I've been having trouble with my Ode Counter add-in.

I have been using File::Find to gather filesystem information and make it available to Ode, and I learned two things.

1) The Ode add-in framework allows the passing of scalar variable data from add-in to non-post areas of the site, but it doesn't allow passing of arrays. This is easy enough to work around. You just convert the array to a scalar. There is more than one way to do this, but I chose this one:

$directory_list = join('', @directory_list_array);

2) Producing acceptable HTML out of the add-in is one thing, but for it to transfer properly to the Ode site, all the usual characters must be "escaped" on the server side:

Instead of:

<li><a href="/blog/programming/perl/">Programming > Perl</a></li>

It must be:

<li><a href=\"\/blog\/programming\/perl\/\">Programming > Perl<\/a><\/li>

Once I fix my regex, I'll be in business.

I've been working on and off on the next version of the Counter addin for Ode sites.

The last update added counts of photos in the blog's filesystem to the original counts of entries with breakouts for traditional blog entries and social updates (basically counting everything in the whole documents directory and the updates directory, then using a little math.

I used the File::Find CPAN module as the backbone of the addin.

The next thing I wanted to do, also using File::Find, was to crawl the blog's filesystem and generate a categories list that can be displayed on the site.

So I've been playing with File::Find, Perl regular expressions and arrays.

I am able to generate an array made up of every directory that contains Ode posts, and I'm working on the regex to make the HTML and display text look exactly the way I want.

At this point I have a pretty good looking array, and I'm ready to move the Categories code (which I'm developing in a local directory with a "dummy" filesystem) into the main Counter addin code.

There are still some issues to work out, but as soon as I get the next version of the Counter addin ready, I will make it available for download and also hopefully have it on Github.

From the Ode forum:

How to do a slide presentation with Ode

Get the Presentation theme here.

I've been meaning to get back into the Counter addin that I wrote for Ode with Rob's help, and over the past few days I added some functionality to the code and deployed it on my site, where you can see the results in the right rail.

The original Counter addin only counted posts, which in my case are files in the documents directory with .txt suffixes.

Since I now create many of my social-media updates with Ode, I added some code to count those entries and report how many of the overall entries are "full" posts and how many are social updates.

While I was in there, I wanted to play around with regular expressions, so I also added a count for the number of jpg and png images both in the entire documents directory (which includes themes) as well as in my images directory (where I try to keep all images that go into posts).

It's definitely fun to write a very little bit of Perl and have something happen on my live site. It's a nice feeling, for sure.

The addin uses the File::Find CPAN module to crawl your filesystem and count the files.

The way the Counter addin works is that you download it (for now I'm hosting it here) and unzip it, stash the addin's directory/folder in your addins directory (mine is under /data/addins), add some HTML with calls to the addin to your theme (generally in the sidebar area), and it should just work.

Once again, thanks to Rob Reed for creating Ode and helping me get off the ground with this addin.

If you missed the link above, download the new Counter addin from my site.

I still have some code cleanup to do, and I will probably add some documentation, licensing information and acknowledgments. But this version does work.

In the future, I can see this addin, or something like it, creating even more dynamic (or even static) content for the sidebar of an Ode site. It could help build a list of directories and certainly could provide more statistics on how many posts you have under any given directory.

But for now I can instantly see how many posts and social updates I have written (and you can, too).

I'm noticing this issue when using Ode's EditEdit in Fedora 23. It looks like the line spacing in the CSS for the "composing" windows is screwed up. See the screen grab above (click for full-sized image).

You can see that the top line in the "Title" windows is cut off on top, and the lines are a little cramped in the "Body."

I need to check this in Firefox to make sure it's not some kind of overall Fedora 23 issue (I just upgraded my OS from Fedora 22), and I'm sure I can adjust the CSS for EditEdit to make this problem go away.

Update: It looks fine in Firefox:

Update: This has something to do with the Courier font. Rather than go crazy about it, I'm just going to knock it out of the EditEdit CSS.

Can you see this word?

Here it is with backticks:

Here it is on a line with backticks:

Can you see the ?

It begins as a dollar sign: $

Here it is as a code block set off by a tab/indent:

And here it is at the beginning of a line with backticks:

I imagine this is a potential problem because of the way Ode passes data from the script to the HTML.

My question: Is there a way to "escape" the $ so it appears on the live Ode site without resorting to backticks?

It seems that I can get a single $ but not a with backticks.

See the markup: Here is this file as plain text.

I just removed the social-sharing buttons for Google Plus and Twitter from this site.

Even though almost every http request for content on this Ode-powered blog is done via Perl CGI on shared hosting, the site is extremely quick.

And these two social-sharing buttons, which appear on every entry, were really slowing things down. (Instead of a third-party social-button service, I used embed code provided by Google and Twitter, respectively).

The question/dilemma I face: Is the reduced "performance"/speed of the site a fair tradeoff for what the social buttons have to offer?

Read the rest of this post

I've been playing with the idea of using Ode as both a traditional blogging system as well as a social-media platform generating exactly the kinds of posts that I normally would originate on sites like Twitter.

With the help of dlvr.it, this is entirely possible not just with Ode but pretty much any blogging platform.

The key to this concept is that my social-media updates should originate on my system, where they will continue to live. They are mine. Twitter will have a copy, but I will have the "original."

And now I can tell you how easy it is to do this. And it doesn't just work for Ode but can be done on any blogging platform (including WordPress) that allows you to post to categories (or directories or folders) and tap into RSS for that specific category (or directory or folder).

Read the rest of this post

This paragraph is set off with tabs and has a Markdown-generated link:

This is my Ode site, [which lives here](http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog).

This paragraph uses "blockquote" HTML tagging and an HTML link:

This is my Ode site, which lives here.

This paragraph is set off with tabs and has an HTML-tagged link:

This is my Ode site, <a href="http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog">which lives here</a>.

None of this text uses the "code" tag.

So my question is, how do you call "blockquote" without "code" in Markdown?

Later: I have the answer. Set off every line with the > character:

> This text will be set off in blockquote style.

With the proper Markdown, this becomes:

This text will be set off in blockquote style.