More geeky stuff… (too much time on my hands to screw around with technicalities?)

I was playing with Zenphoto, and it is a heck of promise as far as a gallery script replacement for my site. I even managed to run it on this server, which was, quite as usual, quite challenging because its software is outdated.

Even mod_rewrite functionality (the one responsible for pretty urls) seems to work.

The value added to my current script is that ZP seems well written, works on the database as a decent script should work and supports comments, rewriting, and quite a few other features that I miss. It is likely that I would manage to integrate it with Wordpress as well.

But a show stopper for me is lack of sub-albums support. It should be part of the next release, and hopefully it will come out soon, because the script itself is really the best I have across so far, its issues with my server notwithstanding.

Update: Judging from the author’s plans, it might take quite long before the subalbums functionality will see the daylight. But I can wait, probably. No better option on the horizon, anyway.
(weird feeling about this open source software, you peek into author’s life and discount his personal plans)

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I found an article that helped me to bypass the original problem, here:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/62057

The workaround seems quite rough and I’m not sure if there aren’t any side effects, but it does its job.

Everything seemed to be fine, except for the SPGM gallery, whose rewriting rules, as usual, got broken… I must roll back again and postpone this fun till weekend (2.5 hours wasted so far).

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I decided to upgrade to Wordpress 2.0 this evening. First I started on my test site, ie. on the account I still have on the university server.

I copied the files, made database backup, uploaded new wordpress in, copied old files into its directory, renamed old wordpress installation to make the way for new one, renamed the new one to take over. Ran the upgrade script. Script said it worked. And the site itself… bingo, everything fine!

Looks cute, this new version, and this shiny post editor. Right away I start with my “production” facility.

I copied the files, made database backup, uploaded new wordpress in, copied old files into its directory, renamed old wordpress installation to make the way for new one, renamed the new one to take over. Ran the upgrade script. Script said it worked. And the site itself…

500 Internal Server Error

S H I T

1 hour of unsuccessful tries to repair the thing.

I rolled back. Thanks God the database backup was flawless…

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Przemek decided to give it a try:

http://spammax123.wordpress.com/

I worked with Przemek in ConQuest Consulting. He is less masochistic than me, so he writes in Polish.

But still, I wish more will follow soon, I feel we are so far behind with the blogging thing.

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I’m just trying to recover from our yesterday’s outing, which this time took us to Bemowo airport.

Before that, our ever-growing consulting workforce barely found enough space in a cinema theater and took its annual dose of success stories and outstanding results achieved during the last year. Seems that we are doing truly fine, and plan to get even better. (read more…)

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“Your site is very informative, interesting and a certain daily visit for critical weather information. Thank you.”

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Yesterday I took part in an annual meeting of ConQuest Consulting. For those who may not know, ConQuest is a student consulting association, till recently the only one of kind in Poland. I worked with CQC for something like three years, starting as an IT support, and leaving after serving as a board member.

First of all, congrats to the new Board and Monika, the next President!

(read more…)

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In order to choose a wiki for one of my pet projects I had to spend quite a few weekend hours on comparing, demoing and testing things available on the market. There are lots of them, and I had little background to start with. As a matter of fact, my experience with wikis is limited to Wikipedia… and it’s only reader’s experience.

Eventually, I decided to go with Wikispaces.

I thought my expectations towards wiki to be quite typical, so I was quite surprised that it was so hard to find a suitable solution. My basic requirements for the wiki were the following:

• Should be hosted
• Should preferably look as simple and clean as Wikipedia
• Should preferably NOT look or feel like Sharepoint
• Should demand as little overhead as possible ? for example provide a WYSIWYG editor
• Should be cheap, at least in the beginning

I found some helpful sites giving an overview of the wiki landscape, including:

• Wiki page with list of wiki solutions
• WikiMatrix? really nicely done dynamic matrix comparing different wikis

In the end I established some intimacy with the following wikis:

• Confluence
• Editme
• eTouch SamePage
• Jotspot
• Socialtext
• Stikipad
• Wikispaces

Below, rather than a detailed review (I have full time job, sorry), a report on impressions along the way. (read more…)

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(On the second day I remembered to have _both_ camera and charged batteries with me, so no more lame photos from phone camera)

(read more…)

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I?ve not walked Cracow for something like 10 years.

I could fall in love with the city, whose old town streets and squares easily impress, even if I have Wroclaw as a worthy comparison.

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And in brief, I enjoy it. It?s like discovering the whole new side of the world. Sure the writing presents a challenge, but everything is so different that it?s actually pleasure to explore ? so far.

Writing aside, the sounds seem similar, at least when you are starting from Polish (as someone said, every language is just a subset of Polish). Still we haven?t touched the tonal stuff yet.

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I started to search for online collaboration solution and immediately found several sites as interesting as totally irrelevant to my topic, including:

1. Google Trends
2. Pandora music service

(rather unexpectedly, I was directed to both by one of the company’s internal blogs)

Google Trends allows you to input a keyword and see a nice chart presenting the news and search volume for this keyword changing in the course of time. Moreover, you can input several keyword and see them stacked together on a chart.

Pandora, on the other hand, is a music service. It’s a music serendipity engine, to give this entry a double bottom. I am so impressed that I will probably devote a separate article just to it. Do not wait, though - give it a try now!

Serendipity definition:

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
3. An instance of making such a discovery.

A word I was first introduced to by Nick Carr’s article, here. Note interesting discussion on whether Internet is enhancing or killing our ability to experience true serendipity.

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As an input to my ongoing considerations about benefits from writing this blog - which I am hardly writing recently due to lack of time - I’ve recently discovered that people actually use it to check out what I’m doing, and sometimes get back to me if they find it interesting. At least Jacek did when he learned that I’m going to learn Chinese.

To make it more general - there are few more important things in making progress with anything than making it clear to people around where are you heading and what you are passionate about. The message travels fast across the social networks and often, in a totally unexpected way, someone appears out of nowhere and offers help or advise.

It’s natural and reciprocal. I always forward stuff or extend help to people who I know are passionate about something. I never forward anything nor, to be honest, care much about people who are passionate about nothing.

So, to get you updated on the things I am trying to do at this very moment:)

1) Design my apartment in a Japanese style (but no sleeping on the floor)

2) Find a virtual project space, with file storage, wiki & blog possibly included.

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