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   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=#1232745071>23 Jan 2009 Git Logos</a>
  16                         <li><a href=#1232742582>23 Jan 2009 How to deal with files that are not source code when merging</a>
  17                         <li><a href=#1232626236>22 Jan 2009 The UGFWIINI contest</a>
  18                         <li><a href=#1232611542>22 Jan 2009 Top-posting</a>
  19                         <li><a href=#1232607201>22 Jan 2009 Sverre's hat</a>
  20                         <li><a href=#1232604722>22 Jan 2009 Let there be images!</a>
  21                         <li><a href=#1232599693>22 Jan 2009 My blog has style</a>
  22                         <li><a href=#1232589695>22 Jan 2009 My new blog system... bloGit</a>
  23                         </ol></p>
  24                         </td></tr></table>
  25                         <br>
  26                         <div style="text-align:right;">
  27                         <a href="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=blog;f=blog.rss"
  28                            title="Subscribe to my RSS feed"
  29                            class="rss" rel="nofollow"
  30                            style="background-color:orange;text-decoration:none;color:white;font-family:sans-serif;">RSS</a>
  31                         </div>
  32                         <br>
  33                         <table width=400px bgcolor=#e0e0e0 border=1>
  34                         <tr><th>Links:</th></tr>
  35                         <tr><td>
  36                         <ul>
  37                         <li> <a href=http://git-scm.com/>Git's homepage</a>
  38                         <li> <a href=http://gitster.livejournal.com/>Junio's blog</a>
  39                         <li> <a href=http://www.spearce.org/>Shawn's blog</a> seems to be sitting
  40                               idle ever since he started working for Google...
  41                         <li> <a href=http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/>Linus' blog</a> does not
  42                               talk much about Git...
  43                         <li> Scott Chacon's <a href=http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/>Why Git is better
  44                              than X</a> site
  45                         <li> <a href=http://vilain.net/>The blog of mugwump</a>
  46                         <li> <a href=http://blogs.gnome.org/newren/>Elijah Newren</a> chose the
  47                               same path as Cogito, offering an alternative porcelain (an approach
  48                               that is doomed in my opinion)
  49                         <li> <a href=http://msysgit.googlecode.com/>The msysGit project</a>, a (mostly)
  50                               failed experiment to lure the many Windows developers out there to
  51                               contribute to Open Source for a change.
  52                         </ul>
  53                         </td></tr></table>
  54                         <br>
  55                         <table width=400px bgcolor=#e0e0e0 border=1>
  56                         <tr><th>Google Ads:</th></tr>
  57                         <tr><td align=center>
  58                         <script type="text/javascript"><!--
  59                         google_ad_client = "pub-5106407705643819";
  60                         /* 300x250, created 1/22/09 */
  61                         google_ad_slot = "6468207338";
  62                         google_ad_width = 300;
  63                         google_ad_height = 250;
  64                         //-->
  65                         </script>
  66                         <script type="text/javascript"
  67                         src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
  68                         </script>
  69                         </td></tr></table>
  70                         </div>
  71                         <h6>Friday, 23rd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Pig</h6>
  72                         <a name=1232745071>
  73                         <h2>Git Logos</h2>
  74
  75                         <p>
  76                         </p><p>
  77                         The other day, when I did not exactly have too much time on my hands, but
  78                         definitely too much motivation, I played around creating several logos:
  79                         </p><p>
  80                         <center>
  81                                 <table border=0>
  82                                         <tr>
  83                                                 <td align=center>
  84                                                         <embed type="image/svg+xml"
  85                                                                 src="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=git-ambigram.svg" width=317 />
  86                                                 </td>
  87                                         </tr>
  88                                         <tr>
  89                                                 <td align=center>
  90                                                         <a href=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=git-ambigram.svg>git-ambigram.svg</a>
  91                                                 </td>
  92                                         </tr>
  93                                 </table>
  94                         </center>
  95                         </p><p>
  96                         <center>
  97                                 <table border=0>
  98                                         <tr>
  99                                                 <td align=center>
 100                                                         <embed type="image/svg+xml"
 101                                                                 src="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=gitlogo.svg" width=165 />
 102                                                 </td>
 103                                         </tr>
 104                                         <tr>
 105                                                 <td align=center>
 106                                                         <a href=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=gitlogo.svg>gitlogo.svg</a>
 107                                                 </td>
 108                                         </tr>
 109                                 </table>
 110                         </center>
 111                         </p><p>
 112                         <center>
 113                                 <table border=0>
 114                                         <tr>
 115                                                 <td align=center>
 116                                                         <embed type="image/svg+xml"
 117                                                                 src="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=original-git-logo.svg" width=165 />
 118                                                 </td>
 119                                         </tr>
 120                                         <tr>
 121                                                 <td align=center>
 122                                                         <a href=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=original-git-logo.svg>original-git-logo.svg</a>
 123                                                 </td>
 124                                         </tr>
 125                                 </table>
 126                         </center>
 127                         </p><p>
 128                         <center>
 129                                 <table border=0>
 130                                         <tr>
 131                                                 <td align=center>
 132                                                         <embed type="image/svg+xml"
 133                                                                 src="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=git-gitk-logo.svg" width=325 />
 134                                                 </td>
 135                                         </tr>
 136                                         <tr>
 137                                                 <td align=center>
 138                                                         <a href=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=git-gitk-logo.svg>git-gitk-logo.svg</a>
 139                                                 </td>
 140                                         </tr>
 141                                 </table>
 142                         </center>
 143                         </p><p>
 144                         <center>
 145                                 <table border=0>
 146                                         <tr>
 147                                                 <td align=center>
 148                                                         <embed type="image/svg+xml"
 149                                                                 src="dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=git-visual-test.svg" width=325 />
 150                                                 </td>
 151                                         </tr>
 152                                         <tr>
 153                                                 <td align=center>
 154                                                         <a href=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=git-visual-test.svg>git-visual-test.svg</a>
 155                                                 </td>
 156                                         </tr>
 157                                 </table>
 158                         </center>
 159                         </p><p>
 160                         Maybe some of you have fun with it...
 161                         </p>
 162                         <h6>Friday, 23rd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Pig</h6>
 163                         <a name=1232742582>
 164                         <h2>How to deal with files that are not source code when merging</h2>
 165
 166                         <p>
 167                         </p><p>
 168                         Last week, one of the mentors of last year's <a href=http://code.google.com/soc>
 169                         Summer of Code</a> mentioned the idea that merge strategies are in dear need
 170                         for file types other than source code.
 171                         </p><p>
 172                         I think this idea is awesome, even if I cannot bring myself to believe that
 173                         any of the file types would make a good Summer of Code project: either they
 174                         are too complicated (think raster images such as .png or even .jpg), or they
 175                         are too straight-forward (think LaTeX, where all that is needed is a good
 176                         graphical user interface to inspect the three versions: <i>ours</i>, <i>baseline</i>
 177                         and <i>theirs</i>).
 178                         </p><p>
 179                         The LaTeX idea would be a good project for me to mentor, though: I have a
 180                         pretty clear idea how it should be done; I just lack the time (and motivation)
 181                         to do it myself.
 182                         </p><p>
 183                         As for OpenOffice text documents, vector graphics (such as .svg), or more
 184                         specific data such as spreadsheets, I think that all of these are really
 185                         difficult: the problem is not so much the implementation (i.e. the programming
 186                         part of it), but the design.
 187                         </p><p>
 188                         This design should involve much more than a Summer of Code project is about:
 189                         you would need to survey users' expectations, and at least the mentor -- if
 190                         not the student -- would need to be an expert in usability questions, which
 191                         is rather unlikely in the realm of Open Source.
 192                         </p><p>
 193                         Maybe this is the missing part in Open Source: we have many brilliant
 194                         programmers, but next to nobody with a good idea how to design intuitive
 195                         user interfaces.
 196                         </p><p>
 197                         That might be related to the fact that brilliant software engineers, as they
 198                         can be found in Open Source, are not exactly known for their social skills,
 199                         a human trait that seems to be a very important prerequisite for designing
 200                         intuitive user interfaces.
 201                         </p><p>
 202                         Well, I have <a href=http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/SoC2009Ideas#head-6188833471f79f277e162ef9fbe1592aa10b5f6c>
 203                         added</a> the proposal to Git's Summer of Code idea page on the Git Wiki; We will
 204                         see what comes out of it.
 205                         </p>
 206                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Goat</h6>
 207                         <a name=1232626236>
 208                         <h2>The UGFWIINI contest</h2>
 209
 210                         <p>
 211                         </p><p>
 212                         Just in case somebody finds this blog, here is a challenge.  Inspired by my
 213                         own little hack (this blog), I announce the "Using Git For What It Is Not
 214                         Intended" contest.
 215                         </p><p>
 216                         And it is especially cool, since the acronym sounds cool!  You might miss
 217                         this fact if you do no know that I pronounce the "F" like an "A" so that
 218                         it sounds cool.
 219                         </p><p>
 220                         This will be a running contest; whenever I have 10 valid applications, I
 221                         will announce a winner on the Git mailing list.
 222                         </p><p>
 223                         So, what accounts for a valid application?
 224                         </p><p>
 225                         <ul>
 226                         <li> You must use a Git program (the term is used loosely here, GitWeb is
 227                              considered a Git program, for example).
 228                         <li> The program must be intended for something completely different than
 229                              what you are using it for.  E.g. GitWeb -- which was intended to let
 230                              you browse through the history using your web browser -- is used
 231                              to serve a blog to the wide world.
 232                         <li> You must be able to prove that you actually used the Git program to
 233                              the purpose you claim, preferably in a live demonstration like this
 234                              one.
 235                         <li> Nobody and nothing must be harmed in the process (except your
 236                              laughing muscle, that's okay).
 237                         </ul>
 238                         </p><p>
 239                         So, how does such an abuse look like?
 240                         </p><p>
 241                         <ul>
 242                         <li> ... like this blog.
 243                         <li> Managing your mail (in maildir format) in a Git repository.
 244                         <li> Finding duplicate files by
 245                         <table
 246                                                         border=1 bgcolor=black>
 247                                                 <tr><td bgcolor=lightblue colspan=3>
 248                                                         &nbsp;
 249                                                 </td></tr>
 250                                                 <tr><td>
 251                                                         <table cellspacing=5 border=0
 252                                                                  style="color:white;">
 253                                                         <tr><td>
 254                                         <pre>
 255 $ git init
 256 $ git add .
 257 $ git ls-files --stage | sort -k2 | uniq -d -s7 -w40
 258                 </pre>
 259                                                         </td></tr>
 260                                                         </table>
 261                                                 </td></tr>
 262                                                 </table>
 263                         <li> Abusing the Git alias mechanism to call scripts defined directly in
 264                              the config.
 265                         </ul>
 266                         </p><p>
 267                         I am really looking forward to all of your submissions... *chuckles*
 268                         </p><p>
 269                         </p>
 270                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Snake</h6>
 271                         <a name=1232611542>
 272                         <h2>Top-posting</h2>
 273
 274                         <p>
 275                         </p><p>
 276                         Okay, last post for a while.  But this is something that is nagging me
 277                         tremendously.  I should probably just let go, but in my deepest inner self,
 278                         really close to my heart, I refuse to believe that any human beings could
 279                         be incapable of certain degrees of reason.
 280                         </p><p>
 281                         Take the example of top-posting.  Everybody who read a top-posted email
 282                         knows that you have to scroll down, possibly weeding through tons of
 283                         pages to find out what the heck the author of the last reply was replying
 284                         to.
 285                         </p><p>
 286                         Never mind that it would take the author of the reply just a couple of
 287                         seconds to remove all the irrelevant stuff -- as she already knows what
 288                         is the relevant part, saving minutes, in case of mailing lists hours,
 289                         easily, to the readers who otherwise would have to discern what is
 290                         irrelevant and what is relevant first.
 291                         </p><p>
 292                         It is a horrible time waste.  But of course not for the top-poster.
 293                         </p><p>
 294                         The problem is that I frequently run into such people, and when I write
 295                         them a polite mail, explaining to them that it is impolite to top-post,
 296                         and why, the answers I get sometimes make me check if the sky is still up
 297                         and the earth down.  Yesterday was an example of such a dubitable
 298                         pleasure.
 299                         </p><p>
 300                         Most funny are the ridiculous attempts by those persons at explaining why
 301                         top-posting is <i>so</i> much superior to anything else.
 302                         </p><p>
 303                         Which is good, because if they were not that funny, they would be pretty sad.
 304                         </p>
 305                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Dragon</h6>
 306                         <a name=1232607201>
 307                         <h2>Sverre's hat</h2>
 308
 309                         <p>
 310                         </p><p>
 311                         The fun part about a blog is that you can talk about less technical stuff.
 312                         For example, Sverre's hat.
 313                         </p><p>
 314                         Let me start a bit earlier, so that you get the context.
 315                         </p><p>
 316                         Last year, at the <a href=http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitTogether>GitTogether</a>,
 317                         we had an <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference>unconference style
 318                         conference</a>, which basically meant that it was our job to decide what
 319                         we want to talk about.
 320                         </p><p>
 321                         It turned out to be pretty hard, because there was so much we wanted to
 322                         discuss, and because we wanted to get to know each other, and we wanted to
 323                         do some hacking.
 324                         </p><p>
 325                         So to help us decide what subjects, and in which order we wanted to have
 326                         scheduled, Shawn opened a series on <a href=http://moderator.appspot.com/>
 327                         Google Moderator</a>, a nifty, yet simple application which allows a group
 328                         to agree quickly on an agenda.
 329                         </p><p>
 330                         It worked quite well; However, that little saboteur displayed his sense of
 331                         humor so overtly that some entertaining Gitter put the question "Should Sverre
 332                         wear a hat?" on the agenda.
 333                         </p><p>
 334                         Sure enough, the subject got voted up, and eventually, we got Sverre a hat:
 335                         </p><p>
 336                         <center><img src=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=sverre-hat.jpg></center>
 337                         </p><p>
 338                         By the way, another thing I like about this blog engine is that there are no
 339                         comments...  Nothing is more annoying than leaving a comment on a blog,
 340                         forgetting about it for a few months, and then finding somebody answered
 341                         ages ago.
 342                         </p><p>
 343                         Update: Sverre says it was dsymonds idea.
 344                         </p>
 345                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Dragon</h6>
 346                         <a name=1232604722>
 347                         <h2>Let there be images!</h2>
 348
 349                         <p>
 350                         </p><p>
 351                         One of the most important features of blogs is the ability to insert images.
 352                         So what would this blog be, if it could not present something that says
 353                         more than a thousand words?
 354                         </p><p>
 355                         So here it goes, my first picture in this blog, taken from my Google Tech
 356                         Talk in Mountain View:
 357                         </p><p>
 358                         <center><img src=dscho.git?a=blob_plain;hb=aaa9edafbe6ca5349ad7b36848fb294e5f4fc529;f=all-your-rebase.png></center>
 359                         </p><p>
 360                         Now this blog starts to look like a real blog...
 361                         </p>
 362                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Rabbit</h6>
 363                         <a name=1232599693>
 364                         <h2>My blog has style</h2>
 365
 366                         <p>
 367                         </p><p>
 368                         It is official.  The blog has a style sheet now.
 369                         </p><p>
 370                         The major problem was how to design the system such that it would work
 371                         both locally and on <a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a> via gitweb.
 372                         </p><p>
 373                         Basically, I realized that I'd need a dry run mode anyway, to prevent
 374                         all my failed attemp.. oops, I meant, to prevent an accidental push
 375                         when I am at an, ahem, intermediate state of the 'blog' branch.
 376                         </p><p>
 377                         Therefore, I could write a different file locally, which I can load
 378                         into my venerable Firefox.
 379                         </p><p>
 380                         The next plans with my new toy are to enable an easy way to support
 381                         showing images, and then maybe a table of contents.  External links
 382                         would be cool (<a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a> does not count, it is special-cased), too.
 383                         </p><p>
 384                         And later maybe a cut-off, with automatic generation of links to older
 385                         posts.  Hmm, for those, I'll have to change the URL to include the
 386                         current commit name, so that the images will be found, too...
 387                         </p><p>
 388                         Which in turn means that I'll have to parse the source for new
 389                         images first, so that they can be in the commit that index.html
 390                         will link to, <u>before</u> it gets committed.  Oh well, that cannot be
 391                         helped! &#x263a;
 392                         </p>
 393                         <h6>Thursday, 22nd of January, Anno Domini MMIX, at the hour of the Tiger</h6>
 394                         <a name=1232589695>
 395                         <h2>My new blog system... bloGit</h2>
 396
 397                         <p>
 398                         </p><p>
 399                         Nowadays, you got to have your blog.  Or better: your blogs.  Even Junio
 400                         blogs about Git.
 401                         </p><p>
 402                         So I felt a little left behind, having no blog to show off.  But then
 403                         I read about this fantastic new website on the mailing list, called
 404                         <i>git planet</i> which was supposed to be a place where you could have your
 405                         Git located blog.
 406                         </p><p>
 407                         Except that you could not have your blog <u>there</u>.  Instead, it is just an
 408                         aggregator site.
 409                         </p><p>
 410                         I was disappointed.
 411                         </p><p>
 412                         But then, I had this (in my humble opinion very cute) idea that I already used to "publish"
 413                         my slides from the talk "Contributing with Git (AKA All your rebase are
 414                         belong to us)": back then, I just created a new branch, committed the
 415                         file, and uploaded the result to <a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a>, to be downloaded via Gitweb.
 416                         </p><p>
 417                         So I asked Pasky via IRC, if he would have any objections if I abused
 418                         <a href=http://repo.or.cz>repo.or.cz</a> as a blog server.  He understood at once, and found it "sounds
 419                         like a pretty cool idea".
 420                         </p><p>
 421                         Of course, just writing plain HTML and committing that is <i>too easy</i>,
 422                         therefore I decided to write a shell script that would turn some sort
 423                         of simple text file into proper HTML, commit it, and upload the result.
 424                         </p><p>
 425                         Well, about two hours later, I finished the first version of the script
 426                         turning plain text with minimal markup into an HTML page, and it obviously
 427                         worked -- otherwise nobody would be able to read this &#x263a;
 428                         </p>
 429                 </div>
 430         </body>
 431 </html>