Why:
* do people code in medieval style?
* do people ignore the signs of the time?

I guess I need to find a quick and easy solution to make osCommerce work on php5. *phew*

– 10 minutes later –

here’s some quick stuff which seems to work for the installation:

cd includes
vi php5_enabled.php

$HTTP_GET_VARS 	= isset($_GET) 	? $_GET 	: null;
$HTTP_POST_VARS = isset($_POST) ? $_POST 	: null;
$HTTP_COOKIE_VARS = isset($_COOKIE) ? $_COOKIE : null;

.htaccess

php_value session.use_trans_sid 0
php_value register_globals 1
php_value auto_prepend_file includes/php5_enabled.php

and et voila!

Database Import
The database import was successful!
osCommerce Configuration
The configuration was successful!


but that would have been to easy!

I needed to change also in catalog/admin/includes/application_top.php

// line 131 from $current_page = basename($PHP_SELF); to
$current_page = (basename($PHP_SELF)!='') ? basename($PHP_SELF) : 'index.php';

and now it seems to work

I’ve met a lot of people during the time and I have NEVER ever met anyone who was able to give me a good structured text document for a website. So-called professionals work sometimes like bloody beginners.

First of all: THINK STRUCTURED – because a website is a structured thing!

Which means, you should use structured formatting or at least a logical scheme. Think »webbish« and try to visualize it. If you don’t like to format in Word and or OO and of course in case of WYSIWYG editors in some CMS, formatting is sometimes not so good – then think of something else.

Let’s start with an imaginary Website:

Think in links
… and the complete structure would be:

/
/news/
/news/archive/
/products/
/products/fruits/
/products/vegetables/
/products/juices/
/about_us/
/contact/

It is self-explanatory!

However – that seems to be to complicated for some people and so they come up with something fancy like this:

Category Home start site
Category News start site
Category News sub page Archive
Category Products start site
Category Products sub page fruits
Category Products sub page vegetables
Category Products sub page juices
Category about us start site
Category contact start site

Well ok, that would be ok, when we assume the site is in only one language but oops – the site is in german, frensh, english and spanish and you know only 2 of them and they translate also the structure. Dude and there are not only 9 pages but at least 50 with a much deeper depth of sub pages! And guess what? That sucks!

Sub page of category products sub page specials sub page nice price gadgets ...

I believe in you all and know you will do better next time and that’s why I have another suggestion for your next word file. Lets assume a page consists out of a headline, a teaser, a main text, some links and a few pictures. Then I’d love to see your article like this:

Page: /products/fruits/
Headline: Delicious and healthy fruits
Header Image: fruits_001.jpg
Teaser: We are very pleased to say that our products are only organic and seasonal fruits. It is our enviromentall resposibility and debt and of course your grant for high quality food supply.
Main text:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in [ reprehenderit in voluptate http://example.com/content.html ] velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Do you know why it makes sense to do it like in the example above? No? Ok, then let me give you some reasons:

• simple copy and paste
• no need to extract something out of the word file (ie. Images)
• better access to media files (and if I say »never embed something in a wordfile« – then I mean it)
• no need to use the contextual menus to copy a link
• if you use the markup of the brackets to show what should be »linked«, then you don’t need to link it in real
• if something is missing, you and I can see it right away and or add a note /nT, which means »no text«

To make it more easier:

• provide complete and valid links, always using http:// and test them all
• Make use of a understandable and efficient naming convention for files
  • no special characters (for images, downloads, etc)
  • no white spaces (for images, downloads, etc)
  • no bullshit like: »copy of website text english.doc«
    Name it »english.doc«, because it is obvious that the text you send me is for the website and that it contains text, because it is a text document. If you have more files like »»terms of use«, privacy statements«, then name it but pleeeeeeeease without any irrelevant words like text or website – because I assume you have sent me an email with the subject: »english text for website xyz«
  • you may use revision numbers (1.1, 1.2)

–

Software Tip: (to visualize structures / ideas)
Inspriration
Visio

It looks good. Which means it has a nice UI but for somehow some things seems to me me irrational or not logic and besides that I am disappointed by the amount of table layout stuff. Hello Joomla developer: We are in the mid of 2007 and not in the 90′s!

Well the performance is ok and there are a lot of extensions out there but again: do not use f*****g tables for layout!

STFU and get serious!

It’s easy to chill, hang out with friends, do party and all those lovely things but seriously – sometimes you need to get serious. Unplug the Phone, shut down the messenger and do not complain about your work – stfu and just do it. Once you are done – you are done and you can have fun again.

To me it means: no women, no friends, no rave, no alc, no stupid phone calls, nor sms. I really need to setup joomla for a site and finish the basics until Sun/evening. Besides that I’m going on Sat to help spreading the word for droppingknowledge again, by acting as G-Ape or selling cool t-shirts.

Yesterday I’ve downloaded and tried to install DSL (Damn Small Linux) as X as well running it as Live-CD. The latest release from DSL uses for somehow an old Qemu release and I couldn’t start the graphical interface. After downloading the latest Qemu release for Windows and replacing some files witting the embedded version I was able to start it. Actually I liked it. It’s a handy dist for USB-like-devices. I wish my OpenWRT would run in graphic mode and the router were easier to extend with an USB-HD. That would be really nice – something like DSL on my Linksys with an additional 1GB USB Stick. Well, there is a web server on OpenWRT but I configure everything via ssh. However when I checked out Dillo, I figured out there’s no CSS support and no java script. It gave me a good insight into how sites can look like. When I develop sites, I use to check them with JS, CSS and images disabled – but I never thought that there are still some browsers besides lynx, who run with minimal features like Dillo. A lil bit annoying was the non ability to access my dvd from witting DSL. I recon it’s because of the emu but I am not pretty sure

Today I’ll try to unlock my PDA (MDA Pro/HTC Universal). I’ve still found a patch some days ago to do it – but I guess it can be tricky. And no – I will not try to install some linux dist on it I’ll be in London over New Year and got a second SIM card but atm my MDA doesn’t like non t-mobile cards. I really hate manufactures/retailers for »locking« things.

Another funny thing will be, to write a redirect for a WP Site. Of course it’s pretty easy to simply redirect but I want 301 Redirects for every article. I guess it will take an hour including moving WP to another domain. I have something on my mind but I guess I have to check out the mod rewrite cheat sheet again. Capturing simple Get Requests is easy, but Permalinks,… I never tried to capture it.

Capture > Captcha! Today I’ll write a little captcha class for my work – because we still need such class – to inhibit bots spaming some sites. I’m not really sure how to do it – I mean to write it sophisticated and 100% bot save. There will be no 100% I guess but it’s worth a try.

I’ve just wgett’d and »installed« the blacklist* from: http://www.sa-blacklist.stearns.org/ because I’m so sick of damn spam and additional added *@message.myspace.com and other, because they keep on sending fucking mails but I am no member anymore (as you can read right here). Hopefully this radical action will reduce unwanted mails a bit. YAY!

I have reinstalled my system and I was very irritated that my host file is ignored by xp. But luckily windows resolves names in a few more steps than linux. If you have the same problem, here is a solution

Basicly windows resolves names in the following order:

1. cache
2. host file located in %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc
3. DNS server lookup (tcp/ip settings)
4. WINS server lookup (tcp/ip settings)
5. lmhosts also located in %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc

I haven’t tryed to modify DNS/WINS server (you can only enter an IP Address) but therefore the lmhosts and it works very fine for me. Inside lmhosts are some examples and it’s basicly the same syntax as for the hostfile.

Additions:

In my case ip6 caused this behaviour, because of its notation. Switching back to ip4 will solve it