ATF v1 had the concept of Badges, which are like awards that users received for doing something, like having a recipe that had 500 views or submitted bug reports, I even have a developer badge on my profile. Badges were just ways to reward users for contributions and a thanks for being a part of the community. Now, badges are coming back in ATF v2.
Yesterday, I submitted a pull request for All the Flavors to reintroduce Badges. They've been present on user profiles for ATF v1 users, but we haven't issued them since moving to ATF v2. Once the pull request is reviewed and approved, we'll be able to introduce new badges for Users, Recipes, and Vendors. ATF v1 only support them for Users.
We have a lot of exciting new things coming with badges, they are just another step and help restore one more feature we didn't fully implement in v2. There aren't many of those v1 features left, so the new stuff coming is pushing us more toward v3 than adding v1 parity.
I hadn't been talking a lot about All the Flavors here, so I think I'll start. This new stuff is maybe going to change our part of the DIY world.
Fixed some bugs:
Pages now display titles as set in site settings
Improved SEO support
Posts category pages no longer show 404 when not logged in
Home page now shows even number of posts and columns
Error pages have better theme/color scheme support
My next focus will be on finishing Notes and then I'll probably be expanding Pages to support Categories and some more advanced options.
I've finally built up my SurrealDB tool set enough, I think, I can finally pick a launch date for BeSquishy. BeSquishy is a social network I've been building for a very long time. I had planned to launch it earlier this year, but had some delays and then I decided I no longer wanted to support ArangoDB. The problem is I want to build a SaaS behind BeSquishy, but ArangoDB no longer allows this with their open source package and they wont give me a quote for the enterprise package...so I had to swap databases. Seriously, they wouldn't reply to my email quote requests and when I tried their chat, they just said they'd email me, "the starting prices". They never did and I don't want to work with them anymore anyway.
Today I started building out the schema and using my SurrealDB tools in the software behind BeSquishy. With the progress I've made, I'm pretty sure I can launch sometime in October. I don't think I'll be releasing the code behind BeSquishy as open source anytime soon, but I will be releasing the tools I use to build it. I'll also be releasing an SDK, that allows you to build a web site inside BeSquishy, which you can use to power an external web site's data layer. I'll also have other services tied in, which will provide useful features you don't often have on a typical web site infrastructure.
I'll keep you updated a few times between now and then, but hopefully I can launch it in October...
I play Splitgate, which is an arena FPS with a really cool portal mechanic. Well they've been working on a new game for almost 2 years, I think, it's been a while. They stopped development on Splitgate to make the new game. Their website currently has a countdown timer and a July 18th date... Splitgaters are getting excited, but we don't know exactly what the countdown is to. Some think it's just a new teaser video. Others think it's a release. The intensity is building.
What is interesting, and potentially an indicator, is they refreshed their Discord server, so most of the old channels are gone, it has a new logo, and there are 3 new Server Status channels for Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation that are currently locked. The current Splitgate game is still online, so it's odd they would take down everything for the current game, unless the new one is actually coming soon.
Timer is down to 4 hours and 36 minutes, so I'll guess we'll know in the morning...
In case you haven't noticed, I've been building a lot of SurrealDB tools lately. I'm a big proponent of having a deep toolbox that works for you. The old PHP frameworks had basically everything you needed and you could build pretty much anything with them. Node.js is slowly getting there will the SSR frameworks, but if you are using something new, like SurrealDB, there aren't a lot of options.
Everything I've been building isn't just for SurrealDB. I've also been building more generic Node.js tools too. My approach is to build some libraries that aren't NPM packages and don't have a lot of NPM dependencies. The idea is you can choose the libraries you want to use, put them in your project as a submodule, and either follow the projects' progress or just freeze it and use as is, or even make it into something more tailored to your project's needs. Here are some of the more generic ones, before I get into the ones I'm really excited about.
Node.js Process Manager
A simple library that can be used to manage your Node.js processes, like starting, stopping, restarting, or auto-starting a script. There's not a lot to it and it has very few NPM dependencies. If it expands much, it will likely be to add dependency management, so if your script requires another process, it will ensure that one is running too.
Quality Control Manager
This is a different approach than what I normally do and has the opportunity to really make managing a project easier. This is a bit broader than the process manager and wears several hats, but I think it's a needed tool. At its base, it's a documentation generator, but it's also much more. It uses AST to outline all of your code, then uses that to generate documentation, a code trace tree for each function, and usage examples. It has a built in server or it can output the files for use elsewhere. I also want to add tests generation, error checking, and quality analysis.
Others
I have some others, but I don't want to discuss those yet, as I don't have a clear vision for their potential implementations. Let's just say, I'm working on automating pretty much everything.
SurrealDB Tools
So this what I'm getting excited about.
Database Migrations
I've built a migration tool for SurrealDB. Not a big deal, right? Well it's pretty cool. It does the normal migration handling stuff, so you have a development server and a production server, and it allows you to sync your database schema, by using migration files. It also allows you to roll back migrations, either back to a specific migration, back to the beginning, or forward to a specific migration. The cool thing is you can allow it to inspect your database, you can then make whatever changes you want, then allow it to re-inspect your database and generate your new migrations for you. It compares the inspected database to the new, modified database, and builds the script to go from old to new on another server.
Database ORM
I've built a tool that can generate an ORM, based on your database schema. It's built on top of surrealdb.js, so it doesn't limit anything you can currently do, but then it provides some really cool shortcut features to make complex queries as easy as possible. It currently looks a lot like how you use Prisma, but without a lot of the corners Prisma tends to push you into. This thing really adds a lot of features and I plan to retool the generator to let you customize how the ORM works. So if you prefer chained queries, then it'll do chaining, if you prefer object queries, it'll do objects. It also uses your current database to generate the ORM, there's no schema file to deal with, like Prisma has.
SurrealDB Crucible
Finally, this isn't so much a tool, as a way to push the limits of the tools. This is where I put the tools together and make sure they all work together. It's already been useful to find limitations and prove the loose projects approach is capable. It's basically a proving ground, but I'll likely use it as a way to document all of the tools and demonstrate how they work together. It could also become a starter template, or at least the basis for one, in the future.
So that is some of the stuff I've been working on in my spare time. It's been a lot of work, but I feel like each tool is building onto the previous tool, so eventually it'll add up to saving time, I believe. The migrations and ORM alone have a lot of time saving opportunities, for myself anyway. I plan to add branching and more complex version control to the migrations. I also want to add the ability to export specific tables to create a new migration tree, so then it becomes a tool than can be used to spawn new projects. Learn from the best, then make things better :)
I've been building a new ORM for SurrealDB, which is designed to work with my SurrealDB migration tool. It is a generative ORM, so it will be tailored to the database and you'll be able to generate the ORM methods in either Typescript or ESM Javascript. It will have built in types validation and a ton of query options. It will also, eventually, have custom specs, so you can override the build instructions to result in the structure you desire. This means if you prefer one ORM style over another, then you'll be able to use that style, but have the same features. Whether you want chained methods or a simple object parameter, it'll all be configurable. You'll also be able to create or utilize multiple styles, using a namespace, or import additional table classes from within packages, because all of the methods will be compatible. Pretty cool I think :)
Update: I disabled the color scheme change transition, due to a bug. It was kind of a novelty anyway, I'll try to fix it and bring it back later.
I decided to go ahead and update to the latest development version of Grazie! CMS. There are lots of theme fixes/updates and little enhancements here and there. I decided to go with a darker dark color scheme and I've tried to make title colors/sizes more consistent across the site. There is also a new color scheme toggle on the bottom right corner of the page and I'll have some social links there (once I update the settings). The light color scheme also has a lot of fixes and clean up, but it's quite where I want it. You can check out my previous Grazie blog to see the whole list and some of the things I'm working on.
I spent some time this afternoon working on Grazie! (the CMS that runs this site). I haven't updated here in a quite a while, so I'll have to check some older changes, but here are some from today:
Various bug fixes
Fixed an issue that hadn't come up, previously unused, regarding fetching and caching settings stored as objects
Fixed an issue where some settings didn't fall back to their grazie.config settings
Fixed some keys that were based on old data properties (which meant they weren't unique)
Fixed some Typescript types
grazie.config.default.js is now the default config
override it with a grazie.config.js file
Added a SocialIcons component, so the icons in the footer can be functional
Added support for footer.social setting for twitter, github, instagram, etc
Favorite theme now uses SocialIcons in Footer component
Added an SEO component to generate meta() function arrays
The SQLite data.db file now defaults to the /data folder (previously in the /prisma folder)
Favorite theme is moving to a cyan color scheme
Working toward migrating all titles to be more easily themed universally
Updated all packages to latest versions
Today I bumped the version up to 0.5.0. It may get bumped again before I update here. I have a few more things to add, but I'm liking the cyan color scheme, so I may go ahead and update here if I don't have time to get to all of it. Here are a few things on my TODO list:
Finish Notes app
Finish Categories page
Finish refactoring titles to be more easily themed
Refactor all colors to use --mantine- variables
Fix light mode color scheme (mostly depends on the above)
Make dark mode darker
Add a theme editor to make most of them customizable
Add ability to have a dropdown in the navlinks (uses settings to be dynamic)
Add a settings preset, to allow reverting settings to default or knowing which settings to add (read are supported)
Add ability to upload and set site logo and favicon
Those are a few of what's on my list. There are quite a few others, but I need to build up to those and I feel the above are more important at the moment. I need to utilize the built-in features in Mantine better. I also want to add some help features, for both user and admin, and more image/upload features. I plan to build a Grazie! website soon, so some new features will come with that. Part of that will probably be updating to use the latest Remix recommended Vite features and adding a fastify server for serving an API or whatever you want.
More to come. You'll definitely know when I update again, the new theme updates make the current one here look pretty bland.
I've been trying to get a quote for a self-managed ArangoDB Enterprise license. I don't understand how there isn't a price. Like, you buy something, and then you use it. I've sent 2 emails through their contact form, almost 2 weeks apart. I've attempted 2 times to get a quote through their chat. There's apparently no price? It's almost like they are charging whatever they think they can get out of a client. The "person" I talked to in the chat said they'd email me the "starting price". Such a great database, this is breaking my heart.
Interesting discussion to watch at openSUSE Conference 2024.
Brief: SUSE has presented openSUSE with an opportunity to rebrand away from a direct connection to SUSE. This is in an attempt to preserve SUSE's branding and protect it from ambiguity. The discussion is presented by a representative from SUSE and a representative from openSUSE.
I personally think openSUSE should take the opportunity and run with it.
I've started work on a Process Manager for Node.js projects that can be used to start, stop, and autostart Node.js scripts. The idea is to create something small that has a simple purpose and doesn't require a lot of dependencies. I'm still looking for a name. Like several of my other utility projects I've currently working on, this one is intended to be included in projects and not installed as a package. I also plan to include a library that can be used for UI control of Node.js applications.
Among my SurrealDB tools I've been working on, SurrealMaestro is a CLI startup and shutdown manager for SurrealDB written in Node.js. It can manage multiple databases, comes with a status tool, PID tracking and checks, and can be used in automation tools. This should be beneficial to Node.js projects running SurrealDB, as it can be used with start up commands and used in a development environment, as it doesn't attempt to start a server that is already running. I plan to also build a library within SurrealMaestro that lets you build the database control into a UI application.
My interest in SurrealDB has really grown the past few days. I really feel like it can replace ArangoDB in my stack. The only issue is the same issue I had when I adopted ArangoDB: there aren't a lot of tools for Node.js. Like ArangoDB, I'll maybe have to build some myself. The first such tool is a CLI migration tool.
First of all, the Surrealist database manager application is awesome. It's great, it really is and, while ArangoDB has it's web client, it has functionality I missed using ArangoDB that I used to have for relational databases. That is a great tool, but it's more of a development and management tool. I need a migration tool for automation and to make my applications more portable.
Today I made a big push toward creating this tool and it's named Surrealigrate. I've built tools like it for other databases, such as the one we use for All The Flavors, Arangrate for ArangoDB, and I had initially built a multi-database tool for the CMS behind this site (now it uses Prisma, well, for now). Surrealgrate isn't quite ready, but like I said, it's getting very close. It's the first thing I've built from the ground up with AI assistance, which has sped up development considerably. Unfortunately, AI's aren't perfect, so there were a few issues and I had to rewrite portions of it, but most of the changes were just oversights that occurred as I asked the AI to add specific features in steps.
I need to build Surrealigrate up fairly quickly, so I can move some of my current projects to it and get them moving again. While it is already more advanced than my other tools have been, there will be more features coming later. Using AI allowed me to put in a lot of things initially that I wouldn't have had time to do right now. One different approach I'm taking with this tool is it's not intended to be an NPM package. It's intended to be included in a project as a component, potentially using git submodules. I'm hoping this approach makes it more useful per-project and will lead to others contributing.
A vulnerability in openSSH has been patched. You can read about it here. If you are running Linux, there's good chance this applies to you (unless you are running a distro with openSSH older than 2020) and you should update. As far as I know, most major distros had the update available before the announcement was made.
I've been considering picking up a few of the more obscure packages to maintain in Tumbleweed's repos. I see requests from time to time and I think it may help the distro to have those packages available. One I'm considering is Theia IDE, the new IDE from Eclipse. I did some research earlier, to see how difficult it would be. I think I could do it and probably mostly automate it. Just something I'm considering. I'm at least going to start building some of my own packages and using my OBS home repo.
At one time, Eclipse was the IDE for many open source developers. It began at an IBM lab around 2000 (estimated, could be earlier) as a potential competitor to Microsoft Visual Studio (VS) and by the time it was released as open source, in November 2001, IBM had already invested an estimated $40M into it. Hundreds of programs were also built on top of Eclipse's platform, most of them weren't even IDE's, and a lot of them are still in use today - open source and proprietary. It influenced and inspired a whole new generation of IDE's.
It's difficult to pin-point exactly when Eclipse began sliding out of prominence. Many new and, mostly, specialized IDE's came out around the early 2010s, and most of them were simpler to use than Eclipse. The most notable was Atom, which was released in 2015 by Github. Atom came with it's own platform, now known as Electron, which also revolutionized desktop software on a far greater scale than even Eclipse. But that's a different story. After Atom, came Visual Studio Code, which has gobbled up a vast majority of developer desktops and Atom was killed off a few years after Microsoft bought Github, the original creator of Atom.
Eclipse Theia is considered the next generation Eclipse Platform, it was first released in 2017 and has been backed by many of the same companies who backed the original Eclipse. Theia IDE began development in 2019 and has reached a stable version in June 2024 (announced in June, it was technically available 30 May 2024). Theia is built on a lot of the same tech as Visual Studio Code and looks a lot like it. Theia support extensions from OpenVSX, which is the open repository for VS Code extensions, but there's more. You can also install a VS Code extension directly into Theia and it works just fine.
To test a non-OpenVSX extension, I installed the Supermaven extension, which I downloaded from the VS Code marketplace, and it worked just as well as it does in VS Code. Even the chat functionality works, it's exactly like running it in VS Code. Theia IDE is a community answer to VS Code, just as Eclipse was a community answer to VS. The only downside so far is it's only available on Linux, in binary form, as .deb and AppImage, as far as I know. I suspect it will soon be added to some distro repos and I suspect Red Hat's connection to it will lead to an RPM being available, maybe even a flatpak. It's very new, publicly, so it's just getting started.
If you use VS Codium, another IDE to avoid MS, or want to try something new that isn't a big change from VS Code, Theia IDE could be a good candidate for you. I'm going to start using it and I've been pretty faithful to VS Code/Codium for quite a while.
I've been learning how to use SurrealDB and, honestly, I'm kinda loving it. Still learning, but I haven't found anything I don't like. It actually seems to solve my two biggest issues with ArangoDB too...it has very low resource usage at smaller scale and it's incredibly easy to deploy a simple server. Like I said, still quite a bit to learn, but I'm thinking SurrealDB would be a viable primary option for Grazie! 2.0. ArangoDB never was, just because of the issues above. I wish I'd found it sooner.
ArangoDB's new licensing has made me not want to use it anymore. Some of my ideas lean very heavily toward being a SaaS and ArangoDB explicitly disallows it's use as that. I know it states "source code", but I would be using it from the openSUSE repository, which would mean it would be compiled from source and not the binary from ArangoDB. I don't like it. It just feels like it would be too easy for them to make an accusation with the way they have it worded. I also don't want to grow to their 100gb limit and then have to find an alternative or agree some to Enterprise version price that they won't even advertise on their web site. I tried to contact them through the web chat and email [for a quote of the Enterprise version's price] and didn't get a response yet from either. It was really for confirmation (that I can't afford it) and not a last ditch effort to keep using it.
So...I started looking for a new database. Initially, I wanted something with an OSI-approved license. Unfortunately, the one I like the most also uses the BSL 1.1 license, but without the extra conditions that ArangoDB has instated. To me, that's fine. It's the MariaDB license. They have to protect their product. I understand all of this. The ArangoDB's BSL wasn't what I had a problem with, it was their extra conditions; I don't want to run a DBaaS or offer managed database hosting, that's not what I'm interested in doing.
And...it looks like I'll be moving on from ArangoDB to SurrealDB. I considered all of the ways I could get around a change; I don't really like change and I've loved everything about using ArangoDB. I considered staying on a version before the license change and just updating every 4 years when the BSL rolls over to become an Apache license. I just don't want to deal with all of that. I don't want to use 4 year old, unmaintained software. SurrealDB doesn't have an Enterprise version. They've held their BSL license for quite some time and it at least appears that a lot more people use SurrealDB than I've ever found to use ArangoDB. Plus, I may be able to actually find someone else who uses it...who knows, I may want to even hire them.
Yeah, it's becoming a thing. Now I just need to find or create the tooling I need to use it and...start using it.
I was working on one of my several ArangoDB projects and I noticed the version in the Web UI said 3.10, but remembered recently seeing an announcement for 3.12. I started looking into it and found this blog post. According to that post, ArangoDB source code has replace the Apache 2.0 license with the BSL v1.1 license. This is applied to the BSL license:
ArangoDB has defined our Additional Use Grant to allow BSL-licensed ArangoDB source code to be deployed for any purpose (e.g. production) as long as you are not (i) creating a commercial derivative work or (ii) offering or including it in a commercial product, application, or service (e.g. commercial DBaaS, SaaS, Embedded or Packaged Distribution/OEM). We have set the Change Date to four (4) years, and the Change License to Apache 2.0.
Basically, if you are using the source code, you have to use as-is and not build it into a product, including using it with as part of a service. What I have been working on is pretty much providing an interface to use it as a service, but I don't use the source code. The wording and definitions aren't very clear either, does including it in an application include a web site?
The Community version has adopted a Community License:
We are also making changes to our Community Edition with the prepackaged ArangoDB binaries available for free on our website. Where before this edition was governed by the same Apache 2.0 license as the source code, it will now be governed by a new ArangoDB Community License, which limits the use of community edition for commercial purposes to a 100GB limit on dataset size in production within a single cluster and a maximum of three clusters.
This is at least clearer and would apply to my projects. I don't know if anything I do will get above 100gb, I'd maybe like it to, but I don't know. The Enterprise license didn't change. On top of all of this, ArangoDB's pricing is not very clear, like it doesn't tell me what it would cost to do x with their cloud product, it just shows per hour pricing. There's no pricing for their Enterprise on-premise available without contacting them. I'm beginning to not trust it.
I've spent probably 100s of hours working with, learning, and building with ArangoDB. I've helped people set up migration tools and deployments. I've consulting people on migrations from other databases to ArangoDB. I've written a lot of AQL, a lot. I've been an evangelist, basically. I wish I had seen the previous announcements about the license change. I suspect it won't be included in openSUSE beyond 3.10, because it no longer uses an OSI license. I suspect I'll at least look for another option, we'll see where it goes beyond that.
KDE Plasma 6.1 was released on 18 June 2024 and it has been updated in openSUSE Tumbleweed with snapshot 20240622. It seems to be running very smoothly for me. This release comes with several new features and improved Wayland support with the addition of Explicit Sync. Read more on KDE Plasma 6.1's official release announcement.
Also, there is the Reef wallpaper made for 6.1, but not included with the release, you can get it here.
In order to enable codecs with openSUSE Tumbleweed, we need to use a 3rd party repository for potentially patent encumbered packages. The primary option for VLC with codecs is often Packman, these instructions are for installing VLC using the official VLC repository instead.
Open YaST2 Software Repositories
Click Add
Choose, HTTP, click Next
Choose Edit Parts of the URL
Repository Name:
VLC
Server Name:
download.videolan.org
Directory on Server:
/SuSE/Tumbleweed
Go to this URL to verify the GPG Key: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-suse.html
Click Trust
You'll return to the YaST2 Software Repositories screen. For me, it named the repository Tumbleweed. If you want to rename it, select the repository and click Edit. I preferred VLC for the name.
With the repository still highlighted, use the Priority input and change it to 89 or a lesser value than other repositories. This will put it at a higher priority.
Once you are finished, click OK
I then just performed sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper dup. I also had some conflicts already, so if it doesn't pick up the VLC repository for those file, you can probably run sudo zypper dup --allow-vendor-change.
Note: If you aren't using Tumbleweed, the videolan.org link above provides information for other versions. I used it on Tumbleweed, so I can't vouch for it on other versions.
Every time I post something here, something related shows up in my google feed on my phone. It's kinda creepy google.
I use openSUSE on most of my servers, with the exception being my game servers - LinuxGSM doesn't support openSUSE, my desktop, and my laptop. I've built up some scripts and stuff to make things easier to use, so I'll probably make some generic versions to release here. I also want to do a page that lets you track openSUSE Tumbleweed updates and links to current news. I'd need to automate it, so it may take a bit to build it. Once I have that I want to do a page that helps you track Packman updates. Finally, I wrote some docs for a new documentation project we were doing for openSUSE, but it didn't really materialize. I'll probably put some of the pages up here instead. I think I probably have a few local docs I've put together for reminders too. But yeah, I want to put some openSUSE content on here and maybe help people find info easier.
It's been a while since I watched Part 1, so I'm going to start with a Part 2 review. Part 1 will come later, but I'll still do a series rating for now. I really enjoyed this movie and it was a lot of what I thought it would be, mostly. I need to read the books, but as a viewer more than a reader, I tend to respect artistic license for movies based on books.
I thought character development was good in this movie and it was obvious that was respected as a critical facet of the cinematic experience. There was decent use of foreshadowing and symbolism to drive the story along. There is a lot of symbolism in this movie, a lot. I'd probably have to watch it a few times to pull more out and analyze, but it runs much deeper than I was expecting.
Unfortunately, it felt like the first 75% of the movie was kind of drawn out and slow at times. It kept feeling like something was building, but then it would just kind of wander a bit. That may have been driven by the book, I don't know, but the timeline of the movie just felt a little off. It takes place over about 9 months, I wont tell you how I know that, but it's apparent from the beginning and the scene at the end. The last part of the movie doesn't seem like it would fit in the time frame it was slotted into. To me, it felt like last 30 minutes of the story was rushed, because so much time was spent in the first 75% of the movie. Again, maybe that was driven by the book.
The action in the movie was really good and the fights were well choreographed. The final fight scene was good, not really great, but not bad. Overall it was all the action fitting and realistic enough for the setting.
Rating: 4.7 out of 5 - Highly Recommend
There are maybe 3 or 4 movies, I've ever watched, I'd rate as a 5. The series, so far, Part 1 and Part 2, I'll rate as a 5, even though the individual movies are not 5's, in my opinion. It's a very good movie and I plan to watch it again, after I watch Part 1 again.