EntBlog
Code, 3D, Games, Linux and much more...

Blog Refinements

I have just spent the weekend upgrading my network infrastructure and finalizing some changes in the blog. Having learned a lot from reading other blogs and expecting this to be helpful for people visiting this site this is the list of the main changes.

• Upgrading to Wordpress 2.3: This have been a surprisingly smooth upgrade. I only had minor problems with UTF-8 conversion (I had to disable the line define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8') from the configuration file). It seems that with this new Wordpress version, categories are going to be deprecated in favor of Tag Clouds. I have yet to convert my post database to tags
• Feed Icons: I am using now what is supposed to be the standard for RSS icons
• Email subscription: Thanks to FeedBurner now you can subscribe to this blog via email. If you are not using a Feed Reader, please use this method instead of bookmarking
• W3C Validation: Now, the XHTML and CSS of this blog are fully validated by the W3C tests. I use a simple text editor to modify the HTML and CSS, so there were lots of errors. After a lot of minor changes (like eliminating warnings in C++), the blog passes all the tests becoming a more standard blog and, supposedly, more friendly to bots navigating through my rumblings
• Amazon book links: I do not like putting ad in my blog (and you probably won’t ever see any), but now book links pass though my Amazon account (I receive a small percentage if you buy using that link). It is a non-intrusive modification so I expect you don’t care about it
• Wordpress plugins updated: I have updated and added new Wordpress plugins. This is the list of plugins I am using:
  • Askimet to combat the spam. 95% of the comments I receive are spam
  • All in One SEO Pack. Meta information, that invisible information that only bots can read, is important. This plugin gives you control over the generated metadata
  • Counterize for tracking internal visitor stats
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith to get feed usage stats. FeedBurner have been bought by Google and now all the pro services are free
  • Subscribe To Comments. This is a very interesting plugin that is increasing the number of comments in the blog. It allows email subscription to posts where you contribute
  • Ultimate Google Analytics to collect info for the Google Service Analytics
  • WP-PostViews for getting visit stats for each post
  • WP-UserOnline. An online users counter

Comments are welcome, thanks for reading.

Joel on Software

Joel on Software
Author: Joel Spolsky
Pages: 362
Published: 2004

What new can be said about Joel Spolsky? His blog, Joel on Software, is in the top 100 of the most visited blogs and it is probably the most visited blog about software. This book, with the same name as the blog, is a compilation of the best articles published in the past in that website. The book is organized in three chapters: the first part is about good practices to improve your abilities to make software, the second part, about managing programmers and a third part dedicated to the software development business.

A little bit of reading through this book and you instantly discover why Joel writings are so popular. Joel is incredibly incisive in his opinions, bringing lot of subjective opinion based in his past experience (mostly, experiences when he worked in the Excel Team at Microsoft). That makes Joel’s articles very useful and with a vision hard to find in other sites. Do not expect to find here nothing on theoretical subjects. Topics like Architecture Astronauts or the one about the necessity of Technical Managers in the world of software engineering are good examples of what you will find in the book.

Joel is probably not right in all his statements. For example, when he talks about the two software cultures: Windows and Linux. He writes, Windows Software is for non-programmers, while Linux Software is for programmers. To me, this is absolutely wrong. Linux is a better stratified culture with two clearly separated layers: functionality and user interface. Most of the time, in Windows both layers are in a inseparable mixed state. In Linux, it is very usual to have a clear separation between server and client with GUI only in the client part. He writes, too, about how the Mozilla project committed its fatal error: starting from scratch. Time is starting to show that this was a good decision, Firefox is starting to threaten to that monolithic monster that IE has become.

In conclusion, and incredibly fresh read that I earnestly recommend. I am wishing to read his other book about user interface: User Interface Design for Programmers.

Rating: 9 / 10