November 2004 Archives
Windows XP has a nice function to keep your task bar organised by grouping windows of the same application. Apparently Windows considers Firefox to be the same application as Windows Explorer :-D
In my quest for a good CMS I have been looking at eZ Publish this week, and my first reaction is: "wow!"
It looks very slick, very complete, very customisable, well thought out, ... but also looks very daunting to implement.
The sky is the limit, since you can create your own content classes, but this involves also a lot of scripting templates to get the functionality to work. Previously I have been looking at Mambo Open Source, which is very easy to use, but has no fine-grained control --- I just want to decide what HTML elements are used in templates. eZ Publish does give me this low-level control, but at a price: template design is more complicated.
Still I guess that I am willing to invest the time to learn the template scripting language, since eZ Publish has many benefits. The biggest benefit is that it can handle everything I do with external scripts: searching, guest book, forum, ... Secondly, its multi-language implementation is great; the properties of each object can be entered in several languages, which will be shown to the visitor depending on the site access used.
I still have to play around a lot more to get to know its possibilities better, but I certainly have a very good feeling about this software.
The easiest way for a club, company or organisation to have a webshop is CafePress. You can upload your logo and select which products you want to offer, and they take care about taking orders, printing the products and shipment. Works like a charm, but they are USA-based. That means that European customers will ahve to pay extra shipment costs, which makes the items rather expensive. So I am looking for companies like CafePress with facilities in Europe to lower the costs.
So far I have found T-Shirt Zoo and spreadshirt, both of which look reasonable, but not as slick as CafePress. T-Shirt Zoo has a very small assortiment, and spreadshirt is only available in German. Are there any other companies like these available in Europe?
It's time for some punk!!!
Dirty Girl from Boobie Trap.
Each year I look at the artists playing at the Dutch Noorderslag festival, since those are the artists that are very likely to break through during the coming year.
I just received a message from Apesjit in which they state that they are going to play on that important festival. I really hope that they are one of the bands that are going to break through next year!
Although I am not a fan of these 80x15 buttons, I noticed that TotalChoice Hosting does not have them. So I went to the Button Maker page, and made some buttons.
They are free to use for everybody.
One of the nicest traditions in Catalonia is the 'correfoc' --- corre = run and foc = fire.
The Catalans love any excuse to have a correfoc, a riotous fiesta of sparklers, firecrackers, and roman candles, where colles de diables, or brigades of devils and dragons, dance threateningly to the strains of an accompanying percussion band as they weave through a startled and delighted public. In order to save your clothes, there is only one remedy: jump so the sparks roll off. We filmed a correfoc at October 8 in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, so you can see a little bit how it is:
Video file: Correfoc.mpg (5,93 Mb)
Tomorrow evening we will take the plane to the Netherlands for a short holiday. We will stay there until Wednesday.
I'm afraid that we don't have a lot of opportunities to meet you, since we will spend the weekend with my parents and my sister. In the little time left after the weekend we have many obligations, but will try to meet as much friends as possible. We will bring the DVD of our holidays to keep you away from meeting us. :-D
Wednesday we will also take the photos from our wedding with us to Spain, so there is little time left if you did not see it yet.
This week the most important IT fair in Spain takes place: the Simo TCI. Of course ICG Software is present; we have a big stand together with our Master Providers. As a result, the office is very empty this week, since most of our commercial department is in Madrid.
We will be presenting version 5 of our software, which brings real-time communication between shops or restaurants and the central office.
I just installed Firefox ---the Spanish version---, which went flawlessly. It placed the files and updated my extensions. But after one hour I saw a new icon on my screen:
Apparantly there are updates available, only one hour after I installed it. Almost surely this is an external extension that has quickly been updated after the new release of Firefox, but it will confuse new users.
Technorati has launched a new service: Top MP3s. They monitor which MP3 files have the most references in the last 48 hours, and publish their results as a handy list. I used the list to add two songs to the jukebox: Wonderwall from Oasis and White Wedding from Billy Idol.
This is the obligatory "If you can read this, the move was successful" message. Moving to the new server was very easy, I only had to give my cPanel details to the support staff, and ten minutes later they had my site and e-mail up and running.
There was only one Perl module missing to get my applications going, which was fixed in another two minutes. Now I have to wait for the new DNS settings to propagate. This was a lot easier than I thought!
I have made my choice: this site is moving to TotalChoice Hosting. I have looked at many hosting providers, and TCH appeared to be the best choice for me. I was looking for a hosting provider with more or less the same characteristics as my current provider; I only want a little bit bigger company to prevent problems. In the past I have read good comments about TCH's performance and service, and their prices are incredible. I now have 1Gb of space waiting to be filled! This is probably the last post I publish on the old server. Once my new account becomes active I will check it ---since both providers use cPanel, they are able to copy the whole site for me--- and pull the switch. See you on the other side!
The hosting provider for this site ---bloghosts--- is stopping. Anybody knows a good provider?
