Content Management System

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I am looking for a content management system to use at work. We want something that will be easy to allow end users manage and update content on. So the goal is to get something setup by technology that we can simply hand off and not worry about the management of the site. At first we thought a wiki was good enough to setup, but media wiki required too much learning curve to use. This project is a side research project right now, but it would be nice to figure something out and get it up sometime soon. I think I am going to play with a few CMS’s on my own website and see how the functionality looks.

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Windows Vista RC1 Take 2

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I know I said I thought I was pre-determined to not like Vista in my original post about it, but there are plenty of annoying things that just scream out at me. Some stuff looks nice also, but all that I have found that I like are all UI things. No real substance.

My first major complaint is that the control panel is different. For example all the elements you could previously get via the display control panel are now separated. So you have to go looking for the control panel option for the screen saver, screen size, desktop, etc. It is annoying. I also looked for 15 minutes and could not find where the option to NOT let Vista log me out after an extended period of time is kept. In XP and older versions it was configured in the screen saver options.

The major thing that drives me crazy is how you have to install software. Since at work everything is on a network drive I have to say ok to launching something from the network, and then I have to say it is ok to install something, since Microsoft likes to ask me if I really want to do what I am telling the OS to do. That is nice in theory, but if you get too many dialog box’s you tend to just say yes to them and not read them. I thought they (MSFT) figured that out with 2003, but apparently they didn’t learn their lesson. In fact they decided to take it a step further. Jayson says this all the time, but by turning off all the options of a browser by default does not make it more secure. Users will just say yes to the warning box when they try to run something. They will also look less at each box the more of them they get.

Now on a good note, I was surprised how quick Office 2003 applications such as word and excel opened when launched. I didn’t get a chance to use the apps since I really don’t work on a windows box anymore, but I was happy with the snappy performance. Of course the performance better be that nice on a 64bit AMD 3000+ with 2gigs of RAM.

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Mooing Macbook Pro

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My Macbook Pro has been causing me problems for almost a month now. It sounds much louder than it should during normal operation. Every once in a while (more often than not now a days) it will start getting much louder like an engine for a while. After a while it eventually goes back to normal, but as I said normal is still way too loud. Last week I got fed up with the sound (when my office is quiet all I hear is this dam laptop and it drives me crazy) and had it taken in to a Apple service center. I got it back in the middle of this week, and early on it was apparent that the replaced fan did not do much good. Yesterday when it started sounding really loud again I knew whatever they replaced didn’t fix the issue.

I called Apple support today and spend almost an hour on the phone. At first the level 1 support guy was giving me the normal song and dance about how they need to bring it to a depot and take a look at it. He couldn’t shed any light on what was going on. Something must have clicked because after a while he put me on hold and sent me to a specialist. I actually spoke to someone who knew what he was doing. Now it is hard to explain a noise problem. The system functions without any issues, but it is just abnormally loud. I can’t localize the sound. It seems random when it gets really loud, but it is constantly emitting a low hum that it should not. I know it shouldn’t because at work we have a few Macbooks and Macbook Pro‘s. My luck that my personal computer would be messed up. The guy I spoke to supposedly made some special notes on my ticket and I am now waiting for a box to arrive to send it in. They said something about the logic board, but they will run it for a while when they get it to see if the can reproduce the issue. I hope they can, but based off of how often it happens to me I don’t think there will be a problem with them reproducing it.

Now I have to go without my work computer for probably another week. It isn’t too bad since I have my personal Macbook I will bring to the office. The downside is that I normally leave my Macbook on at home when I am at work and run a bunch of different processes. I shouldn’t complain too much since I at least have a laptop to use. I know I get a bit spoiled with the gear I have access to at work. I just hope this unit comes back and works. More news when the unit comes back!

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Photo Albums

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The driving force to get me to try a new web hosting provider that I mentioned in my post “Spoke Too Soon” was to get an easy to use web album management system installed. Not simply using some client side image formatting system like I had been using. Granted my most recent photo layout tool, RapidWeaver was good. It was the latest in a long line of editing tools such as Frontpage, the generic export feature of iPhoto, some php photo album generator, picasa, and more. The ability to have a true photo management system powered by mySQL running on a server sounded great. I stumbled upon Gallery by accident the other day.

Once I looked it over a bit and found a hosting provider that would script the setup in a minute I setup a new hosting account. I was uploading photo’s in 5 minutes. Now I haven’t got everything exactly the way I would like it, but I am working on it.

Now I will continue to use RapidWeaver for my general website creation, but since most of my content is photo albums Gallery will come in handy.

More updates after I get more content into the system.

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First Thoughts on Windows Vista RC1

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I downloaded RC1 of Windows Vista over the weekend. I have been hesitant to test it out, but I finally broke down and got it. This is the first release of Windows since I have had a computer that I will not use as my main OS. I don’t count Windows ME in that last statement. I may not want to use XP anymore, but before I became a Mac fan I used it. 2000 was good, NT 4 was stable, but not much hardware would run on it. 98 (all flavors) was slow and crashed, but it was an improvement over 95. 95 was better than windows 3.1, but still wasn’t awesome. The more that I look back the more I realize the pain I went through over the years with these OS’.

I look at Vista in a different light since I look at it not to be my new electronic home, but to see what it is about and see if or when it will have a place at the company I work at. I honestly go into evaluating it, not expecting to like it. I admit I am biased against it based off of everything I have read. My initial assessments reaffirm that fact.

I decided to test it on a physical machine, since I was concerned about the performance of it in a virtual machine. I took a brand new HP desktop that we are deploying and tried to install the Vista DVD. First thing I learned is that our brand new AMD 64bit desktops don’t have DVD drives in the stock configuration. My trusty external drive came in handy. I then learned after 2 attempts that I could not install vista by booting the computer and getting the DVD to load. It started to work, but every time the install UI tried to load the dam computer blue screened. This happened twice until gave up and just loaded the XP build I had on it and just started the install from within windows. I don’t like to do this, and when the process was done I had a windows.old directory. What I would give for a clean install!!!

The install once I finally got it to work, seemed to take forever to run. It honestly took like 2 hours on brand new hardware with 2 gigs of ram. I wasn’t sure about this hardware being fully compatible with Vista since it has an integrated video card on the mother board. Everything did finally install.

Initial performance thoughts are mixed. It didn’t seem faster than XP. The UI did seem sort of cartoonish. It is like they tried for the slick UI that the mac has (and newer linux distributions) but just didn’t get it. They did have some cute UI features like blurring some of the text of items that are visible behind some transparent windows.

The install pains I had alone where not a good start. I didn’t get to do much further testing on it before I went home for the night. I am interested to see how bad IE 7 is. Jayson put a version of IE 7 on an XP box and had only bad things to say about it. I will see if I have time tomorrow to do more testing. I will have a follow up posting with more feedback. For now I can safely say unless Leopard is total crap I will stick with the Mac for now.

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The Ultimate Media Center

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Do you know what the Ultimate Media Center setup is? Please tell me! I thought I found it a few years ago with Tivo, but then I wanted more so I had my Tivo hacked (Yes I didn’t want to deal with it myself so I had it done). Then I went out and built my own DVR with Beyond TV and thought that was perfect. Then I wanted more. I know I am demanding and all, but I keep upgrading and changing my DVR/TV setup.

Now I am on the fence between trying out Myth TV or just getting a dam DVR cable box from my provider and not bother anymore with the endless tinkering.

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Spoke Too Soon

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So whenever I write about some service or piece of gear that I like or am content with I always jinx myself and end up finding some reason to get rid of it or change something right after I write about it. My post “2 Years on Typepad” is one of those times. Today while looking to solve one problem on the web, I stumbled across an application that I wanted to try on my website. In trying to figure out how to do the install I found a web host (actually several) that had this app pre-installed and ready to use. My current hosting provider is great, I wasn’t kidding about that, but they provide only basic site tools compared with some of these other providers. After doing some more research I have decided to sign up for an account with Site 5. It looks like they offer the same or more basic features as my current provider Media Temple, but they also package in tons (50+) pre-built packages that you can run that install open source apps to your account. I could probably install the same tools on Media Temple, but why should I if I can get the same stuff with the click of a button from Site 5? After I add up all the costs on Site 5 compared to my Media Temple account I will be paying the same amount. I signed up a little while ago, and I will use the 60 day free trial. Since I am very picky we will see if Site 5 does anything to piss me off or not.

One of the pre-built packages they offer is WordPress, so even this blog is not safe from me wanting to shake things up a bit.

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Enigma in Flash

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I was a history major, and my favorite area of study was WWII. I also have always been fascinated with codes and cryptography. Even before I went into technology I did a term paper on the German Enigma cypher machine. That is why I thought it was very cool when I saw a link on Digg to this Enigma machine in Flash.

OKGXLNFLSKLOATYONBNKJCVFBXCDYZJYBJXJZEVCPQQMSOSWWM or shall I say ILIKEDTHESITESOMUCHTHATICREATEDTHISTEXTUSINGENIGMA

Nifty. I wish my free time projects would be as cool as this!

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2 Years on Typepad

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Last week marked the second anniversary of me moving my blog to Typepad. Even after some bumpy spots, the service has been great. It is easy to use and offers allot. That is why I have been lazy and not just hosted my blog myself. It would only be slightly a pain for me to setup a Moveabletype or WordPress site on my Mac, or a linux box, but I just don’t want to deal with the effort of keeping the system up if I can pay and have it hosted properly. That is of course the same excuse why I host my mail and website now, instead of hosting my mail myself or have Miguel host it on his server with a ton of of other people I know.

Amenities Mishap

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One of the things I like about the building I live in is the dry cleaners in the basement. I usually drop off a bunch of laundry and dry cleaning once a week so I can maintain my lazy lifestyle and not do laundry. Laundry is like prison time for me. Dates back to when I was like 11 and my Mom started making me do the laundry. Since she was into all that keeping the apartment clean stuff, I had to wash and fold everything in the laundry room in our building. Man was it hot in the summer and cold in the winter down there. So now when I think of doing laundry I relate it to really bad conditions. Well that is the story I tell myself when I fork over $15 a week to have my stuff washed and folded for me.

This week I had a bit of an issue with my laundry. I picked it up Tuesday night and never started to unpack it until late that night. When I did, I realized that it wasn’t my laundry. I had just switched to a new generic white mess laundry bag and all my stuff was in it encased in a plastic garbage bad. Someone else also had a mesh bag and the laundry got them mixed up. Man was I pissed, but at least I had clothes and towels for the next day.

I went back on Wednesday and thankfully right as I walked in the lady stated that she bet I had the wrong laundry. In 2 minutes I had my stuff and was off. It was a close call. It could have gone allot worse. That was my brush with craziness on Tuesday.