Super CMS

I've been assigned a task by the company that I work for to set up a new wiki since the current one was a bit slow, dull, unorganized and just screaming at its visitors "Help me!" ;-)

I was tempted enough to just upgrade to the newer version since that would mean the quickest easiest path without having to manually migrate the content. Fortunately, my boss insisted that I find something where we can start over from scratch that can handle all we want and get the developers back to using the wiki as it currently sits there being idle.

I was excited to hear that I didn't have to migrate any data to any new wiki, so the search was on to find a newer, faster, better wiki (I won't mention the one we used, could be bad for them ;-) ).

We tried Deki-Wiki but it was such a hassle to install without the VMWare route. Everything had to be done manually, then a setup page had to be completed, then some more manual configuration, only to find that apache didn't want to work anymore, since Deki-Wiki has its own internal 'server'. Look DekiWiki looks fabulous (except I didn't get a chance to see what other functionality it had) and seems great but it wasn't worth the hassle.

We looked at other wikis like Media Wiki but it was too 'open' for our taste, we needed more ACL control, as in be able to set permissions or rights for viewing/editing/etc per person/group and to block content from non-registered viewers.

Then I thought: "What about CMS solutions"?
I remembered Joomla, and tried that. Already things were much better but unfortunately Joomla lacked the following, otherwise I might have considered using it:

• Revision control
• Group/Role rights managements (can individually set page rights but is totally inadequate)
• General discussion boards, ie. Forums
• Scripting ability
• Can't block non-registered users from viewing content unless you specifically mark each page with a 'registered' right instead of a 'public' one.
  

There were some other points but I can't remember what they were.

It installed VERY EASILY, the admin pages were astounding and the web pages looked so wonderful, especially if you found the right skin (even on default).
I felt sorry because it looked so great, I even went to the module pages to see if some people developed some modules that could fill the gaps but I didn't find any that met the eye.

So I went to its brother system 'Drupal'. It sounds like a german (or something) name for a water drop (as to the Afrikaans term 'druppel') as the logo suggests.
Drupal looked interresting but I thought that I was just going to find some missing features yet again (and I was right... well somewhat).
I downloaded, installed (also VERY EASILY) and so far I was quite impressed. I could choose between MySQL & PostgreSQL (unlike Joomla which featured only MySQL since PHP and MySQL is well coupled).
By default, Drupal doesn't have everything we needed, so I visited the modules page to find:

• Desired page ACL control
• Good editor (Drupal doesn't come standard with a rich text editor)
• Pagination tags (breaking up long articles/stories into pages via a tag)
• Page concurrency control via a 'check out' system (not ideal but at least it will prevent 2 people from making changes to a page at the same time, unlike other wikis and CMSs)
  
• And much more

Drupal comes standard with these:

• Blogs
• Tags
• Forums
• Page content (custom types too)
  
• Excellent logging and monitoring
• Adequate ACL
• Skins
• Modules
• Notification (system or by clicking on a user's contact page to send that person an e-mail from the web interface)
• Revision control (need to enable that per page)
• Categories
• Comments
• News aggregation
  
• Scheduled tasks (using Unix's CRON and Windows's Schedule service)
• PHP scripting
• Role based assignment to users
• And so much more

Drupal comes standard with some modules as well that needs to be enabled but you can have a look at them. Since Drupal is PHP based, it already feels much faster than our current wiki and content can be nicely categorized, even in a forum.

I can't wait to start to implement this on our companies new server and to start setting things up.
I am very impressed with Drupal. If I were to rate it, I would give it 95% (since you need to install some modules that adds missing functionality, so much effort! ;-) ).

In the end, you need to find something that does what you want it to. I found Drupal and would recommend it to anyone.

Google's power-saving alternative

I read my PC Format mag yesterday and there was an article about Blackle...

Blackle is a custom Google search engine which is predominately black. Why? No, nothing to do with occult or anything. Apparently a researcher has discovered that for a screen to draw a black screen requires less energy than drawing a white one (details are on the Blackle site's about page: www.blackle.com).
I thought it might be a good idea to switch to blackle and maybe even do my part for the environment, since I use Google a lot (like most people) and since the Google's page is white.

The Blackle page isn't that bad looking, in fact I find it easier on the eyes since everything is dark and my eyes are sensitive to bright screens. My brothers always adjust my screen to a brighter setting if they're using my pc.

So why not give it a try and if you don't mind setting your homepage from Google to Blackle, you too could help save energy, one watt at a time ;-)

Hath Hell No Fury?

I have stumbled yet again but I landed on a site very interesting and intriguing. This site challenges some beliefs we have about death and hell.

Read it for yourself, and be the judge.
It certainly provided a new view point of Hell and those who're going to visit it.
One thing inside which I do want to highlight is, that it claims the Bible to say that people die in Hell for ever but they don't burn there forever (or they won't be dying forever).

http://www.helltruth.com/

Web Linux

This is the weirdest (and maybe even one of the coolest) things I saw on the web...

Imagine Ubuntu but right from your Firefox browser! I don't know how the guy did it but it seems very real and nice! (Except the menus isn't working).
Go to the site and give it a try. Its fast and you can also browse within a Firefox browser in Wubuntu (Web Ubuntu).

http://wubuntu.weejewel.net/

WikiMatrix

A great site for finding the Wiki you want.

I sort of stumbled across this website that gives you the ability to view and compare all the different kinds of Wikis on the internet, both retail and free. I would definitely recommend you visit this site first and choose the wiki you want/need.

It gives you a very good sate of information, from licensing to security, coding tags to server requirements, etc. It really tells you everything you need to know. Also, you can complete a "Choice Wizard" that helps you determine the kind of Wikis that are right for what you want.

WikiMatrix

E-mail Icon Generator

For those who didn't know (like me until now ;) ), a site that takes your email address and generates a nice image containing your e-mail address.

You can generate your own here.
This usually helps guard your inbox from spammers who sends out bots to capture e-mail addresses and allows (at the same time) visitors to get your e-mail address. Also it looks nice and neat.

Blog Hacks

Today I have accidentally discovered the wonderful world of Blogger hacks.

Now you can read long posts by clicking on the "Read more..." link and the rest of the post will just pop up (I thought I might as well use peekaboos since loading the post's own page is a waste of time and bandwidth and you have to load the entire blog front page in order to hide the "Read More" side) and you will notice that I have also added an automated "Digg It" button which gets added to all my posts automatically.

I am hoping to find more cool hacks which could prove useful and wonderful in the future which I want to add.

If you're interested here are 2 major cool Blogger hacking sites:

Hackosphere
Blogger Hacks


I also added this one: :)
The Last Word

It allows me to add smilies to my blog post automatically. Unfortunately it isn't done at the server side but the author took some convention and made the browser replace all the characters that resembles facial expressions not at page load time but after the page is loaded, which doesn't delay the load of my blog. You will see some characters one moment and then its a smiley the next.

I also have discovered that when you click on the "Older Posts" link, its as if the page doesn't reload and the "Read More" with the smilies doesn't get applied on the page. But don't worry, as long as you click on labels, links, etc. anything other than the post navigation links such as "Older Posts" and "Newer Posts" links, it will work just fine.

Another discovery (recently) was that the "Read More" links doesn't work so well with browsers such as Opera and Konqueror. While the page loads, it is fine but after it is done, you cannot expand or colapse the post anymore. I'll look into it when I have some time available.

PI

PI, only a small fraction of what it could become ;) :
http://www.zenwerx.com/pi.php

Software List

This is a list of software/libraries which I recommend or like or find interresting:

• - Great Web browser
• - Great e-mail client
• - Great free Office Package
• - Cross-platform Framework for Python/C++
• - A web development IDE, looks like Eclipse's. Supports Web scripts such as the basic stuff plus PHP, Ruby on Rails and Ajax.
  

• DevC++ - C/C++ IDE
• wxDevC++ - Its DevC++ but with wxWidgets From Designer
• Code::Blocks - Very Good C/C++ IDE (until RC3, use the night builds)
• 7zip - Free archive utility, fast and supports many archive formats for Windows (GUI) and Linux (apparently command line).
  
• Free download manager - An Open Source, Windows download manager that competes well with the commercial app: Download Accelerator Plus.
• Update Checker - Scans your Windows PC and displays the applications that have newer versions on the net.
  
• Komposer - Frontpage open source clone
• NSIS - Installer creator (for Windows)
  
• HM NIS - Installer creator GUI (needs NSIS)
• e-Sword - Great Bible study program (for Windows)
  
• StarDict - Dictionary software. Very useful!
  
• Doxygen - Documentation generation
• YAReG - Reiser FS partition browser for Windows
• Netbeans - Very good JAVA IDE (for many platforms). Now has more support for other languages, etc. as well.
  
• Tortoise SVN - A very good Windows Subversion GUI
• log4# - Very good logging system (# being many languages: java, .net, c++, etc.)
• Python - A popular interpreted language
  
• PyScriptor - A good IDE for Python
• Ruby - A popular scripting language
  
• Launchy - Open source keystroke launcher for Windows
• Poderosa - Poderosa is a tabbed terminal emulator for Windows.
• Ultra Explorer - A very good Windows Explorer alternative
• Console - A nice Windows Console alternative
  

Here is a list of software/libraries which I found and would like to use (basically future reference):

• c++ check - c/c++ code checking. Checks for these bugs: memory leaks, mismatching allocation-deallocation, buffer overrun, dangerous usage of 'memset', badly defined overloaded operators. Checks for code improvements: redundant code, rewriting standard function.
• Design Pattern Automation Toolkit - A toolkit to design applications using design patterns, with facility to generate code, and reverse engineering. Drag and Drop facility to create UML Class diagrams Support to write custom plug-ins for code generators and reverse engineering.
• Sharp Develop - Very good alternative to Visual Studio for C#
• Loki - Many OpenSource projects (including the popular Linux installer creator as the one of UT 2004)

Sites of note:

• C# Source - A website dedicated to C# libraries and Frameworks.
• Java(TM) Source - A website dedicated to Java libraries and Frameworks.
  

Free Ubuntu & Kubuntu CD delivery

Those of you who've heard of Ubuntu being shipped for free can now get Kubuntu which is Ubuntu but with KDE rather than Gnome.

Kubuntu
https://shipit.kubuntu.org/

Ubuntu
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

My Linux questions answered (part 1)

Hi.
I have a couple of links here that I have made at Linux Questions.org's forums which I hope you might find useful.
SAMBA Sample
Problem setting up iBurst USB-terminal on SuSE Remote connection to KInternet
Kernel module with multiple source files compilation problem
Compiling a Kernel Module for User Mode Linux
A program to rip audio to a RAW file (Linux Programming)

Yes these are all Linux type questions, so if you have problem with stuff like that, then I hope this would be useful to you.

EDIT: I've updated the title to a more associative one.