Evenstar

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Finally, my dream has started taking its shape. As promised in my earlier post, here comes the first preview of Evenstar. Catch evenstar live at http://stage.myjerry.org. The blog system in general is fully functional with some of the features pending wiring, and a few nice touches remaining, including building a beautiful but fast enough theme. For the curious the following still need to be perfected. Any help on the same is most welcome.

• Importing from Blogger is still somewhat broken
• Email service is not yet wired
• Feed service is not yet done - so no feeds from the blog
• Performance Optimization - we still make a lot of DB hits which can be reduced.
• Security is another area, where I need to work upon

Go ahead guys, try it out and let me know of issues you find. You may download the code for GAE and deploy it yourself. Code can be found at https://jerry.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/jerry/JerryNext/evenstar/. The code makes use of GAE SDK 1.3.0 and runs using Java 6. I have not tested this with Java 5, but it should work. Anyhow, with GAE supporting both Java 5 and Java 6, it should be a problem. Wishing all a very Happy and Prosperous, year 2010! Welcome to Evenstar, where dreams come true!

It has been over two weeks since the last update on Evenstar. Before everyone thinks that this was just another idea that went down the drain, lemme assure you that its gonna be different this time. Over the last couple of days I have been working hard to finish up the first milestone build with all the features promised in the last post. What I have completed till today is the branding for evenstar, along with the major features. I still have to wire some security code here and there, along with some nice little tweaks to the look and feel itself. Till I tie all this stuff up, you may take a look at the full size version of branding here. You might noticed the words myJerry in there, yes, thats the abode where evenstar will reside. What is myJerry? It needs some more time before I jot down on the same. And this time I will not go to sleep, this time I will leave no stone unturned to make my dreams come true, for my prayers to go unanswered. For this is the time to do or there is no option to die ;) Let me know what you think on evenstar, and I promise, evenstar shall start lighting your dreams very soon! PS: The font used is Diavlo, courtesy Jos Buivenga.

evenstar is a dream, a dream that lets my imagination fly on wings of hope, hope that my prayers would be answered, answered with a gift, a gift that is worth everything I may ever be. They say necessity is the mother of all invention. For me, it has been the sucker of many odd hours at night leading to the development of a blogging engine. Yes, evenstar is a blogging engine! For the geeks and interested here are the technical specifications:

• Open-source Java-based blogging engine running on Google App Engine - so anyone with a Google Account can run it for free, yeah!
• Support for multiple blogs via a single instance
• Blog layout templates based on the powerful Velocity templating engine
• A post system featuring author-defined permission on who can view, what can be viewed
• A commenting system featuring various protection modes, on who can view the comments
• An author controlled post URLs - with default automatic mode aka Blogger style
• Integration with popular tools
• Wired with Google Authentication
• Integrated email notifications, RSS/Atom feeds
• Powerful user management - both for authors and viewers
• REST based open architecture - go build your own UI
• Ability to prettify code snippets - for the developer community
• Import previous blogs from popular systems
• Sanitization of incoming/outgoing HTML
• Powerful system to manage which posts are allowed to be crawled and indexed
• Integrated post-search honoring author-defined permissions

This is just a broad level of features planned/in-development. Drop your comments for,

• on thoughts over building this new system up
• for lending a helping hand in this intiative
• for catching an early-preview (sometime late Dec 09)

This is just a small peek into the dream of mine, and I leave it to you to find about the gift I seek.

Many of you who would be reading this post of mine would have some own blogging experience. Many amongst them would be avid bloggers. Some have their own personal blogs, where in, they put down everything that goes in through their hearts and not the mind. Few like me put in everything for we have no mind. And all of us has friends. Now, What do such mindless blogs and sage friends have in common? Well, sometimes our friends become our biggest foes. Sometimes, when their intelligence, loaded with sanity, soaked in logic, with a fragrance of reason, decorates our blog as a token of their liking, the blog owner's insanity turns insane. At times it leads to defeat the sole purpose of the post and turns off the very visitors whom you adore. To add appreciation to glory, if you try some legal ways (read as, settings in your favorite blog engine), these sage start expressing their wisdom vocally than in writing; at this point you only wish to be reborn. With such instances most of us wish if there was a way to bury such friends in the deep deserts of North Pole. Some turn to hibernate in the cool comfort of the Sahara Desert. Well, I tried doing both and failed. And now, the only thought up my mind is, May it be an evening star, Shines down upon you, May it be when darkness falls, Your heart will be true, You walk a lonely road, Oh! How far you are from home! (Enya) Being just another good for nothing person, I am using the power of primary language of expression to do believe in the above, waiting for the evenstar to shine down upon me soon! Till time, if I could remain as sane as my thoughts above, there would be more in here soon. Keep Watching the space! Keep Walking, Keep Hiding! PS: None-the-less, if anyone has suggestions on how to bury in the North Pole, please leave your comments, which would be highly appreciated and acknowledged with due respect. For those whose sanity is troubling them find an answer as to why I chose North pole, here is my insanity packaged in a line; I live in the northern hemisphere, and I don't want my friends to suffer (more) when I drag them to the pole.