I am way behind schedule on the TCW update, I know (and thanks for reminding me, Konsti!). Yes, I’m actually done with the changes – 3 of them, in fact – and I am ready to put it up into TCW WordPress.org’s Extend at latest by tomorrow.

I got to be honest here. My delays are almost always (99.99% of the time) caused by two things – one: finding the time to do some coding, and two (a more embarrassing fact): I have little to zero clue how to use Subversion.

I know, right?! How could I, after more than three years developing TCW, still not get a handle of using it? More shameful is the fact that I’m a programmer by trade. Boo me.

It was suppose to be easy, this check-out, edit, commit, check-in thing. There’s a myriad of how-to posts specifically on using TortoiseSVN for WordPress.org. And I’m a programmer, for heaven’s sake! I should know code versioning!

The truth is, I’m a solo programmer and I don’t have to share my code with anyone. So all I needed to do was to create a new folder and dump my latest codes in there. That’s my versioning. Even if I did need to use versioning, it ‘ssuppose to be as easy as using Google Code.

So why is it that every time I tried to commit using Subversion, it Just Didn’t Work ™? I didn’t see the change in trunk to the latest version number. My changelog sometimes reflected the change in WP server, then suddenly I didn’t see it anymore. Went through the steps again, from1 to 10 (or 11, or 20… I lost count of the many how-to I followed).

After nothing seemed to work, I went off the beaten path, and tinkered those options out of frustration. Then suddenly, Eureka! It’s there in WP.org, my latest version of TCW in all its glory! My heart sings Hallelujah as I typed down what I’ve done the best I could, hopeful that whatever I’ve typed would become my next blog post on my stagnant WebGrrrl blog.

But alas. This problem feels like a nasty cycle of procrastination and/or forgetfulness and/or carelessness. Take your pick.

You’ve read my previous post on how “active” I was these past couple of years. So tonight, I shall once again go through the process of committing my latest Top Commentators widget update, typing those steps again into a draft post, crossing my fingers and hope that this time, that post won’t disappear into thin air and I’ll not only have the latest TCW up for you, but also my next Post Of The Week ready for primetime viewing.

BTW, here are some blog posts from WebGrrrl.net readers who are taking on the PostAWeek 2011 challenge:

• Like giving up on sex! by LaViaP The Geek

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Having been impressed with the demo at the recent Microsoft TechNet MSDN Roadshow here in Kota Kinabalu early September, I decided to install the freely-distributed Windows 7 RC installer on my just-repaired Acer Aspire One netbook almost immediately afterwards, and have been installing and testing many software almost non-stop since then.

I’m so psyched that Windows 7 performs as well as, if not better than, Windows XP! Not only were there no hardware and device conflict, but many of the software I used in XP is still compatible with 7! I’ll be honest and admit that there were very very small occasions where I encountered the dreaded BSOD, but those were entirely my fault since I installed certain software *cough virtualization cough* that were not compatible with my CPU, against Microsoft’s and Intel’s warnings, and again those errors were very few and far between.

As a blogger, my main concern was whether I’d still be able to use XAMPP and TortoiseSVN for my WordPress sandbox and plugin development, specifically for the Top Commentators Widget(TCW). Boy, am I glad they work on 7!

The screenshot above shows my Windows 7 desktop with the XAMPPLite program running Apache and MySQL. I’m also re-setting the TCW repository with TortoiseSVN to continue with my WordPress development, specifically the GEDCOM plugin and another plugin which will be simple but surprisingly useful – the latter will also be my first attempt at developing an AJAX-powered app.

So, yeah… I hope this lame excuse is enough of a good reason for the lack of posting in this blog

BTW, I’m typing this post via Windows Live Writer (which is bundled with the free Windows Live Essentials if you’re wondering how to get it). If this program screws up with the formatting, then this will be the last time I’ll be using WLW, otherwise I’ll be sticking to this as long as there are no better decent and free offline blog editor that comes along. I’m currently not using ScribeFire, since Mozilla Minefield doesn’t support it yet (yeah, don’t install FireFox on Windows 7, it’s very unstable).

Hope to do more posts concerning my WordPress plugins and Windows 7 experience soon.

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