Link fest11:35:00 PM

Chris was nice enough to link to me and some of the latest highlights.  Thanks Chris!

Here are some answers to some of his questions:

• JoeBlogger does, by default now, produce XHTML compatible output.  I don't have it saving out <xhtml:body> to the RSS feed yet.  I'll get around to that eventually.  Please download it and play with it and let me know what you think!
• I got no problem with people linking to stuff that I mirror.  Just link to me and send me the flow!
• I am working in the same group that is doing the Longhorn desktop compositor.  If you look at these videos here from WinHEC (a Japanese site, no less!), you can see KerryHam's hands.  Kerry is one of the PMs in our group and, now that she is an internet celebrety, we are going to start up the Kerry fan club -- alt.fan.kerry.  Let me know if you want to join.  I'm working to help design (along with a bunch of others -- ChrisAn included)a set of APIs that we haven't made public yet.  Stay tuned for the PDC to see what I'm doing.
• I don't hate all New York.  It is too big a place for that.  I definitely don't like the Yankees, though.  A while ago I read an article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine that basically said, "Why is Washington, DC, the capitol of the US when everyone knows that NY is the true center."  I guess that a few experiences like that has tained me.
• I'm really excited about the server and what we can do with it.  For instance, I'd love to have a real CVS server.  (GDN workspaces only lets you check out one file at a time and SourceForge isn't very MS friendly...) I know someone else who (I think) is doing something similar to my co-op idea, but I don't want to "out" him.  If anyone has experience doing this stuff, I'm all ears.  This could  become a pretty popular model for stepping up from a regular web hosting type account.

Seablogs10:12:13 PM

Colo Co-op7:37:50 PM

Instead of switching to a new ISP, I'm thinking of getting a bunch of friends together and buying a box and colocating it.  Here is how the math works out:

• 1U server hosting: $100/mo.  There are a couple places in seattle that i've found that offer this kind of deal.  $100 seems to be the starting price.
• 1U server: ~$1200.  This all depends on how much you want to spend.  Since there won't be someone backing this stuff up for us, a RAID mirroring config is probably best.  It looks like iron systems might have some decent machines.  I spec'd out a 1.47GHz Athlon w/ 256MB of memory and 2 160GB disks w/ HW RAID for $1200.
• OS: Install something free or step up to Windows 2k3 :)  Being a MS employee, I can get a deal.  This could be an extra $1000, depending.  When the web edition is released it will probably be a lot cheaper.

So, assuming that I can get 5 people together on this total, the start up cost will be $250-$450 each.  The montly cost will be somewhere around $20 each.  With 6 people, we can get the startup cost down to $200-$360 each.  I'd probably want to charge more per month so that there is an ongoing slush fund for machine upgrades and fixes and such.

Adding SQL server is another $5k.  Chances are I won't need anything that industrial strength. 

So, for a very reasonable price ($450 + $20/mo) you can get your very own W2k3 machine in a data center that you can do anything you want to.  BTW, 160GB is a ton of disk space to have on the net.  Beyond this, you also have to worry about back ups and applying the latest security patches...

Has anyone out there done this?  How is it working out?  Words of advice?

Terminal Services tip7:35:53 PM

Want to TS to a machine from the command line?  Here is how to do it:

c:\> mstsc /v:<hostname>

Sweet!

JoeBlogger 0.9.05:46:08 PM

I finally cleaned up my blogging software enough to release the source and an install package.  There is a screenshot here. I'm releasing this as 0.9.0.

License
MSI install
Source

Once you've installed the binaries, there is a readme on what to do next installed into the programs directory.  You have to copy some stuff around and edit some xml files to configure what is going on.  If any of this is unclear, let me know and I'll update the readme.  The readme is here also.

Here is the basic architecture:

• All data exists in <My Documents>/JoeBlogger.  If you want to back up your site, this is the thing to back up.
• <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Config/Site1.Config is a private config file with various file paths and FTP server information.
• <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Site1 is everything that gets uploaded to the server.  This includes the raw XML source data and the generated html files.  If you have images or other files in that directory also, they will get uploaded for you.
• <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Site1/Config/Site.Config contains public config information.
• When publishing the client generates the site into the <My Documents>/JoeBlogger/Site1 dir and then uploads that to the FTP server.

Play around with it, send me any deltas you have and spread the word!