Blogger Editing via ${EDITOR} - GoogleCL

Google CL allows the use of google tools over command line. This allows amazing things like editing google docs in vim (or emacs, if you're into that sort of thing). There's also blogger and picasa functionality, and you can dump your entire google calendar to stdout (in csv format, so start brushing up on your awk).

One of the things that's blatantly missing, however, is blogger integration with your favorite editor. Hopefully, this post will fix that, as it's doubling as my test of google-cl blogger integration and my blogger script.

#!/bin/sh

GOOGLE=/usr/bin/google
BLOGFILE=`mktemp`

ed=${VISUAL-${EDITOR-/usr/bin/vim}}

timestamp=`date -r "${BLOGFILE}" +%s`

${ed} "${BLOGFILE}"

newtime=`date -r "${BLOGFILE}" +%s`

if [ $? -eq 0 -a "${newtime}" -gt "${timestamp}" ]; then
 title=`head -1 "${BLOGFILE}"`
 /bin/sed -i '1d' "${BLOGFILE}"
 echo 'Posting to blog "fmt >/dev/internets"'
 ${GOOGLE} blogger post --title "${title}" "${@}" "${BLOGFILE}"
fi

rm "${BLOGFILE}"

File inclusion courtesy of :r. Now that makes me happy.

:wq

Let's Do the Time Warp Again...

I'm reposting the work related stuff from my old blog, in reverse order. Now I can use the personal blog for personal stuff and this one for sysadmin/work stuff, and the two don't have to intermix.

This means that rather than posts getting pushed onto the stack, they're being enqueued, but the all-powerful google will still index them and make them searchable. Also, I'm making sure that the "new" old posts are tagged.

:wq

Test Blog Post with BlogWriter Lite

This is a test blog post from BlogWriter Lite.

Though I haven't yet used it, BlogPress' free version has a camera button built in; I assume this works in conjunction with the integrated Picaso client to allow posting of images stored on the iPhone or taking images with the webcam and posting them immediately.

BlogWriter doesn't have any image support in the free version, but supposedly the full version does offer HTML and image support.

Neither program allows for turning the phone sideways and using the landscape keyboard, which would be really nice.

:wq

Blogging From the iPhone

I just downloaded a couple mobile blogging apps for iPhone that support the Blogger API. BlogWriter and BlogPress both have free trial versions, so I figured my first attempt to get things working would be with them. If I can't connect at all to blogspot, then it's no money out of my pocket for the experiment.

A word from the not-so-wise: look up your username and password when setting up something on the iPhone. I could have posted this 3 hours earlier if I hadn't been entering the wrong password to my gmail account. Thank you, Firefox, for letting me forget.

After the 3 hours of learning about XML-RPC, the nasty guts of the original Blogger API, and how to integrate with Drupal/Joomla, I finally have two working mobile blogging apps.

BlogWriter seems to be aimed at a larger community of bloggers. It supports Blogger, WordPress, and anything that can speak the Blogger API at a custom URI.

BlogPress, despite being a portmanteau of Blogger and WordPress, only supports Blogger. The configuration is simple (provided you know your password), but it does require both Blogger/BlogSpot and Picaso credentials. They're the same now, though, and thankfully the app pre-filled my Picaso login information.

BlogPress also appears to be able to work with drafts; I don't yet know I'd they're only local to the iPhone or if it's integrated into the main Blogger web interface.

This just in: BlogPress doesn't turn sideways. Really a bummer because the iPhone keyboard is much easier to use in landscape orientation. Spellcheck and autocorrect can only do so much.

That's really all I have to compare until I actually use BlogWriter. So far, though, it looks like blogging on the iPhone is definitely doable, even without Google's SMS and e-mail hacks.

:wq