Melkjug Project

Version 0.1.1 of melkjug is now available (and running at http://melkjug.com). This version is entirely a bug fix release. The following issues are addressed:

• Fix #64 article dates are wrong — timezone issue
• Fix #68 System fails with ‘too many open files’ after running for a while
• Fix #92 reader flickers when closing articles
• Fix #107 dismissed items sometimes blip back into existence momentarily
• Fix #114 Pre tags can break the layout of the feedreader
• Fix #116 Unicode decode error in html_entries
• Fix #121 key error in source filter
• Fix #122 reindex finished but did not terminate
• Fix #130 error rendering article when author has no name
• Fix #138 view button on add remove is hard to find
• Fix #139 author filter generates non normalized names
• Fix #140 IntegrityError is mishandled for filters when adding ratings
• Fix #141 typo in reindex causes failure
• Fix #143 errors handling filter uris with non ascii characters
• Fix #144 content type is too strict for json checks, ignores charset
• Fix #148 installer tarballs full of obnoxious apple cruft
  

I posted the 0.1 release of melkjug to freshmeat earlier today, which has been sending a slow steady stream of folks to the site ever since. A few people hit the demo and actually signed up, which was cool to see — I consider anyone I don’t know creating something with no instructions and no “eh… lemme fix that for a sec” a small victory :)

I think a lot more folks would have tried it out, but I realized there’s not really anything compelling or interesting to do with it until you sign up, which is incredibly dumb (duh). I also noticed that a fair amount of people actually check out the “about” page, which could probably use a little dusting off. As a result, I’m changing gears to make “do something cool without signing up” a new priority for the next non-bugfix release.

For those you of you who can stomach some bumps and sharp edges, there is now a live ‘rough draft’ demo of melkjug running at http://melkjug.com to mark the release of version 0.1 alpha

You should feel free to poke it, prod it, curse it’s existence and burn me in effigy when it doesn’t work and/or do your dishes. In all cases please make sure to give some feedback!

Although there are a million things I’d like to get to and more that are already broken, this release represents a few basic features that I’ve chosen as a point to reckon against. I don’t think it’s yet touching on any of the Big Ideas, but I will venture as far as to say it’s inching boldly towards better than nothing!!!

With the recent stray posting of a Melkjug demo url in the openplans IRC channel, recent statistics have shown that more than 1 in 5×10^8 people are now using Melkjug!

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