Blog On a USB Stick

[gautams]

I am new to Thingamablog. Was using Blogger before and changed over
this week. My biggest problem with Thingamablog was the lack of
support for "distributed" posting. That is, since it is a desktop tool that
creates a local DB to hold all posts, I cannot use it on different PCs,
say at work and at home. To overcome this I decided to use a
Transcend USB memory Stick (512 Mb) with Thingamablog. I now have
Sun's 1.4.2 JRE, Thingamablog and my blog DB all on the same stick.
Total space requirement at this stage is about 100 Mb. This of course
will increase as I post to the blog.

I have tested this on my PC at work as well as at home. Works like a
charm. And since the FTP settings do not change, publishing new posts
works the same as long as no proxy server configurations are required.

In addition to installing Thingamablog on the USB stick, I also changed
the way the program is executed. For some reason I am yet to track
down, the default installation didn't work for me. Most probably a local
environment setting is messed up on my PC. Anyway, I used Janel
(http://janel.sourceforge.net/janel/) to make my own
thingamablog.exe file.

To install on a memory stick, I used the following steps:

1. Download the JRE from Sun's web site and install it on the USB
memory stick. Note that during installation you should disable the
browser/JRE activation otherwise your local web browsers will try to
use the JRE on the stick. Install into say, E:\Java\, if E:\ is the USB
memory stick drive letter.

2. Install Thingamablog on the memory stick at say, E:\thingamablog\.

3. Download Janel.

4. Copy the "Windows Executable" version of the Janel executable file
into the folder where I installed Thingamablog and rename it to
"thingsmablog.exe". Copy the corresponding LAP file file from Janel
(see Janel documentation) into the same folder and renamed it to
"thingamablog.lap".

5. Edited the LAP file to contain the following:

Code:

#Thingamablog LAP File.
janel.java.home.path=..\Java\j2re1.4.2_08
-Djava.class.path=thingamablog.jar;./lib/browser.jar;
./lib/edtftpj-1.4.7.jar;./lib/hsqldb.jar;./lib/jcalcombo.jar;
./lib/jdom.jar;./lib/jhall.jar;./lib/jhelpaction.jar;./lib/jmyspell.jar;
./lib/jsch.jar;./lib/lang.zip;./lib/plastic-1.2.1.jar;./lib/rome-0.6.jar;
./lib/rtext.jar;./lib/tb_legacy.jar;./lib/userguide.zip;
./lib/xmlrpc-1.2-b1.jar;
janel.main.class=net.sf.thingamablog.App

[/b]

Note the path to Java. I added everything in the Thingamablog Lib folder
to the classpath. Not sure if everything is required. Will check on that
later.

Also note that the classpath settings should have everything in the same
line, and not brokken up into separate lines like I have above (to make
sure the forum page does not display horizontal scroll bars).

6. Started Thingamablog via the new Janel executable.

7. Told Thingamablog to create a new Blog DB on the USB stick. I used
E:\blog_db\ as the folder name. If you already have a Thingamablog
Blog DB you could just copy it over to the stick and open it with Thingamablog.

Note that using Janel on the stick is easier than to fiddle with your
environment settings to make the default Thinga1.exe work with your
JRE-on-a-stick. This approach isolates the Thingamablog/JRE/Blog DB
into a single package that is completely portable. All you need is a
PC that supports USB, preferably USB 2.0. You don't need to have Java
installed on the PC. You have it on the stick!

I did most of this stuff during lunch at work yesterday. Took the Stick
home, connected it to the home PC, fired up Thingamablog and hit the
"Publish" button. Voila! Everything works. This morning I made a new
post to the blog using Thingamablog-on-a-stick and I now have
everything working at work. Neat  

[Bob]

gautams,

Thanks for the excellent howto! Good stuff

-Bob

[gautams]

Thanks Bob. This is the blog for which I am using Thingamablog: http://www.satpathy.in/blog/gautamsatpathy/.

Regards,

Gautam Satpathy,

[edoc]

Note that using Janel on the stick is easier than to fiddle with your
environment settings to make the default Thinga1.exe work with your
JRE-on-a-stick. This approach isolates the Thingamablog/JRE/Blog DB
into a single package that is completely portable. All you need is a
PC that supports USB, preferably USB 2.0. You don't need to have Java
installed on the PC. You have it on the stick!
D

Anyone reading this who can translate the process to the Linux world?

What might one do differently?

Also, what if one starts with a 128 usb stick and later needs to upgrade to a 512 or 1g?

May one do a backup and restore?

doc

[edoc]

Anyone loaded Thingamablog on a USB with Puppy Linux and Java?

Puppy seems a pretty robust tiny Linux which appears to easily load Java and thus readily interface with Thingamablog.

Anyone done this successfully yet?  I am puzzling re. getting the Puppy download onto my USB stick.  So far I only see ISO's of the latest release and that's CD-specific ... or am I wrong?

Thanks!  doc

[CharlieD]

Incredibly Brilliant.  I just set this up (while at work) and it works incredibly well (aside from the firewall blocking my access to the web).

[CharlieD]

I have been trying to be able to make postings from any computer using TAMB.  I set it up on my USB drive, and it works great, aside from the corporate firewall at work.  My idea for a "workaround" came to me today as I was updating the non-blog version of my site (http://www.opensourcepalm.com/flash/).  Here are my thoughts to get around the firewall.

Running "Portable Thingamablog" (as I have coined it) and posting locally to my USB drive.   Zipping all of the files and uploading them to the site using Web2FTP.com (with the Secure login-https).  

I haven't actually tried it but I will once I copy all that I have posted (ok so it's like 4 or 5 posts) to the USB drive.  I will post what my results are..

[bizulk]

Hello !
I really liked the idea to make an embedded ThingAmaBlog, Since like you i need to use the same blog as in office and at home.
I have chosen ThingAmablog since there is no blog installed in my office intranet, and some information posted must stay confidential.

Well, I think that if you put JRE in your USB and attach ThingAmaBlog to it  you will lose one interesting feature of this software : it is cross-plateform.
I think better use the J2RE installed on the computer and install ThingAmaBlog  in a multi-boot partition (FAT32 for example).

Best Regards,
bizulk

[hans]

I didn't find any of this necessary, just made a batch file into the folder with the jar file, java folder at the same level

@echo off
Start "close me" ..\Java\jre1.5.0_11\bin\javaw.exe -jar thingamablog.jar
exit

works like a charm - as far as I'm concerned TAMB is "portable" in every way right out of the box!

[jrfoleyjr]

I have a 2 gig stick that I am going to try out for this.

Thanks for the instructions!

[milleja46]

I know this is old, but you can just download the zip, that has the java executable in it, and run it from there once you extract it.