Sharpers.com

Hello folks, I’m not sure how many of you are reading this these days. But let me know if you are by clicking on the “add comment” link below. Tell me that you are still around, and let me know what you would like to see on the blog. Cheers, Steve

Hey peeps, you probably noticed that this site has not been updated for a very long time. Well why is this? There’s a number of reasons, but mostly because I have been busy and this website has been taking a lower priority on my list. Hopefully I havent lost any of you because of this. Well, now I am back I’ve decided to try out some new software. Why would I do this?

• To learn some new skills
• To make my site a little flashier (hopefully)
• To take advantage of new technology
• Because its FUN!

Here are the criteria for the new blogging software, hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a method to incorporate all of the following:

• Update it easily – so I may be more inclined to upload photos and tell you about what is going on
• Link in with my Google Calendar. This is a calendar I am maintaining anyway – so why can’t I just pull out the data? Let’s see shall we.
• Dont reduce the functionality of the previous sharpers site: articles, pictures, comments, events, photo, videos, popular items, recent items
• Use some new techology. I want to see some Ajax and I want it powered by Ruby on Rails. This will help me keep up to date with these technologies

So which of these do we have already?

• I can update very easily. I have configured my web browser with the performancing plugin which embeds a blog editor right into the browser.
• New technology. It’s powered by ruby on rails blogging software called typo.
• Existing functionality. We don’t have it all yet – but we have the basics:
• • Articles
  • Links to Pictures (I’m going to try using flickr and google picassa) – I’m going to try out these services because they should be richer featured than anything I can host myself – and they are a lot cheaper (free) than hosting myself. They also provide us with sharing capabilities so everyone can upload (hopefully)
  • Embedded pictures. We can embed already hosted pictures into this blog easily