Tag: blog

Still searching for a new long-term place for sharing my rants.

Here are some personal opinions on the alternatives.

The just say no collection
Self-hosted – A lot of engines to chose from, and quite a bit of work to set up, and a lot of work to keep safe, backed up, up to date. I’d like to publish, not run a publishing operation.
Ello – Been there, tried that, moved on.
Facebook – Can go f… themselves. Want to be betrayed and sold? Go ahead.
Friendica/Hubzilla – Didn’t click with me at all.
Diaspora/Dreamwidth – Had potential, but as platforms, gone stale. That said – Dreamwidth has a very interesting set of features, and new platforms should take a look and get some ideas.
Mastodon – We already have Twitter, which is ok for signalling, but not really a place for conversation.
Medium – Fenced in, and starting to look really corporate.
Minds – A natural home for the SEO / Get Rich Quick inclined. A gamification and monetizing hell / heaven – depending on your taste.
Reddit/Tumblr/Instagram/Snapchat/Pinterest – Well… hmm… no.

The most likely alternatives for self-publishing:

Blogger
Very quick and relatively uncomplicated to set up. A bit of spam removal may be needed, the rest is taken care of. It works, but it is starting to look really old, and new features are far apart, and their comments are currently linked to G+, which will die soon. Last, but not least: It is Google – who knows how long it be around.
Can import G+ posts via Friends+Me export tool. Supports Google Analytics.Can export content. Ads are optional.
Some stale content of mine: https://delphi.fosdal.com

WordPress.com
It comes at a price, but entry level is not too expensive. Tried and tested. Very, very feature rich and a bit of a learning curve. Unlike the self-hosted version, there is no upkeep chores to deal with. Can import G+ posts via Friends+Me export tool. Can export content. Supports Google Analytics. I did not expect to like the looks of WordPress.com as much as I do, but I am still just tinkering with it. Yes, it means placing your bets on a commercial operator, but at least this one is all about hosting your publications, and not about tracking you and selling your data. Ads are optional. You can follow other WP users.
Testing Blogger and G+ imports at
https://larsfosdal.home.blog

MeWe
It has a certain G+ like feel, but although there are many nice and even impressive features with MeWe – I really don’t like the lack of truly public posts. I wish that I could chose to see one stream with content from all my contacts, groups, and pages – instead of it being separated. Some freaking annoying navigation issues, such as returning to the top of the stream, instead of where you visited from. Resharing external content is pretty brilliant, though and the scraping done to do a brief / nice post is excellent. No Ads.
https://mewe.com/i/larsfosdal

Twitter
Soapbox place #1 Not really a place for dialog, as we are shouting at each other, rather than conversing. Ok for keeping an ear to the ground.
https://twitter.com/LarsFosdal

GoNevis.com
Has potential. WordPress-like in many respects, but very new and still work in progress. Supports Google Analytics. Partially open source, with intent to go fully open source? Created by the Savand brothers, who are Russian. No Ads.
https://larsfosdal.gonevis.com/

Openbook / Solid
Looks very interesting, but still a LOT of unknowns.

God dang it, Google, why did you do this to us!?

“The Trolls of Trollholmsund” Porsanger – Norway

“The Trolls of Trollholmsund” Porsanger – Norway

Are the names of the unusual dolomite stone formations that have given this place its name.

I took this photo just before sunset, at 01:39 in the morning! Gotta love the midnight sun up in the north! 🙂
From my photo essay: http://tiboine.com/2013/11/30/trollene-i-trollholmsund

An ancient Lappish legend tells the story of a group of trolls who wandered down from the moors of Finnmarksvidda. They were carrying a chest of gold and silver. When they came to Porsanger they wanted to enter the cliff and started to dig caves in it. But they couldn´t make the caves big enough and wandered further on.

The trolls came to a headland and had to cross the fjord in order to reach the other side. But by this time the sun was rising. They had to drop the chest they were carrying. And before they could go into hiding, the sun shone on them and they were turned to stone.

               

Blog++ / Google+ Delphi Circle

I just connected my Blogger ID to my Google+ account, and according to the update at the Blogger site, I’ll be getting access to the new G+ integration stuff as it is rolled out. Can’t wait to see G+ as the commenting system! I also tried out the new dynamic template, and you can see it live on the “Tools and Books” section, but that is not quite ready for prime time use yet. I like my gadgets and syntax highlighting… speaking of – I think I lost the booklist 🙁 *sigh*

BTW: I already have over 200 people in my Google+ Delphi circle. Look me up at plus.lars.fosdal.com and drop me a comment to be circled!

Source Code highlighting in Blogger

Oddly enough, Blogger don’t come with any tools to syntax highlight source code. A little web spelunking unearthed a nifty little java-script (syntaxhighlighter by Alex Gorbatchev) that support multiple languages (C++, C#, CSS, Delphi, JS, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, VB, XML, HTML). It is fairly easy to add it to your Blogger template, although you need a place to host the scripts and styles.

When the scripts are in the template, all you need to put in Blogger is:



program Demo;
begin
  // Say hi
  Writeln('Hello World');
end.


… and it shows up as:



program Demo;
begin
  // Say hi
  Writeln('Hello World');
end.

program begin end. // comments?

The purpose of this blog is to have a place to think aloud about my favorite tool – CodeGear’s Delphi – and my daily struggles with programming in general and Delphi in specific.

During my thinking aloud, I might (frequently?) digress into the more philosophical “if only” direction in the context of how Delphi works contra how I wish it would work. We all have our ideas about how things can be improved – although what one man see as a solution, another man might see as a problem.

Every and any comment is welcome, so please feel free to share your joys, insights, opinions or frustrations.

About Lars Fosdal

I did my first commercial work in Turbo Pascal 3.0 in the summer vacation of 1987.

After having used Compas Pascal and TP 2.0 and 3.0 as a student and hobbyist, I accepted the task of porting a Process control application for Timber Drying Kilns from USCD Pascal on a DEC Rainbow running CP/M-86 to TP 3.0 on a IBM PC running PC-DOS.

In the process, I had to learn how to control serial ports, needle printers and graphic cards. It was one hell of an education and I probably learned more about programming in those two months than in the other ten months at school that year…

I have been around the Turbo Pascal / Delphi community for a while, but usually more as a lurker than a contributor, unless I was doing what I do best… exposing my “ignorance”. In my book, nothing is so obvious that it cannot be questioned 🙂

I have always had the skill of asking stupid questions, and I am increasingly unafraid to use it!