Life on Mars

I’ve put up version 0.004 of MT-Redland, and I think it’s coming along really well. I noticed that the previous versions were relying on a one word hack I had made to the Movable Type code, so this is the first one that would work by itself without patching the code.

I’ve got a test install of Movable Type running on my local machine with the entire database from http://kasei.us/ (roughly 700 entries and 900 comments), and it’s holding up surprisingly well, all things considered.

I’ve got a new template tag that will export an entry’s data as RSS 1.0. I’ve gotten the CMS hooks to a point where I think they’re stable, simple, and work well. And the review plugin now uses the hooks, as does the new locations plugin for specifying a spatial geographic point for the entry.

Here’s a screenshot of the Movable Type Edit Entry interface with the topics and review plugins:

And here’s a screenshot of the kind of possibilities this approach opens up. In it, I’m performing a search of entries with an RDQL query, finding all entries that are about an Image that I have rated higher than seven out of ten:

This clearly isn’t a great interface for performing searches, but the ability to open up queries like this (more than just keyword searches) to a wider audience is exciting. By combining these RDQL searches with the ability to retrieve search results in RSS, some really interesting things tumble out. You could get a custom feed of posts to my site based on any criteria you want: only posts to the Semantic Web cateogry; only posts about Images; only posts about movies that I rank higher than 7/10; only posts that Adam has commented on (to pick someone at random); only posts that link to Jerkcity, &c.

I’m excited.