after moving the files to a different folder, it worked great. I’m still going to file a bug but that should not keep you away from using Sparkle, its just the thing missing from OSX to handle Application updates.

EDIT: Reached Version 0.8.2, Sparkle works great while the Error mentioned was on my Part, sorry :)