Halogen Labs Weblog

According to this announcement, 2.1rc1 has been released. Congratulations everyone!

Congrats are also in order to Guido Casper who was put up for commit access.

Rumor has it Cocoon 2.1rc1 will be released tomorrow. Hooray! Another step closer in getting attention and support for Cocoon in the corporate world. Cocoon 2.1 has been very usable for a while, but I guess people “in charge” just don’t like to use alpha or beta software.

In other Cocoonish news (Hmm, I think I just invented a new word), congratulations are in order to Ugo Cei and Marc Portier for being put up for Cocoon committership.

I just noticed people hitting my site searching for “slow iTerm”, which takes them to my entry about iTerm which I wrote about quote a while ago.

I decided to check in on iTerm lately, and according to this comment on VersionTracker, they managed to fix the slowness with multiple tabs. Looks like I’ll be checking it out again. Tabbed terminals is fun fun fun.

Just a couple quick musings for the day. Yes, I know openWeather and the resulting weather RSS feeds are way behind schedule, and I apologize. I know everyone’s chomping at the bit to get their weather on. I’m approaching the end of the summer semester and I’ve been very busy with classes. I promise I won’t abandon the project.

Musing 1: JavaDocs are nice, but JavaDocs in a manpage format would be oohhh so much nicer.

Musing 2: Cocoon is the perfect platform to implement the EchoAtom API on. I’m waiting for someone to do this :)

That’s all, talk to everyone later.

I’m a firm believer that every programmer needs at least one non-computer-related hobby. It gives you something else to worry about when you’re not trying to get the latest version of Cocoon compiling.

I’ve recently taken up the glorious (and often expensive) hobby of model railroading. It all got sparked when I went to the Great American Train Show earlier this year with my Dad.

It wasn’t anything sudden, more of a slow, building urge to do something like this. It all culminated in me purchasing a nice N-Scale starter locomotive and some track. The track currently sits on my carpet. I don’t even own a transformer to power the darn thing, but I will soon.

I’m not sure what it is about the hobby that gets my attention. Perhaps it’s the idea of physically doing something creative and results in something a little more tangible than a running computer program.

I barely have the room for it, and I barely have the money for it. I probably won’t have massive amounts of either for another year until after I graduate school. But it’s a start, and it’s a great outlet for when I’m feeling frustrated by my studies and my work.

Today I was doing something I rarely do: reading comments on Slashdot. In particular, I was reading the comments about a JSP/Taglib book. Curiosity kicked in, and I clicked the comments link.

To my surprise, one of the highest-moderated posts was one entitled, “What about Cocoon?”

Indeed, what about Cocoon? Nobody seems to have the time to mess with it (Outside, of course, from the Cocoon community), so I will now answer the question.

Q: What about Cocoon?

A: Cocoon is a bitchin’, kick-ass XML web publishing system. It has a beautiful and elegant architecture, and is more powerful than it initially appears. It is complex, but it is worth every minute spent working with it. It may even set off some mindbombs. Everyone should use Cocoon, and someone should hire me to work with Cocoon full-time.

And that’s “what about Cocoon” … don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

I just spotted this article on XML.com about getting started with publishing data online with Cocoon. Good source of beginner info.

Well, it’s Thursday, and tomorrow is Independence Day here in the US, so I’ll be gone all weekend up at a cabin shooting off fireworks and sitting in a nice cold lake in my swimtrunks. Thusly, openWeather probably won’t go beta until sometime after I get back. Expect the beta service to open up next week.

Things left to do:

• Canadian & Euro Feeds
• Slightly revamp backend
• Tidy after openWxBot
• Convert to intermediate format after Tidy
• Correctly embed a timestamp using exslt’s date:date-time() func
• Finish FAQ, Legal Disclaimer
• Look into starting an LLC :)

Damn, that’s one ugly-ass bulleted list.