In Valid Logic

Last night, the latest edition of Tellicast was posted, including a sneak peak of Graffiti, the new light weight CMS product by Telligent.  Graffiti is being geared at small to medium sized business who just simply want to get some content up – whether it be a blog or a whole website.

One thing you may ask right off the bat when looking at it is if Graffiti is a new single-blog engine.  The answer?  Yes, it can be, but no, it isn't intended to be.  As Scott says early in the video, CMS isn't always a blog, but a blog is pretty much always a form of CMS.  So you would be able to easily run a blog off of Graffiti, though it can do quite a bit more.

Graffiti played a part in the Telligent Hack-A-Thon that we had a couple of weeks ago while the remote crew was in Dallas.  The Tellicast was a snippet of Scott's presentation of Graffiti, and after his presentation, we were all set loose with the challenge to build the coolest add-on, feature, or do-dad for Graffiti in 18 hours.  There were about a dozen or so excellent entries, most of which probably ended up being incorporated as core features.

For a quick look at Graffiti, you may notice the new Community Server Developers Conference site includes a footer that say "implemented in Graffiti CMS".

Today, we announced the pre-release of Community Server 2007 SP3.  Why a pre-release?  First, check out the announcement and note the huge list of fixes and enhancements.  This drawfs the change list for our earlier service packs.  With all those changes, it seemed prudent to have a pre-release for testing purposes before recommending it for roll out to all customers.

It is important to emphasize that it is for testing purposes, so don't necessarily rush it out to mission critical production site.  Once we can continue to test the variety of improvements, then we will issue the final release.

Overall, it shows that we've been really busy in the last two months since SP2, even with development on CS 2008 in full swing.

Has been almost 24 weeks since I posted a photo of what I've coined "The Belly".  Trish is now 33 weeks along, only about a month and a half until the expected date.  So is really showing know, and boy is it a mover!  It is constantly kicking, rolling, and moving all over.

Last weekend, Trish had her baby shower put on by her mom, sister, and one of her friends.  The first wave of boxes and things to put together came in.  In a few more weeks, we're going down to my parents to have another baby shower by my mom with all of my family, since they're all in the Bay Area.

Next weekend, I get the joy of painting the baby room so we can finally put everything in its place and get the furniture.  That should be fun.  Yay.

Also, some time ago, we picked names.  We aren't finding out whether it will be a boy or a girl (though we are told that there is pool going as to which is it).  If it is a boy, it will be Nicholas James Robertson, or if it is a girl, it will be Kelly Ann Robertson.  Everyone else seems to be more anxious to know than us.

Update: Wife corrected me on the spelling of the baby's name.

Last night I did something I haven't done in a long time… I stayed up to 2am, on a week night, coding.  It caught me rather off guard.  I was getting into bed when I looked at the clock and it said 1:50am.  I stopped for a second, thinking it must be an hour ahead.  But then I remembered seeing the clock on my laptop's taskbar at 12:59am, and thinking to myself it was time for bed.  But then I got into the "ohh, just do this real quick… and that… and this… one more" and when I finally shutdown and crawled into bed, it was almost an hour later.

I haven't done that in a while.  Nowadays, if I'm on the computer, I'll be falling asleep at the keyboard by midnight.  Before I was married, I used to stay up until 2-3am every night, and most of the time was coding til then.  I used to have people rag on me for making forum posts on CommunityServer.org at 3am.  There were times I'd be just going to bed as Scott or Rob were waking up in the morning.

The change wasn't really that I started sleeping more, but more that I shifted my schedule.  I get up in the morning earlier than I used, and so I tend to go to bed a few hours earlier than I used to.  Though it still gives a small sense of satisfaction when you roll into bed in the wee AM hours after a good coding session.

A while ago before Scott's wife gave birth, Scott was hunting for a good compact digital camera.  Now I find myself in a simular predictament.  Trish is due in less than two months now, and while I have the digital camera aspect covered, but what I am needing is a camcorder!  Pictures are good, but we will undoubtably want video too.  I mean things like it crawling around or smiling, or first steps, etc.

The primary thing I want is a digital camcorder.  I mean, hello, future geek dad, has to be digital.  For media, I don't care too much.  I am a little unsure about DVDs, since while they are ready for use, they aren't ready for use on the computer, and the media isn't reusable.  MiniDV is nice, but from what I'd seen years ago, to get it off the camcorders and onto the computer, you had to like play the movie back… you couldn't just drag and drop onto your computer.  Ones with a hard drive are nice, but then you are limited to the built in size and can't just swap to another disc as with DVD/MiniDV.

Additionally, it has to be name brand with a good repuation for optics.  I don't need top of the line stuff, but I'd want something that I won't be looking to replace within a year or two.  In general, I am in love with Canon products.  But even brand name can vary, since there are so many factors.  Most important is probably video quality, focus, and battery life… suppose.

Finally, I am somewhat on the rocks as far as whether or not to get HD.  HD camcorders are usually more expensive, though I have seen that some like 2006 models are affordable new.  Could easily get them online new even though they aren't the current model year.  HD camcorders have been around for a little while, so getting cheaper, and previous model years are even more affordable.  The geek part of me is hungry for HD.  The geek parent is thinking "don't you want baby's first steps in HD?"  But the first time parent in me is saying to be practical and to think affordable, since I'll soon be moving a good poriton of my budget to diapers.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Today, I'm flying out to Dallas for the week as a kind of a mini-meetup of various Telligent remote staff.  Just got to through security for my 11:50am flight and was surprised to find that the wi-fi access is now free!  No more ripoff rates for the T-Mobile hotspot when you know you'll only be on like an hour.  Very pleasant surprise.

About two weeks ago, the first Community Server Developers Conference was announced for October 20th/21st in Dallas.  Obviously, all the Dallas folk will be there (since it is in Dallas), and some of the other team members like Jose, Scott, Ben (pretty sure), Dan, and others will be there.  Kevin even created a Facebook event for it.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend it.  Would have really liked to, however seeing as how my wife is due October 15th, just won't be able to make it.  She will either have just popped or about to pop, and either way, I'll be dead if I tried to leave to go on a trip.

However, anyone else if who isn't pregnant, co-conspirator to someone who is pregnant, or would not be subject to bodily harm if they went should go!  Registration is only $99 before September 5th, and if it is a success, then they will likely have a second one, and I should be cleared to go to that one.

The event should prove very interesting, with discussions on Community Server 2008, likely showing off what we've done so far and will be continuing to work on, as well as discussion on where we should go in the future and information on how to achieve the most with what we have today.

The other day I was looking at my blog and realized it had been over two months since I posted!  Hadn't realized it had been so long!

Going to be trying to get back in the swing of things and get posting.  Hasn't really been a shortage of things to write about, since I'd definitely had some "ohh, I should post that" moments, but more just a matter of thinking about it when I have the time/availability to do it.

Also, been really slouching on my blog reading as of late.  The past week or two, been working on catching up, but it always seems every so often I get tired of keeping up with various blogs and souch, then it is so hard to get caught up with some posters.  I've been trimming my blogroll some more since really there are some deeply useful blogs (for a developer) like Coding Horror, and then there are the high volume little relevance ones like Consumerist, and some others who I just simply never manage to stay up on like Seth Godin (Coding Horror is more my alley).

Hopefully can do a mind dump over the next few days and get some of these topics in writing.