DRM - Daniel’s Random Mutterings

An interesting (well, to me anyway) tangent to my recent post about GetAFreelancer. While looking through my Google Analytics report, I just found a number of referrals from rentacoder.com. Looking further, I find that someone had been looking for a developer for build a solution for “Video Blogging using Django and Flash(tm) Video (FLV)”.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s the title of one of my earlier blog posts. That’s right! My blog posting was cited as a reference on a rentacoder.com posting: “The initial scope of this project is to establish a Django-based video blogging site to accomodate YouTube-like functionality, as described by the DRM blog at http://blog.go4teams.com/?p=56. The blog includes the essential code snippets.“
I’m actually a bit flattered. Of course, it’s hard to ignore the obvious question: “Why the %&§§%§! did you not contact me?”.
Unfortunately, the offer was not bid on, was later canceled and nothing seems to have come of it. Pity! Might have been an interesting project to follow up on. Maybe there are some takers in the Django community? I’d be willing to participate by sharing some of my trogger.de source code, if that would be of any use.

Technorati Tags: django, rentacoder, youtube

I just launched the English language version of my Django-powered travel portal, trogger.de. The newly-launched English version is at trogger.info.

For those who haven’t yet checked out trogger, trogger is a travel-oriented Web community site, where users can maintain travel blogs, post travel reports, share holiday insider tips and publish photo albums. The most recent extension to the trogger platform has been the addition of video blogging support, allowing users to upload and attach video files to their blog entries.
Both portals, the .de and the .info one, are powered by the same application. For the English version I translated the HTML templates and other literal strings using Django’s built-in internationalization (i18n) support.
In fact, the whole translation process has been pretty straightforward and hassle-free (even though it was a lot of mind-numbing work). Django provides a tool to extract string literals, or translation IDs, from the application’s source code as well as from the HTML templates. The extracted strings are stored in “.po” files which can be translated and later compiled into resource files which are used when rendering the page content. The “.po” format is actually not a Django invention. It’s used throughout the Linux world, courtesy of the gettext package. To me, that’s a sure sign of a mature framework: Don’t reinvent the wheel, if what’s there is already the best tool for the job.
Luckily, this standard support for internationalization means that I had a good tool on my Linux box already which I could use to translate the Strings: KBabel. KBabel frees you from the hassle of fiddling with the .po file text format. Going through the translation file is just a matter of repetitive “Ctrl-Shift-PageDn” to get to the next untranslated string and then translating that. Piece of cake!
Currently, the two portals, trogger.de and trogger.info share the same hosted server. I opted to make them two almost completely separate installations, though, to give me the freedom of moving one of them to its own server later on, if bandwidth or disk usage requires it. So, I use Apache’s Virtual Host support to separate the two Django applications. Actually, both installations share the same implementation code. I’m just using the Virtual Host configuration to distinguish between two different settings files, with different database names, different language settings and media directories. This way I only need to maintain the one installation and can keep that up-to-date in a single go, while I keep full flexibility. The Django documentation is really helpful in getting this all set up and running.
So — please check out trogger.info. Participate in the discussions, post your holiday experiences, videos and holiday snaps.

I just added Flash-based (FLV) video blogging support to my Django-powered travel portal site, trogger.de. The whole process is surprisingly simple and straightforward and can be done entirely with free (FLOSS) tools.

The video publishing workflow consists of the following parts:

• A Django model to store our video and associated information
• An upload form where the user can upload a video
• Converting the video into a format usable on the Web
• Extracting additional details
• Playing the video in the Web browser
• Making the player a bit friendlier
• Advanced features

Following this simple workflow, trogger.de allows users to write and submit a blog post. Once that’s submitted, the user can add one (!) video file to it. When later viewing the blog entry, the attached video is shown in the browser.
(more…)

Well — it’s finally happened. My new travel portal is almost as good as I’m going to get it by fiddling around with it by myself. In the hope of getting feedback for improving the application, and of course also in the hope of having built something that people will actually want to use, I’ve installed and started the site: www.trogger.de!

What is trogger? It’s a German-language community portal for all things to do with travel. Going on a trip? Keep a travel blog on trogger.de and stay in touch with your friends. Been on a trip? Post a trip report and insider tips on trogger.de, along with your photo albums. Read a good travel book lately? Write a book review on trogger.de and tell everybody about it. Planning a trip? Then come to trogger.de, read the info and tips available here and discuss with other travellers.

Of course, trogger.de is sprinkled with a selection of “Web2.0ish” goodness — blogs, tags, interactivity, RSS. More and exciting features are planned for the future and will be prioritised and implemented depending on visitor feedback.

Tags: travel; blogging; trogger; Django