2 <!-- Blerg is (C) 2011 The Dominion of Awesome, and is distributed under a
3 BSD-style license. Please see the COPYING file for details.
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20 <h1><a href="/">Blërg!</a></h1>
21 <h2><span name="section">Welcome</span></h2>
22 <div id="usercontrols" style="display:none"><a href="#" name="user.reflink">[chatter]</a></div>
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26 username: <input type="text" id="login.username" size="10">
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29 <p style="font-size: large"><a href="#" onclick="$('welcome').hide(); $('items').hide(); $('post').hide(); $('signup').show(); return false;">I want to blërg!</a></p>
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32 Hello, <a href="#" id="userlink"></a>. <a href="#" onclick="loginStatus.logout(); return false">logout</a><br>
33 <a href="#" onclick="postPopup(); return false">Write new entry</a><br>
34 <a href="#" id="reflink">Chatter about me</a>
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39 <div id="post" style="display:none">
40 <h2>What's on your mind?</h2>
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60 <div id="latest-tags"></div>
62 <div id="latest-posts"></div>
65 <h2>I am 12 and what is this</h2>
67 <p>Blërg is a microblogging platform. Or maybe a miniblogging
68 platform. Blërg is not sure. Blërg is a lot like <a
69 href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a>, but aims to fix some of its
70 idiosyncracies. Blërg does not want to be a full blogging platform
71 like <a href="http://wordpress.com/">Wordpress</a> or <a
72 href="http://livejournal.com/">Livejournal</a>. Blërg is also an <a
73 href="/doc/">open source tagged text database engine</a> written in C
74 that does the back-end work. Blërg's author finds it entertaining to
75 anthropomorphize Blërg in the third person.</p>
77 <h2>But what's wrong with Twitter?</h2>
79 <p>I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. There are two aspects of Twitter that just bug
80 me as an engineer:</p>
83 <li><strong>Ruby on Rails</strong> - Using rails to prototype a system is
84 fine — scaling up to a million hits a day with it is just a bad
85 idea. As the service grew, I'm sure it cost them a lot more time than
87 <li><strong>140 characters is not enough</strong> - I routinely write
88 sentences longer than 140 characters, so I can't even begin to imagine
89 making a point in such a small space. This textual confinement has
90 led to the rise of URL shorteners, which are <a
91 href="http://bytex64.net/blog/e2256">breaking the internet</a>.
94 <p>Blërg solves these problems by applying absurd reactionary
95 engineering. Blërg's database backend is a custom C program that
96 handles requests over HTTP and stores data in a very small and
97 efficient indexed log-structured database. The frontend is done
98 entirely in client-side Javascript. A single post can be up to 65535
101 <p>Which is not to say that I believe writing your service in C is the
102 solution to all your problems. Clearly, this approach has just as
103 many hairy problems that will bite you in the ass sooner or later.
104 The best way, as with most things, lies somewhere in the middle of
105 high-level abstraction and ZOMGHARDCORE OPTIMIZATION.</p>
107 <h2>Is this a joke?</h2>
109 <p>Yes. No. Maybe. Blërg is an exercise in constructive satire — a
110 fully functional service created in a fit of hubris to poke fun at Twitter's
111 engineering. It's just for fun, but no one is going to keep you from using
114 <h2>Tell me more about this database engine.</h2>
116 <p>Here, take a look at the <a href="/doc/#design">design docs</a>.</p>
118 <h2>I'm a social media whore and I want to share links!</h2>
120 <p>I've created a bookmarklet just for you: <a href="javascript:location.href='http://blerg.dominionofawesome.com/?post/'+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+'/'+encodeURIComponent(location.href)">Blërg it!</a></p>
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