Minimalist Dong

In the year 2001, I wrote a blog called Minimalist Dong. This involved not just writing the content for it but also the software to make it go, as was the style at the time. This is that software. The README and INSTALL files are exactly as I've found them, and this thing you're reading now is the only new thing.

This has been uploaded from a working/test copy that I left unpacked in an old home directory that made it into my backups somehow, and is not the exact contents of the minimalistdong-0.7a.tar.gz release file. All the actual release archives appear to have been lost to time. I've put a couple of files back, deleted some things, and left some stuff like an alternate style sheet that was hanging around.

Don't use this

The file extension is .php3 for god's sake, that alone should be a red flag. Will it even run in ... whatever we're up to now? I hope not. There's no separation of code and content, the HTML is right there in the body and includes things like this:

<h1><?php print "<a href=\"$config[URL]\">$config[SITETITLE]</a>"; ?></h1>

There are some enlightening things in the mindong/content folder, which are the blog entries for the software itself. I was very, very keen on XML in the year 2001, and it shows. There's a second blog section in the faq folder that you can take a look at as well.

The default contents of the links and rdfsources files have been modified, as almost all the links were invalid now, and ... well the RDF stuff won't be there either but I left a couple of examples in there for what it looked like.

What's its deal?

The point of this was to be able to write my blog entries in a text editor in a terminal. The files were plain text, and ordered by the file creation timestamp on the filesystem. Could backups and copying have messed up your entire blog sequence? Oh yes. I planned to add a simple header format at some point with date and meta information, in much the same way static generators do things today!

The FAQ included this entry on the design philosopy:

Design Philosophy

Minimalist Dong has only two firm critera for its development.

Firstly, all a user requires to run a Minimalist Dong site is a web server that supports PHP version 3 with some fairly standard configuration options. No databases, no administrative rights on the server and no specific platform. A user with the correct environment should be able to unpack it and start running things almost immediately.

Secondly, the interface will be text. No graphic elements will ever be required in the default configuration. You're free to add them, of course, but you'll never require them.

It is because of this philosophy that the software gains the term "Minimalist". Any feature that can be implemented without breaking these rules will be considered.

Why "Minimalist Dong"?

From the included FAQ:

Something Nikolai wrote ...

Shitsu-Tonka. We of maked MINIMALIST DONG, maked a lot of, more than of digital watch that buy of American magazine TIME to give away to lucky reader.

MINIMALIST DONG is wary, always, even in raining.

MINIMALIST DONG make stong men weep, make weepy men stong, but what she do to stong weepy women we can not say about. Just to say weepy no more, but knuckles closer to ground! Always tell correct time!

MINIMALIST DONG soft on inside, stong and not crack on outside, inside too. Press button on end and can hear TRUCK DRIVER DIVORCE loud and soft too. and soon many more soon to choose from, ZOOT ALLURES soon. MONTANA, soon. BABY SNAKES too, soon, but not copyrighted yet, here.

MINIMALIST DONG batteries INCLUDED!

MINIMALIST DONG smoke but not inhale.

MINIMALIST DONG not banned by Geneva Convention.

MINIMALIST DONG. You will be assimilated. Resistance is irrelevant.

More information

If you're interested in what the hell was going through my mind, my later plans, and associated Hubris, you might enjoy reading my blog post about Feedtube.