OK Sushi
w.Blogger and FeedDemon sitting in a tree
So it looks as though I may have set up w.blogger and FeedDemon to work together. The theory being that I can send interesting links from FeedDemon to the blogging client, which will then send them to my blog using the awesome new Textpattern XML-RPC that was released the other day.
Why would I do this? Is it really that painful to log into the back end of my site and type posts there? No, that is really quite painless, but this should save me about 10 seconds per post, thus improving my productivity. Forget about the hour I have set configuring this thing :P
Maga Bo Mix
Maga Bo – has a new mix on Blentwell – this is one of the most exciting mixes I have heard in aaages. And I sell records for a living.
An incredible mix of grime, hip hop, wierd eastern stuff and broken up beats. Seamless.
The introduction at the start of the mix (it’s actually a Blentwell podcast) is great too.
They totally have an RSS Feed as well – and you can just grab their podcast. Awesome stuff.
It is rare to hear new and interesting stuff these days, so when I get to hear stuff like this I get a little bit nutty.
From his site:
Maga Bo is a DJ/producer working with an international collision of styles, sounds, location recordings from all continents and beats that have yet to be classified. A study in the digital contortions of hip hop, ragga, breakbeat and jungle drum ‘n’ bass, his sound is a divine (s)mashup of batucada, rai, capoeira, bhangra, and skewed electronic beats in a borderless conundrum of gritty street sounds, found and modified rhythms and melodies from Brazil, Morocco, Senegal, India and beyond. DJing and producing tracks with a portable laptop studio, he has worked and performed in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America.
First experiences with ModX
This week we trialled using ModX for a client website, and my first impression is definately hyped.
This CMS offers all the things that I have wanted out of other packages I have tried. We have been using Joomla for many sites recently, and I seem to spend a greater portion of my day head in hands as I run into limitations with the CMS model that Joomla uses.
The first problem with Joomla is user access control. By default, Joomla offers only “Guest”, “Registered” or “Administrator” (and some others that I won’t go into here). When it comes to a site with different requirements relating to user management, Joomla does not cut the mustard. There are small hacks that you can use (ie modifying the Joomla core source code) but when you then try to integrate another product (aMember in this case) things FALL APART.
ModX offers a much simpler and flexible use of users and groups, and at this early stage, I am very excited about it.
There is a great forum thread on the ModX website that has people listing the reasons they moved from Joomla to ModX – check this out
Templating the MODx CMS is very simple, and give a lot more flexibilty than using Joomla. Joomla has a lot of it’s formatting hard coded into the source, and unless you want to present your information in the way Joomla anticipates you do, it can be a dull chore to hack things into submission. MODx works simply and effectively. I’m sure I will rave on later about this.
Growing Coffee in Your Backyard
The guys at Ministry Grounds , Australian Coffee blog, have set about growing coffee in their backyard
I fully anticipate the plants to thrive and produce some fruit in 2-3 years. It will interesting to watch, and there’s a certain satisfaction to seeing the very beginning of the coffee journey in the plants, through to roasting, to the finished product in the cup.
Impulse Tracker Clone - Schism Tracker
Schism Tracker looks very interesting. The interface is 100% Impulse Tracker, the code is based on ModPlug so it is more ‘advanced’ than it’s older cousin.
You can download a precompiled version for windows here
Other versions have been precompiled here
See how they look the same?