Hi all,
here’s one of my famous apologies…. I’m sorry for the lack of updates and bigfixes bugfixes (holy Freud…) for the Joomla module, but my notebook (Asus Z53, cursed be thy name) choose to spontaneously disassemble itself, so I’m now in the process of backing up data, finding an affordable replacement and generally being annoyed that computers these days last only little more than a year. I hope I’m back on my feet by middle/end next week.
I caught the flu and at the moment I consider to admit myself to the hospital, so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear anything from me for a couple of days.
I think the last PC game I played regularly was Duke Nukem (insert Duke-Nukem-Forever/Vaporware-Joke here), although I occasionally dabbled in Starcraft during my University days (but then my loyal Zerg troops were always being beaten by the annyoing Terrans from the sociology department). But, after watching some nice trailers I now consider to buy Fallout 3 for PC.
However I do not intend to buy a new computer, so I wonder if Fallout will run (run with satisfying speed, that is) on my laptop, an Asus Z53 with 2Ghz Intel Dualcore, 2 GB RAM and an Nvida GeForce graphics chip with 128 MB dedicated memory (wich probably will be the bottleneck in the system). So, can anybody contribute some real life experience regarding big games on tiny machines? Do you think this will be fun on my computer, or should I rather save up for that playstation ?
Not to me, of course – when I want money for something I name a price up front. But it’s christmas season again, and for those of us who have still some surplus money despite the recession and everything it should be the season to give.
So, if you like the stuff offered here (and judging from the number of downloads it seems there are at least 85 000 people who like my joomla modules) I would ask you to give a little to a charitable cause – I would like it best if you gave something to a childrens fund.
If for some reason you do not like children (please check with a mirror if you’re actually human) you can still do good, for example by donating a bit to a sciene-based organisation like the Planetary Society or to the excellent astronomy site Universe Today.
I wish you all happy holidays and all the best for 2009.
I am, as I believe the phrase runs, “supportive of the LGBT community”, which in practical terms (I’m really not much of a thinker) means that I will probably punch you in the face if you make anti-gay remarks in my vicinity. As important as freedom of speech is, sometimes it has to stand back to basic human decency and, in turn, sometimes decency is best expressed via a slap in the face.
Being, as it were, supportive of the LGBT community it makes me sad to read that Del Martin died last Wednesday at age 87. As early as the mid fifties Martin came out and lived openly as a lesbian, which makes her one of the bravest people I ever heard of, and she helped founding Daughters of Bilitis, the first US lesbian rights organization. Her numerous accomplishments are listed in this obituary by the National Center for Lesbian Rights; her picture went around the world a few months ago when she was finally allowed to marry Phillis Lyon, her sweetheart of 55 years.
Think about this number: 55 years. Most people would kill each other before they’d spend that much together, and they still had enough love to get married.
My best wishes go to Del Martins widow. May it be some consolation that she died only after the world had improved in a matter that was important to her and that she had fought for all her life. I assume this is the best a human being can hope for.
I guess I will think of her when I visit the wedding party of a woman I’ve known since my school days and who has now married her girl friend (unthinkable back then, and possible now only because of brave people like Del Martin).
If you’re looking for a way to commemorate her life in your own home you could pick up a science ficion novel by Ursula LeGuin, because these are books written by a strong woman that have at their core almost every time a committed relationship between two people; or you could pop “If these Walls Could Talk 2″ into your DVD player and pay special attention to the “1961″ segment, or you could just sit back for a moment and think about if there isn’t some thing you could do to make this world a little better, too.
I’m currently swamped with work and don’t have much time for blogging. But for those of my visitors who do their own HTML and Javascript I thought I share some programming problems I had in the last two days and their solution where I found one. It might be that these are things should be clear from reading the relevant standards, but I have to admit that I find the standards for HTML and Javascript hard to read and even harder to understand; my usual tactic is to look how others are doing it and follow the majority.
.. to all who wait for enhacements or bugfixes for the Joomla module. I’m recovering from a sunstroke (yes, Berlin summer is that hot) and have trouble concentrating, so everything will take longer than expected.
The german Federal Court of Justice decided that any business that publishes an e-mail-address or fax number on its’ homepage has to accept unsolicited advertising (a.k.a spam), according to the news magazine Tagesschau. The judges argued that publication of an e-mail-address constitutes implicit approval to receiving advertisments.
I hope Tagesschau got something wrong in their report, because else I would have to assume that german judges do not know german law. Because commercial ventures (and that includes me as a freelancer) are forced by law to publish their e-mail address (”Angaben, die eine schnelle elektronische Kontaktaufnahme und unmittelbare Kommunikation mit ihnen ermöglichen, einschließlich der Adresse der elektronischen Post“, § 5 TMG ).
Frankly the fact that I’m forced to do something by threat of punishment does not mean I approve of the possible consequences.
This comment is just in :
I have *tried* to move to Joomla 1.5. Unfortunatly there are a number of extensions vital to my website which will not work under 1.5, Until they are updated, I very much doubt that I’ll be able to move to 1.5. Some of this vital software isn’t even supported anymore, so the chances of it being updated for 1.5 is slim to none! I don’t have the time or the knowledge to do it myself just now. Basically all the means is – I’m screwed!
I can feel his pain… this is why I still do my best to support the content item module despite the fact that I hardly use Joomla anymore, some people depend on it.
But this is not a problem specifically with Joomla, it’s more a general problem with system that use plugins – you choose a few things you like and suddenly you find you have to depend on the goodwill of strangers to keep you site running. Not so good.
I have not yet settled for a new system to replace Joomla (I’ve done some fairly elaborate stuff in Wordpress, but that sucks on a annoyingly large number of issues when you use it as CMS) – I’m looking for something with a fairly complete set of features in the ‘core version’. The advantage of core features over plugins is simply that when the core get’s updated everything get’s updated. With plugins you usually need luck, patience, and, more often than not, a Plan B when they are being abandoned.
To add a little self-criticism, part of the problem is of course with wrong expectations that our clients and we (as in “we web developers”) have in Content Management Systems. A CMS is, after all, complex software and it should come as no surprise that a major update is tedious, expensive and requires to re-write lots of stuff. Plus prices a somewhat spoiled, and if a client sometimes pays only a few hundred bucks for a complete CMS he will probably not understand why he should pay just as much for an update. The ease of install with many CM Systems to some extent obscures the plight of maintenance.
But still, this sucks incredibly. After all people (in our case the open source ‘community’) keep telling you how easy it is to install and update Joomla (Mambo, WP, whatever), and only after you’ve hit a wall they suddenly says that you should have known from the start that there will be problems.
So here’s the advice (not directed a the original commenter who is propably not a beginner, but at the world at large): Even if the system of your choice looks dead easy be prepared for major trouble along the way. And don’t use plugins if you cannot verify that the developement team behind the plugin is as committed as the developers of your CMS (if the developers of your CMS are not committed then you are screwed anyway).
Even shorter version: When things look really easy they probably aren’t.
According to this news article a drugstore in the german city of Fulda is now prohibited from selling condoms; their landlord happens to be the catholic church which does not allow to sell “stuff that damages the reputation of the church” (”Dinge die das Ansehen der Kirche in der Öffentlichkeit herabsetzen”) within their premises.
A church official defended this by saying that the church cannot possibly condem contraceptives ex cathedra and then allow them to be sold on church property. Well, it is only consequent, but other than the man assumes two little dumb things do not cancel each other out but instead make one very very very big dumb thing.
But at least this episode sheds some light on the question how the church did get that much influence on society.
“I tried to argue with the bishop”, the district manager of the drugstore chain recalls, “but at some point you simply give up and do what they tell you.”
Damn, I knew I do something wrong; to get to the top you obviously need to be both persisent and dumb.