You Want Realtime? We've Got Realtime!

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Get or use your existing WordPress.com account, setup http://im.wordpress.com, http://p2theme.com, maybe even http://iphone.wordpress.org and our “Publicize: Twitter“, and you’ve got yourself one nice, quick, full-featured lifestreaming blog.

“At im.wordpress.com we have been experimenting with instant delivery of blog posts and comments. We started by providing a firehose for our partners but that was only the beginning. Now you can subscribe to WordPress.com blogs in your Jabber IM client and receive posts and comments the instant they are published. It is also possible to post to blogs from the chat client. In time we plan to add these real-time features to web pages. Soon the conversations on blogs will be as fast as chat rooms.”

ZNC Rox0rs

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It’s no secret that IRC is at the heart of all things WordPress and Automattic when it comes to realtime collaboration. I hadn’t used it in years, but am now back to being logged in for substantial portions of my days.

With this in mind, I set out to install the excellent ZNC IRC bouncer on my home Linux server yesterday, coupled with the experimental Colloquy Push module to send relevant messages to my iPhone when not in front of my screen.

Couldn’t have been any easier on Centos 5 (Note: actually, if you happen to have a Mac desktop or server that is powered on all the time, unlike my laptop, Colloquy has a built-in push bouncer that makes things even easier).

Install the Fedora EPEL repo as root:

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

Install the ZNC daemon and related packages (and openssl-devel and g++ which weren’t installed on this box):

yum install znc znc-extra znc-devel gcc gcc-c++ openssl-devel

Download compile and install the Colloquy Push module:

curl -LO http://github.com/wired/colloquypush/raw/master/znc/colloquy.cpp
znc-buildmod colloquy.cpp
cp colloquy.so ~/.znc/modules/

Generate an initial configuration file (with SSL and Colloquy push module):

znc --makeconf

Edit the said configuration file manually to add a flag so that it stops sending push notifications to my phone if I’m already connected to the bouncer: added -attachedpush 0 to the LoadModule = colloquy line in ~/.znc/configs/znc.conf.

Opened port 6697 (the one I chose, default would be 6667) on my home router.

And that’s pretty much it.

Now instead of connecting to the Automattic IRC server directly, I connect ZNC to it permanently on my server, and connect to the said ZNC bouncer (via SSL) from both my desktop IRC client, as well as the one on my iPhone (over 3G, Edge and/or wifi).

I’ll have to wait until Monday to confirm that the push notifications are working as intended, but beyond this, it’s been stable and awesome since yesterday.

Nice!

Update: The push notifications are working great!

Update 2: I forgot to mention ZNC also has a very handy web admin module. I strongly advise SSL once more, as well as considering the -noircport flag combined with a custom port.

Update 3: After a full workweek of use, the little time I spent on installing ZNC has already proven invaluable enough for me to more than recommend it. Push notifications work brilliantly, but most of all, the buffer replay option, is the BEST FEATURE EVER! My IRC user experience has now been changed forever. Awesome!

Dream Gig, Dream Team, Dream Environment: Thanks Automattic!

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Today is the most beautiful of days. I’m not talking about the weather, but about a feeling that is currently impregnating every single fiber of my professional being. See, today marks the beginning of my trial phase (contractor) as Automattic‘s newest full-time systems wrangler.

You read that right: I’ll be working for the company behind WordPress.org, WordPress.com, Gravatar, Akismet and many other innovative and industry-leading products, with its wikipedia-entry-worthy figures, multi-datacenters infrastructure, the whole shebang.

Don’t get me wrong, although this assignment represents, to me, the professional chance of a lifetime, it will also be the most challenging by far, the scale of it all mind boggling. Nothing is won yet beyond the opportunity and everything is still left to be achieved. Needless to say, I will be doing my very best (and then some) to own the said challenge and prove Barry, Matt and others I am indeed the right guy for the job.

WordPress.com, one of our flagship products if you’re not familiar with it (hint: this very blogs runs on it), hosts such sites as “CNN’s Political Ticker, Dow Jones’ All Things D, the National Football League’s Official NFL blog, Time Inc’s The Page, People Magazine’s Style Watch, Om Malik, official blogs for communities like Flickr and BBC’s Top Gear, and many other high-profile and high-traffic blogs“. Automatticians also happen to be amongst the most successful Free and Open Source software evangelists, users and providers in the Web industry.

To top it all off, the position means 100% telecommuting, a mandatory requirement for me to work for a US-based (but internationally staffed) company since my wife, 3 children and I are happily residing in Montreal, Canada. An ideal proposition for a professional like I, who applies as much emphasis on his family life and welfare’s as he does on his career (even if often with little moderation in either :p). Balance being the path to a full and well-lived life, in my humble opinion.

In conclusion, I’d like to extend my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to Matt and the entire Automattic family for presenting me with this opportunity, as well as for welcoming me in their midst as we start and learn to work together.

Aim high, reach higher!

Update: Not a contractor any more. On staff since September 21st. :)

Presence BMX Jam 2009 Goodness

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Today was Presence BMX‘s summer jam here in Montreal, and since I had an iPhone on me, I thought I’d post updates on Twitter all day (easiest updates+videos+pictures on the go).

PresenceBMXJam

Here’s how it went for my angle, as seen on my twitter account or in their search tool:

T’was a good day. Mad props to Jeremy Deme and the gang for being such a tight crew and keeping BMX in Montreal fresh! :)