Although it is unclear how it came about, the URL used by the FeedEk application that handles Grammar Captive’s WordPress RSS feeds was pointing to the wrong web address. It is suspected that WordPress underwent a modification that rendered the old link obsolete. In any case, after some research the problem has been resolved, and you can once again observe Grammar Captive’s development as it happens.
Roddy
A full month has past without any news. This is because making the transition to Bitbucket has been slow on the one hand, and Grammar Captive’s founder and up until now sole developer has been very busy with personal matters on the other.
It has recently been noticed that the RSS feeds have disappeared on the Grammar Captive mainpage. As there is no obvious evidence of malfunction — at least, none other than their absence — it is suspected that the absence of new posts is the cause.
Let’s see.
Roddy
Two-factor authentication has been added to Grammar Captive’s WordPress site. It is one additional layer of security to ward off unwanted intruders and mischief-makers.
The credits that went missing several months ago, when the current version of Grammar Captive was replaced with a less contemporary back-up have finally been restored. Also, new credits are on their way! These latter must wait, however, until Grammar Captive has realized its first online, team effort using Atlassian’s Bitbucket versioning software.
It is the recent implementation of this software that has created the delay in the uploading of Grammar Captive’s new, multilingual GC Tutor pages.
Setting up Bitbucket is likely an easy task for most. The current soft- and hardware constraints to which Grammar Captive will remain subject for some time into the future has made the integration of this software especially difficult.
Alas, unlike corrupt government’s around the world, Grammar Captive must live and develop within its means.
Roddy
A sound understanding of the grammar of one’s target language can greatly accelerate one’s mastery of the target language as a whole. A sound understanding of the grammar of one’s own native language makes learning the grammar of one’s target language so much easier.
There are plenty of native English speakers on the internet looking to make a buck, but there are few who can teach their own language’s grammar very well. There are far many fewer who can provide that knowledge in the native language of their own students.
The multilingual nature of Grammar Captive is an important first advantage in such a market place. During the week ahead Grammar Captive will develop a language specific, GC Tutor, introductory page for each of Grammar Captive’s second languages.
First on the list is English to Arabic.
Roddy
GIT is a kind of versioning software that is widely used among software developers. It is designed for orderly team development and has been newly introduced as an integral part of the Grammar Captive project.
Mind you there is still a lot to learn about the use of GIT and BitBucket, but already a private repository for Grammar Captive has been created and an invitation sent out and accepted. Thank you, Atlassian!
In order to grow one must make room for others. BitBucket is Grammar Captive’s first step in this direction.
Roddy
Already a year and several months have past since hardware failure beset nudge.online and pushed the Grammar Captive project into the software Dark Ages. At the time the ability to send copies of the Seven Gates newsletter to Grammar Captive newbies was indefinitely suspended. As there were still no podcasts, there was little need for the newsletter, and the entire routine of account sign-up, sender confirmation, visitor verification, and automated delivery of the first edition of the Seven Gates newsletter was left to languish. As there is renewed hope for an upcoming launch, this routine has been restored along with several improvements:
It is good to be producing useful user content again.
Roddy
Now when you click where it says Click and Read after performing a Newsletter or QA search using Grammar Captive’s custom search engines, your smartphone automatically scrolls to the head of the newsletter. It was a bit of enigma to get it to work, but it greatly improves the user-experience.
Also, if you tab after entering your search phrase, you will go directly to the required number field. The tab functionality of the Reset button has been purposely cancelled, and you no longer have to tab twice to reach the number’s input box.
Roddy
Grammar Captives modified version of ImagelessCaptcha is now complete. All future keyword searches in Grammar Captive’s custom search engines (see the Local Search menu in the navigation bar on the Grammar Captive mainpage) — will require a Captcha entry before the search can be processed.
Minor dysfunctionality in presentation format remains, but the primary functionality is now well in place. Hooray! Hooray!
Installing Imageless Captcha has been a very involved process that has revealed other problems that need to be address. Recovery from the hardware failure from the summer of last year is still not complete. Obsolete software on an obsolete machine has let to important version incompatibility with the Grammar Captive website.
Because of the complexity of the Grammar Captive site even more problems can be expected in the future. For the moment, the mail function no longer works as it should, and the code must be upgraded. This and the installation of a GIT repository will take priority for the moment.
Have a great week!
Roddy
In light of recent suspected hacking and a future need for team development Grammar Captive is taking a pause to set up a GIT Repository with Version Control. The remote depository will be hosted at Atlassian’s BitBucket and the local depository will be set up with cPanel on Grammar Captive’s Lunarpages server.
The short term benefits of this extraordinary change in workflow will be the ability to track all changes to files in Grammar Captive’s development folder.
The long term benefits will be a platform whereby multiple developers can can collaborate on the development of Grammar Captive’s functionality in a secure and shared environment. Think of it as a development chat room with monitored read and write access to the folders and files on the Grammar Captive website.
Up until now the development of Grammar Captive has been pretty much a solo development project with indirect outside support. This has placed the entire burden of development on me — a novice developer who is learning as he goes along.
Preparing for the future.
Roddy
Grammar Captive’s custom captcha has finally been implemented. You can experiment with it using Grammar Captive’s Newsletter custom search engine in the navigation bar on the GC mainpage.
