Fabulous and fun was the way Hans Matthias Olwage had his exhibition opened at the school of arts last night for which his close friend Boris Vukasovic sponsored decadent catering that was just delightful.
Willem Boshoff revealed Hans to us in appropriately endearing terms, commending him for his creativity and non conformity. One can overlook the dearly innocent person Hans really is by misjudging his art. Willem used the Latin 'extravagari' that translates 'to wander beyond' associated with the fact that Hans walks just about everywhere he goes. And in spirit of Hans' ability to challenge the norm changed our perspective on the word extravagant by keeping quiet at that part of his sentence so we could fill in the gap after he took it apart cleverly.
Too bad if you missed out on the fun last night. Fortunately Hans is still there during the upcoming days from 10:00 till 16:00 until the 2nd June. And it is well worth your while to pop in and have a look. I do not consider myself a conventional thinker and had some of my conventions challenged. In the potentially heavy and serious subject matter your sense of humour will not be disappointed. I am not going to give away more over here. Go and have a look. Failing that you can connect with him on facebook and see some of his pieces which will regrettably lack the impact of the full bandwith real life exposure.
The National School Of The Arts,
17 Hoofd Street, Johannesburg, 011 339 6539
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Being mobile could be cool but it's tough for South Africans
Today I downloaded Connectbot to this Android phone to make an ssh connection to a server where I am busy upgrading a Drupal installation. I could also attend to details using this browser.
I want to bitch about how slow 3g is and the fact that MTN prematurely expired my data bundle and they set up an extremely incompetent and powerless help desk to bring greatfrustration to their customers. As if their predatory business practise is not bad enough. Why are the cell phone networks in South Africa allowed to treat us the way they do?
A friend wants an iphone app for taxi routes and hand signals. I wonder if she really believes that people who use taxis will spend such fortunes while most of them are earning less than the cheapest phone contract in Europe. Is it possible that we suffer all this abuse for the foreign shareholders to oppress us in a new way?
Should I be contributing to a system that treat people like this? Does anyone know of alternatives? The other monopoly has been tacking the piss much longer. Do we really have no say in this? Is talk and bitch all to be done?
It is believable considering that the government expects workers to pay for their employers electricity. Citezens have to subsidize industry energy use? Revenge for all the unreported theft parhaps? Or is the machine simply stronger than man? There are some scary fantasies about robots becomming or turning out evil but it is really someone somewhere who fails to care at the right moment.
sulk...
I want to bitch about how slow 3g is and the fact that MTN prematurely expired my data bundle and they set up an extremely incompetent and powerless help desk to bring greatfrustration to their customers. As if their predatory business practise is not bad enough. Why are the cell phone networks in South Africa allowed to treat us the way they do?
A friend wants an iphone app for taxi routes and hand signals. I wonder if she really believes that people who use taxis will spend such fortunes while most of them are earning less than the cheapest phone contract in Europe. Is it possible that we suffer all this abuse for the foreign shareholders to oppress us in a new way?
Should I be contributing to a system that treat people like this? Does anyone know of alternatives? The other monopoly has been tacking the piss much longer. Do we really have no say in this? Is talk and bitch all to be done?
It is believable considering that the government expects workers to pay for their employers electricity. Citezens have to subsidize industry energy use? Revenge for all the unreported theft parhaps? Or is the machine simply stronger than man? There are some scary fantasies about robots becomming or turning out evil but it is really someone somewhere who fails to care at the right moment.
sulk...
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Drupal makes life so much easier it's just beautiful.
It can actually be very easy and convenient to roll out an advanced application.
With Drupal you can create a content type, export it as a feature, extract the feature to the modules directory, open the exported .module file, add some relevant code and export the feature so your customer can easily install it.
The user story went something along the following lines. To get an insurance quote, collect information from a user. Submit the collected data to a webservice which will return a quoted premium which the user can then accept or decline. Some prompts went to the user interface and other details were emailed to various parties including an XML update to another administration system.
It was a matter of creating a new content type with CCK and exporting it as a feature using the features module. This conveniently creates all the files that make up a module. It creates a compressed tar which has to be extracted to the modules directory on your Drupal installation with tar xzf exportedfeaturefilename.tgz and then enabled in the modules administration.
In the myfeaturemodule.module file a menu call back was added for a admin form which was coded right there using the forms api. And voila, an admin page where an administrator could add configuration settings like the webservice endpoint and authentication details. It is worth mentioning that the persistence of these settings was taken care of with drupal's variable_get() function that stores it in it's variable table.
In the form alter hook the node's submit button text was changed to "Get quote". Some of the node's fields were hidden using field permissions module.
Using the node api
* the form input was first validated on the 'validate' event after which
* the 'presave' event executed code to authenticate a soap client using the soapclient module, and do a soap call populated with the form values to the webservice end point configured in the admin form.
* In the 'insert' event we had the node id to create links to two other menu call backs, one to accept and another to decline the quote. Which was added as a links in a message to the node's display.
There is more to it with exception handling and emails to be sent to another admin system, administrators and also confirmations to the person requesting the quote which Drupal made very convenient and easy. The email to the admin system was the only XML processing to be done. The soap client takes care of turning arrays into XML and vice versa.
Changing the permissions so anonymous is allowed to create content of the quote node type and adding a menu link to 'Get a quote' that links to the node creation form which cost the content type definition creation to get.
And voila! An advanced application with a great looking user interface, networking with security, persistence all taken care off.
Thank you dear Druapl community for making my life so much easier and creating a system that is so much fun to play with!
With Drupal you can create a content type, export it as a feature, extract the feature to the modules directory, open the exported .module file, add some relevant code and export the feature so your customer can easily install it.
The user story went something along the following lines. To get an insurance quote, collect information from a user. Submit the collected data to a webservice which will return a quoted premium which the user can then accept or decline. Some prompts went to the user interface and other details were emailed to various parties including an XML update to another administration system.
It was a matter of creating a new content type with CCK and exporting it as a feature using the features module. This conveniently creates all the files that make up a module. It creates a compressed tar which has to be extracted to the modules directory on your Drupal installation with tar xzf exportedfeaturefilename.tgz and then enabled in the modules administration.
In the myfeaturemodule.module file a menu call back was added for a admin form which was coded right there using the forms api. And voila, an admin page where an administrator could add configuration settings like the webservice endpoint and authentication details. It is worth mentioning that the persistence of these settings was taken care of with drupal's variable_get() function that stores it in it's variable table.
In the form alter hook the node's submit button text was changed to "Get quote". Some of the node's fields were hidden using field permissions module.
Using the node api
* the form input was first validated on the 'validate' event after which
* the 'presave' event executed code to authenticate a soap client using the soapclient module, and do a soap call populated with the form values to the webservice end point configured in the admin form.
* In the 'insert' event we had the node id to create links to two other menu call backs, one to accept and another to decline the quote. Which was added as a links in a message to the node's display.
There is more to it with exception handling and emails to be sent to another admin system, administrators and also confirmations to the person requesting the quote which Drupal made very convenient and easy. The email to the admin system was the only XML processing to be done. The soap client takes care of turning arrays into XML and vice versa.
Changing the permissions so anonymous is allowed to create content of the quote node type and adding a menu link to 'Get a quote' that links to the node creation form which cost the content type definition creation to get.
And voila! An advanced application with a great looking user interface, networking with security, persistence all taken care off.
Thank you dear Druapl community for making my life so much easier and creating a system that is so much fun to play with!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Jozi Drupal Camp
Such fun! Different from the usual geek get together which are mostly sausage festivals the Drupal camp at IS in Bryanston was _very_ different. Drupal gets something right which no other software project I know about has done. Girls. Woman. Babes. Honeys. Yummy. Asked why Drupal, they all answered it's fun and they love working with it and they love the community. Someone who was subjected to Moodle was trying to persuade her employer to allow her to redo it in Drupal just because it is so much more fun. Another was migrating a Sharepoint server to Drupal because it is more fun and easier to use.
Gorgeous people, beer, boerewors on the bbq, girls and guys speeking geek in understandable language, sharing, caring and, and, and then some, pure delight. It's just amazing how people share their knowledge and experience while in another part of the software world people have insensitive to hold on to their knowledge and try to keep it secret. I went home with a whole new bag of tricks feeling great about another world where ideals still have value and people are actively acting on it.
The sponsor's generosity was confirmed by the people who work with and for them. Their values go deeper than just public relations exercise. Telamenta's people talk about each other like family and they adopt new members into their family rather than employ employees. eConsultant's girls and guys considerately care for each other. It was remarkable how happy people are and how they enthuse about the companies they are involved with and the projects they work on. How eagerly most of them were to let you into the technicalities of their work and share and share, share and share some more. It will be difficult to choose a team to be part of between IS Labs, Telamenta, eConsultant, Springfisher, Brandsh or Cerebra. Which probably explains all the independent people who rather share their time with all these different teams.
Yesterday was pure inspiration and I am very grateful to one and all there. My experience the previous day with the cynical or perhaps simply incompetent noise of the CMIS specification and the miserable reality they sustain contrasted strongly against this ideal, vibrant living energy. Here is something worth contributing towards. This is a culture I want to be part of. A culture that is generous, open, accessible and kind. Geeks who don't try to baffle one with jargon and technicalities to set themselves apart but rather letting other people into their reality by making it accessible in clear terms and language with kindness. It is apparent why girls also love being around. Jozi's Drupal community positively ROCKS!
More photos:
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| Jozi Drupal Camp |
Friday, May 7, 2010
CMIS is just a bad PR exercise
So there is a new specification which is supposed to make a developer's life easier.
Yeah right!
Unfortunately there is nothing useful in it. The specification is developed on a very high level and there is simply no benefit for the developers on the ground who have to actually use it. Well of course it is not supposed to be like that and there are attempts at something technical that is just silly.
The smallest base type in the spec is 'Document'. Yep. So everything we deal with everyday which we call 'Content', that being the _content_ of Documents is completely discarded in the so called, ha, ha, ha, 'Content' Management Interoperability Service. Unless off course you are OK with changing all your fields, nodes, components, etc, etc to extend the base class 'Document'.
It seems to me that a bit of that eighties geeky need to deal with emotional insecurities by clouding up one's language with ambiguities may have survived in the legacy part of our machine. And they are going to fight to the bitter end to make it stand. Even in 2010 with freaking SQL and all. I s#*7 you not. And even going as far as leaving Web Content Management out of scope. How old are the grandfathers who are doing this to us?
Can they seriously omit Content from the 'Content' Management? Are they intentionally trying to dissuade anyone from taking it seriously?
It is very sobering to realise that OASIS in fact just supports 'standards' because they are paid to, regardless of the poor quality.
Perhaps I fail completely in articulating our needs via their channel for public feedback on the spec causing myself and them unnecessary frustration and emotional grief. Please have a look at the spec and submit some honest feedback. Who knows maybe someone somewhere actually do care.
After reading the spec you may have a good laugh at these blatant lies:
OASIS announced the approval of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) version 1.0, a new open standard that enables information to be shared across Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories from different vendors. Advanced via a collaboration of major ECM solution providers worldwide, CMIS is now an official OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Using Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces, CMIS dramatically reduces the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Companies no longer need to maintain custom code and one-off integrations in order to share information across their various ECM systems. CMIS also enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create specialized applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems. David Choy of EMC, chair of the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee: 'CMIS makes it possible for business units to deploy systems independently and focus on application needs rather than on infrastructure considerations. With CMIS, integrating content between two or more repositories is faster, simpler and more cost-effective. This is how it should be.' [...] Mary Laplante, vice president and senior analyst for the Gilbane Group: 'CMIS has the potential to be a game-changing standard, not only through its promise to facilitate affordable content management, but also as an enabler of whole new classes of high-value, information-rich applications that have not been feasible to date. At the end of the day, companies simply need better approaches to integrating systems. Business agility increasingly separates the winners from the losers, and agility is perhaps the biggest single benefit that CMIS offers'. CMIS is offered for implementation on a royalty-free basis..."
But ranting is not getting us any further so we should simply agree on some standards among each other and find vendors who value their integrity to support it.
Yeah right!
Unfortunately there is nothing useful in it. The specification is developed on a very high level and there is simply no benefit for the developers on the ground who have to actually use it. Well of course it is not supposed to be like that and there are attempts at something technical that is just silly.
The smallest base type in the spec is 'Document'. Yep. So everything we deal with everyday which we call 'Content', that being the _content_ of Documents is completely discarded in the so called, ha, ha, ha, 'Content' Management Interoperability Service. Unless off course you are OK with changing all your fields, nodes, components, etc, etc to extend the base class 'Document'.
It seems to me that a bit of that eighties geeky need to deal with emotional insecurities by clouding up one's language with ambiguities may have survived in the legacy part of our machine. And they are going to fight to the bitter end to make it stand. Even in 2010 with freaking SQL and all. I s#*7 you not. And even going as far as leaving Web Content Management out of scope. How old are the grandfathers who are doing this to us?
Can they seriously omit Content from the 'Content' Management? Are they intentionally trying to dissuade anyone from taking it seriously?
It is very sobering to realise that OASIS in fact just supports 'standards' because they are paid to, regardless of the poor quality.
Perhaps I fail completely in articulating our needs via their channel for public feedback on the spec causing myself and them unnecessary frustration and emotional grief. Please have a look at the spec and submit some honest feedback. Who knows maybe someone somewhere actually do care.
After reading the spec you may have a good laugh at these blatant lies:
OASIS announced the approval of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) version 1.0, a new open standard that enables information to be shared across Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories from different vendors. Advanced via a collaboration of major ECM solution providers worldwide, CMIS is now an official OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Using Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces, CMIS dramatically reduces the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Companies no longer need to maintain custom code and one-off integrations in order to share information across their various ECM systems. CMIS also enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create specialized applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems. David Choy of EMC, chair of the OASIS CMIS Technical Committee: 'CMIS makes it possible for business units to deploy systems independently and focus on application needs rather than on infrastructure considerations. With CMIS, integrating content between two or more repositories is faster, simpler and more cost-effective. This is how it should be.' [...] Mary Laplante, vice president and senior analyst for the Gilbane Group: 'CMIS has the potential to be a game-changing standard, not only through its promise to facilitate affordable content management, but also as an enabler of whole new classes of high-value, information-rich applications that have not been feasible to date. At the end of the day, companies simply need better approaches to integrating systems. Business agility increasingly separates the winners from the losers, and agility is perhaps the biggest single benefit that CMIS offers'. CMIS is offered for implementation on a royalty-free basis..."
But ranting is not getting us any further so we should simply agree on some standards among each other and find vendors who value their integrity to support it.
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