It figures that right after putting up my RubyConf talk the server I host terralien.com on would bounce, and I would find out that the cron job I set up to re-spawn the site didn’t quite work. Oh, and that all this would occur whilst I was out all day at meetings. And on top of this, I would attempt to show a client our portfolio page in the midst of a sales meeting and get a 500 error. Oh Murphy, how I love thee, let me count the ways…
Moral of the story? Test your cron jobs, especially the ones that only happen at system boot. Only an idiot wouldn’t (d’oh!).
I saw a “Colophon” section on a site the other day, where it was used to describe the technologies used in the site. Curious, I just looked up the term, and it has a fascinating history. It started out as “meta-data,” if you will, on clay tablets, and today is a publishing term for a book section delineating typefaces, ink, paper, and other production details. Colophons apparently show up most often in limited edition and private press printings – I suppose hard-core bibliophiles eat that sort of stuff up.
So here’s our colophon: we’re running terralien.com on Radiant CMS, which is of course by our own John Long. The Ship’s Log, which you’re reading now, is running on SimpleLog, which just so happens to use Matt McCray excellent theme_support plugin. Both apps are served as Lighttpd fastcgis running on TextDrive, and use MySQL databases.
So, how do I like the setup? I’m really loving SimpleLog – it lives up to its name, and seems to be developing very nicely. I’ve noticed that comment support is being added to trunk, so you can look forward to doing some heckling in the future (feel free to email me in the meantime – I’m always open for some heckling). Radiant is also a joy to work with, and of course it helps that I can IM John whenever I run in to something sticky (which is not very often). Lighty is great, and I can’t wait until 1.5 sees the light of day and I can use it in front of a pack of Mongrels.
I hope that satiates the technophiles – I’m one myself, and I’d love it if all sites had a colophon. Of course, the literal meaning of colophon is “finishing stroke,” so putting it in one of the first posts to the blog seems a bit backwards. However, if you consider the fact that a blog is usually viewed in reverse chronological order, this post will be at the end soon enough!
A quick tip: If you’re going to soft-launch a blog, don’t forget to turn off pings! Otherwise soft becomes hard, and you end up going to bed a bit later than you had originally planned.
First posts are always tricky to write. Why is that? Well, there’s the fact that they’ll form a lot of first impressions. On top of that, all you really want to do is tap the mike and say, “Testing, 1-2-3, testing. Is this thing on?” Finally, while there are grand plans for the new launch, it doesn’t really have a personality yet, and the initial scribbling calls for soul-searching.
Of course, the one thing not to do is write a meta-post. That would be bad.
Anyhow, welcome to The Ship’s Log. This where we’ll record our learnings as we wander the galaxy in search of new ideas, killer technology, and great people. Who are we? Well, that’s a great topic for a future post, isn’t it? Until then, check out our people page for a little more about us.
Thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoy The Ship’s Log!
