index.html

   1 <html>
   2         <head>
   3                 <title>Dscho's blog</title>
   4                 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
   5                         content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
   6         </head>
   7         <body style="width:800px;background-image:url(dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=5f002cab57a837125a8f901bcd1f3c1477bc3119;f=paper.jpg);background-repeat:repeat-y;background-attachment:scroll;padding:0px;">
   8                 <div style="width:610px;margin-left:120px;margin-top:50px;align:left;vertical-align:top;">
   9                         <h1>Dscho's blog</h1>
  10                         <div style="position:absolute;top:50px;left:810px;width=400px">
  11                         <table width=400px bgcolor=#e0e0e0 border=1>
  12                         <tr><th>Table of contents:</th></tr>
  13                         <tr><td>
  14                         <p><ol>
  15                         <li><a href=#1232626236>22 Jan 2009 The UGFWIINI contest</a>
  16                         <li><a href=#1232611542>22 Jan 2009 Top-posting</a>
  17                         <li><a href=#1232607201>22 Jan 2009 Sverre's hat</a>
  18                         <li><a href=#1232604722>22 Jan 2009 Let there be images!</a>
  19                         <li><a href=#1232599693>22 Jan 2009 My blog has style</a>
  20                         <li><a href=#1232589695>22 Jan 2009 My new blog system... bloGit</a>
  21                         </ol></p>
  22                         </td></tr></table>
  23                         <br>
  24                         <table width=400px bgcolor=#e0e0e0 border=1>
  25                         <tr><th>Links:</th></tr>
  26                         <tr><td>
  27                         <ul>
  28                         <li> <a href=http://git-scm.com/>Git's homepage</a>
  29                         <li> <a href=http://gitster.livejournal.com/>Junio's blog</a>
  30                         <li> <a href=http://www.spearce.org/>Shawn's blog</a> seems to be sitting
  31                               idle ever since he started working for Google...
  32                         <li> <a href=http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/>Linus' blog</a> does not
  33                               talk much about Git...
  34                         <li> Scott Chacon's <a href=http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/>Why Git is better
  35                              than X</a> site
  36                         <li> <a href=http://vilain.net/>The blog of mugwump</a>
  37                         <li> <a href=http://blogs.gnome.org/newren/>Elijah Newren</a> chose the
  38                               same path as Cogito, offering an alternative porcelain (an approach
  39                               that is doomed in my opinion)
  40                         <li> <a href=http://msysgit.googlecode.com/>The msysGit project</a>, a (mostly)
  41                               failed experiment to lure the many Windows developers out there to
  42                               contribute to Open Source for a change.
  43                         </ul>
  44                         </td></tr></table>
  45                         <br>
  46                         <table width=400px bgcolor=#e0e0e0 border=1>
  47                         <tr><td align=center>
  48                         <script type="text/javascript"><!--
  49                         google_ad_client = "pub-5106407705643819";
  50                         /* 300x250, created 1/22/09 */
  51                         google_ad_slot = "6468207338";
  52                         google_ad_width = 300;
  53                         google_ad_height = 250;
  54                         //-->
  55                         </script>
  56                         <script type="text/javascript"
  57                         src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
  58                         </script>
  59                         </td></tr></table>
  60                         <br>
  61                         <div style="text-align:right;">
  62                         <a href="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=blog;f=blog.rss"
  63                            title="Subscribe to my RSS feed"
  64                            class="rss" rel="nofollow"
  65                            style="background-color:orange;text-decoration:none;color:white;">RSS</a>
  66                         </div>
  67                         </div>
  68                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Goat</h6>
  69                         <a name=1232626236>
  70                         <h2>The UGFWIINI contest</h2>
  71
  72                         <p>
  73                         </p><p>
  74                         Just in case somebody finds this blog, here is a challenge.  Inspired by my
  75                         own little hack (this blog), I announce the "Using Git For What It Is Not
  76                         Intended" contest.
  77                         </p><p>
  78                         And it is especially cool, since the acronym sounds cool!  You might miss
  79                         this fact if you do no know that I pronounce the "F" like an "A" so that
  80                         it sounds cool.
  81                         </p><p>
  82                         This will be a running contest; whenever I have 10 valid applications, I
  83                         will announce a winner on the Git mailing list.
  84                         </p><p>
  85                         So, what accounts for a valid application?
  86                         </p><p>
  87                         <ul>
  88                         <li> You must use a Git program (the term is used loosely here, GitWeb is
  89                              considered a Git program, for example).
  90                         <li> The program must be intended for something completely different than
  91                              what you are using it for.  E.g. GitWeb -- which was intended to let
  92                              you browse through the history using your web browser -- is used
  93                              to serve a blog to the wide world.
  94                         <li> You must be able to prove that you actually used the Git program to
  95                              the purpose you claim, preferably in a live demonstration like this
  96                              one.
  97                         <li> Nobody and nothing must be harmed in the process (except your
  98                              laughing muscle, that's okay).
  99                         </ul>
 100                         </p><p>
 101                         So, how does such an abuse look like?
 102                         </p><p>
 103                         <ul>
 104                         <li> ... like this blog.
 105                         <li> Managing your mail (in maildir format) in a Git repository.
 106                         <li> Finding duplicate files by
 107                         <table
 108                                                         border=1 bgcolor=black>
 109                                                 <tr><td bgcolor=lightblue colspan=3>
 110                                                         &nbsp;
 111                                                 </td></tr>
 112                                                 <tr><td>
 113                                                         <table cellspacing=5 border=0
 114                                                                  style="color:white;">
 115                                                         <tr><td>
 116                                         <pre>
 117 $ git init
 118 $ git add .
 119 $ git ls-files --stage | sort -k2 | uniq -d -s7 -w40
 120                 </pre>
 121                                                         </td></tr>
 122                                                         </table>
 123                                                 </td></tr>
 124                                                 </table>
 125                         <li> Abusing the Git alias mechanism to call scripts defined directly in
 126                              the config.
 127                         </ul>
 128                         </p><p>
 129                         I am really looking forward to all of your submissions... *chuckles*
 130                         </p><p>
 131                         </p>
 132                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Snake</h6>
 133                         <a name=1232611542>
 134                         <h2>Top-posting</h2>
 135
 136                         <p>
 137                         </p><p>
 138                         Okay, last post for a while.  But this is something that is nagging me
 139                         tremendously.  I should probably just let go, but in my deepest inner self,
 140                         really close to my heart, I refuse to believe that any human beings could
 141                         be incapable of certain degrees of reason.
 142                         </p><p>
 143                         Take the example of top-posting.  Everybody who read a top-posted email
 144                         knows that you have to scroll down, possibly weeding through tons of
 145                         pages to find out what the heck the author of the last reply was replying
 146                         to.
 147                         </p><p>
 148                         Never mind that it would take the author of the reply just a couple of
 149                         seconds to remove all the irrelevant stuff -- as she already knows what
 150                         is the relevant part, saving minutes, in case of mailing lists hours,
 151                         easily, to the readers who otherwise would have to discern what is
 152                         irrelevant and what is relevant first.
 153                         </p><p>
 154                         It is a horrible time waste.  But of course not for the top-poster.
 155                         </p><p>
 156                         The problem is that I frequently run into such people, and when I write
 157                         them a polite mail, explaining to them that it is impolite to top-post,
 158                         and why, the answers I get sometimes make me check if the sky is still up
 159                         and the earth down.  Yesterday was an example of such a dubitable
 160                         pleasure.
 161                         </p><p>
 162                         Most funny are the ridiculous attempts by those persons at explaining why
 163                         top-posting is <i>so</i> much superior to anything else.
 164                         </p><p>
 165                         Which is good, because if they were not that funny, they would be pretty sad.
 166                         </p>
 167                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Dragon</h6>
 168                         <a name=1232607201>
 169                         <h2>Sverre's hat</h2>
 170
 171                         <p>
 172                         </p><p>
 173                         The fun part about a blog is that you can talk about less technical stuff.
 174                         For example, Sverre's hat.
 175                         </p><p>
 176                         Let me start a bit earlier, so that you get the context.
 177                         </p><p>
 178                         Last year, at the <a href=http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitTogether>GitTogether</a>,
 179                         we had an <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference>unconference style
 180                         conference</a>, which basically meant that it was our job to decide what
 181                         we want to talk about.
 182                         </p><p>
 183                         It turned out to be pretty hard, because there was so much we wanted to
 184                         discuss, and because we wanted to get to know each other, and we wanted to
 185                         do some hacking.
 186                         </p><p>
 187                         So to help us decide what subjects, and in which order we wanted to have
 188                         scheduled, Shawn opened a series on <a href=http://moderator.appspot.com/>
 189                         Google Moderator</a>, a nifty, yet simple application which allows a group
 190                         to agree quickly on an agenda.
 191                         </p><p>
 192                         It worked quite well; However, that little saboteur displayed his sense of
 193                         humor so overtly that some entertaining Gitter put the question "Should Sverre
 194                         wear a hat?" on the agenda.
 195                         </p><p>
 196                         Sure enough, the subject got voted up, and eventually, we got Sverre a hat:
 197                         </p><p>
 198                         <center><img src=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=5f002cab57a837125a8f901bcd1f3c1477bc3119;f=sverre-hat.jpg></center>
 199                         </p><p>
 200                         By the way, another thing I like about this blog engine is that there are no
 201                         comments...  Nothing is more annoying than leaving a comment on a blog,
 202                         forgetting about it for a few months, and then finding somebody answered
 203                         ages ago.
 204                         </p><p>
 205                         Update: Sverre says it was dsymonds idea.
 206                         </p>
 207                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Dragon</h6>
 208                         <a name=1232604722>
 209                         <h2>Let there be images!</h2>
 210
 211                         <p>
 212                         </p><p>
 213                         One of the most important features of blogs is the ability to insert images.
 214                         So what would this blog be, if it could not present something that says
 215                         more than a thousand words?
 216                         </p><p>
 217                         So here it goes, my first picture in this blog, taken from my Google Tech
 218                         Talk in Mountain View:
 219                         </p><p>
 220                         <center><img src=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=5f002cab57a837125a8f901bcd1f3c1477bc3119;f=all-your-rebase.png></center>
 221                         </p><p>
 222                         Now this blog starts to look like a real blog...
 223                         </p>
 224                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Rabbit</h6>
 225                         <a name=1232599693>
 226                         <h2>My blog has style</h2>
 227
 228                         <p>
 229                         </p><p>
 230                         It is official.  The blog has a style sheet now.
 231                         </p><p>
 232                         The major problem was how to design the system such that it would work
 233                         both locally and on <a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a> via gitweb.
 234                         </p><p>
 235                         Basically, I realized that I'd need a dry run mode anyway, to prevent
 236                         all my failed attemp.. oops, I meant, to prevent an accidental push
 237                         when I am at an, ahem, intermediate state of the 'blog' branch.
 238                         </p><p>
 239                         Therefore, I could write a different file locally, which I can load
 240                         into my venerable Firefox.
 241                         </p><p>
 242                         The next plans with my new toy are to enable an easy way to support
 243                         showing images, and then maybe a table of contents.  External links
 244                         would be cool (<a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a> does not count, it is special-cased), too.
 245                         </p><p>
 246                         And later maybe a cut-off, with automatic generation of links to older
 247                         posts.  Hmm, for those, I'll have to change the URL to include the
 248                         current commit name, so that the images will be found, too...
 249                         </p><p>
 250                         Which in turn means that I'll have to parse the source for new
 251                         images first, so that they can be in the commit that index.html
 252                         will link to, <u>before</u> it gets committed.  Oh well, that cannot be
 253                         helped! &#x263a;
 254                         </p>
 255                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Tiger</h6>
 256                         <a name=1232589695>
 257                         <h2>My new blog system... bloGit</h2>
 258
 259                         <p>
 260                         </p><p>
 261                         Nowadays, you got to have your blog.  Or better: your blogs.  Even Junio
 262                         blogs about Git.
 263                         </p><p>
 264                         So I felt a little left behind, having no blog to show off.  But then
 265                         I read about this fantastic new website on the mailing list, called
 266                         <i>git planet</i> which was supposed to be a place where you could have your
 267                         Git located blog.
 268                         </p><p>
 269                         Except that you could not have your blog <u>there</u>.  Instead, it is just an
 270                         aggregator site.
 271                         </p><p>
 272                         I was disappointed.
 273                         </p><p>
 274                         But then, I had this (in my humble opinion very cute) idea that I already used to "publish"
 275                         my slides from the talk "Contributing with Git (AKA All your rebase are
 276                         belong to us)": back then, I just created a new branch, committed the
 277                         file, and uploaded the result to <a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a>, to be downloaded via Gitweb.
 278                         </p><p>
 279                         So I asked Pasky via IRC, if he would have any objections if I abused
 280                         <a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a> as a blog server.  He understood at once, and found it "sounds
 281                         like a pretty cool idea".
 282                         </p><p>
 283                         Of course, just writing plain HTML and committing that is <i>too easy</i>,
 284                         therefore I decided to write a shell script that would turn some sort
 285                         of simple text file into proper HTML, commit it, and upload the result.
 286                         </p><p>
 287                         Well, about two hours later, I finished the first version of the script
 288                         turning plain text with minimal markup into an HTML page, and it obviously
 289                         worked -- otherwise nobody would be able to read this &#x263a;
 290                         </p>
 291                 </div>
 292         </body>
 293 </html>