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I'm calling this the 1.0 release of my Ode blog. I have all of Rob Reed's "extra" addins working (that's persistent-dating addin Indexette, web-editor addin EditEdit and the Disqus commenting addin).

I'm also using the core Jumper addin to shorten some entries in the index and provide a link to the full, individual entry.

I've made some small changes in the template to allow the blog title and main image to link back to the blog home page from any other page in the blog.

Now it's time to start filling the blog with content, old and new.

I'm also going to work on a version of the Logic theme (what you see here) to produce a "pages"-like theme that displays content without the traditional blog trappings of publication dates. That should be easy.

It's time I started delving into the ode.cgi script (preferably the annotated version) and seeing how the system works. Ode project leader Rob Reed has been very encouraging both in my putting this site together and in learning Perl, the scripting language with which Ode is built.

Right now I'm focusing on the HTML and CSS in the themes, but I plan to work my way into the Perl of the main script and the addins as I go.

Thanks again, Rob, for hacking on this project. There are dozens of blogging/CMS systems to choose from. Even though it derives much inspiration from Blosxom, Ode is unique in many ways, inspired in many more -- in function and mission. That's why I'm using it. Poke around the official Ode site if you want to know more.

If you see me, add_post worked.

And if you see this paragraph, I was able to add to an existing post.

If you see me, Indexette has done its job.

I like the fish, but that's the Ode-is-simple fish.

I need to get my own image(s) up top. Consider this a placeholder.

It's a portion of the front panel of a 1970s Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/20 minicomputer from Retrotechnology.com's PDP-11 page.

According to Wikipedia, the first officially named Unix ran on the 16-bit PDP-11/20 in 1970. The PDP-11 was succeeded by the 32-bit VAX, introduced in 1977:

I'm in awe at the moment.

I just added the Indexette and EditEdit addins to my Ode site. They both work. The documentation is detailed. The installation and configuration took about five minutes per addin.

I'll be back in that documentation very soon. Each addin's documentation includes a lot of detail and explanation.

I will go into greater detail later, but briefly, the addins do the following:

• Indexette: Allows posts in Ode blogs to retain their original (or arbitrary) post date even if the file and its timestamp has been modified.
• EditEdit: Provides a web interface to modify and create posts in Ode to supplement the usual writing and uploading of plain text files via FTP.

I'd like to thank Rob Reed, the creator of Ode for thinking so deeply about what he wants this project to be and then making it happen with code. And that code is always accompanied by detailed documentation, both inline and in separate PDF and text files.

It's not like I haven't used Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, Flatpress and Blosxom. Because I have.

There's something about this particular blogging system that prompted me to move over to it. More than a few things, actually.

It's complicated, but I hope to explain it all as I go along.

I had some trouble with the domain under which this still-emerging Ode blog began its life.

Long story short, I moved the blog from a subdomain to the main stevenrosenberg.net domain on my hosted space.

Making the move was easy. All I had to do was move the files from one part of the web server to another, after which I edited the paths in ode.cgi and ode_config to point to the new location.

Unfortunately all my files got new date stamps, and the original entry, which you might see below this one, also has a June 10, 2011 date, since Ode (and Blosxom before it) uses the text file's creation date as the post date.

In my test Blosxom site (not online at present), I managed to install the addin that preserves the original file date. I'm planning to install the Indexette addin in Ode to do the same thing. At that point I'll correct the original date. I'm in the habit of putting the numerical date into the filename of just about everything I do, so it won't be hard to remember that original file date when I finally do have Indexette installed and working.

I also added a favicon.ico. I lifted the one from the main Ode site. I'll replace it eventually when I dig deeper into the design.

Welcome to my new blog. It looks a lot like the Ode home page because I'm using Ode to run the site.

And I happen to like the default theme, called Logic.

There's a bit of work to do when it comes to adopting a new platform and customizing it, so this Ode blog should look less like http://ode-is-simple.com in time.

I hope to have many different kinds of content here, and possibly different styles/themes for each category, all without a fancy blogging CMS, reams of PHP code, a database and all that goes with that.

Let's see how it goes.