Part of the reason I like WordPress is because it’s written very well compared to most open source LAMP products that came before it.  It has a plugin and theme API which is relatively simple to learn.  I would prefer WordPress to focus on improving the robustness of the API, rather than adding new features.

Overall I’m fairly confident in WordPress’ developers to keep things straight.  I just hope they’re not making changes just to keep themselves relevant.

Please Note: even after several months from using the above link, I still receive messages from Boxbe to join.

I’ve been hit by Boxbe spam. This company promises to reduce the spam its users receive, and in return spam every one of their contacts on a regular basis.  The only problem is, they do not provide the above link (which I cannot yet confirm it actually works) within their email.  To the best of my current knowledge, it is still a requirement that they provide this link.

Other folks have been having problems with Boxbe as well:

• Boxbe’s spam. A fatal mistake for them and me.
• boxbe.com is it spam or scam?
• Boxbe anti spam filter – a cure worse than the plague

Most people are familiar with Windows.  The Windows GUI environment has become so familiar to us, that some of us may find it difficult to operate in another environment.  Even down to the direction mouse pointer (arrow) is pointing—seeing a right-pointing arrow may make one a little uneasy about having to adjust their “aim” for the pointer to the right side of the pointer instead of the left side.

But there is one point I’d like to make:  Windows isn’t intuitive either.  I’ve seen people use Windows for the first time, and it’s a little bit awkward.  The most noticable thing that people have difficulty with is “double-clicking.”  Double-clicking is certainly not intuitive, and makes Windows difficult to use for first-timers.  But other than that Windows contains other non-intuitive items as well:  menu item names, descriptions of features, locations of files, etc. all contain counter-intuitive elements.

Therefore, if you know Windows, you had to learn Windows.  You probably learned it because “it was there” and you wanted to use the computer.  So, you should not become afraid of Linux when your first attempts prove frustrating.  Linux requires you to learn a different set of rules for operating the computer, and even though Linux has come a long way with its GUI, the operating system and applications may seem so unfamiliar that navigating them and trying to be productive may drive you back to Windows.  But there are ways to start to become more familiar with items of Linux and ease yourself into using the new system.

Probably the number one thing Windows users use their computers for are the Internet and word processing.  Luckily the free software that runs on Linux for these things is also available for free for Windows.  That means you can start to use software which will be familiar to you on both Windows and Linux, while at first retaining a lot of your familiar Windows features.  The following software installed on your Windows machine should help you if you find going cold turkey to Linux difficult.

• Mozilla Firefox: a web browser for surfing the ‘net, similar to Internet Explorer
• OpenOffice.org: an office suite containing a word processor, spreadsheet, HTML editor, presentor, etc.
• Mozilla Thunderbird: an email client similar to Outlook (or Outlook Express)
• GIMP: an image editing and manipulation tool
• VideoLAN Player: a great media player that can play many file formats.
• Wine: an emulator that can allow you to run many Windows programs on Linux (helps with games)
• DOSBox: an emulator to allow you to run old DOS programs.

And the best part about the above software is not only is it free, but it’s super easy to install.  Most Linux, like Ubuntu, have an easy-to-use interface that will automatically download and install software packages for you.  Just search, choose, and apply the changes.

I reserves the right to change or modify current Terms of Use with no prior notice.

Sorry, but if you give me a copy with a particular license, you cannot change it.  Even if you write this blurb on your website.  But I guess it’s enough to intimidate most Web users.

And now, for the blatant GPL violation:

Several themes also make use of TimThumb, a script created by Darren Hoyt. This file, timthumb.php, is released under the GPL, and retains its respective license as mentioned in the file itself. This file is not governed by the above license, and can be redistributed under the rules of the GPL.

Really?!  So now you’re actually going as far as to distribute GPL code along with your code, that your code depends on, and NOT put it under the GPL?  I really hope that Darren Hoyt gave you permission to do that.

UPDATE: I just took a look at the script, and it’s now under an MIT license.  It still doesn’t excuse the behavior of someone who obviously believes or used it when it was under the GPL.

Links

• http://gpl-violations.org/

You see, I’ve been making web pages since 1995, and had a personal home page (remember those?) since 1996.  My first page was rather minimalist, and in a sense, a rebellion against what I’m doing here–writing a dialog with you in typical “blog post” fashion.  Back then I felt that no one really went online to know more about a complete stranger.  I still think I was right about that at the time (although things have changed).  At least I sure never cared about what most people put on their home pages at that time.  My page was utilitarian:  find resources related to gaming, programming, music, or whatever else I happened to be interested in.  More accurately, it was useful to me, a place I could store and show off a few things, including a rather cool photo album for the times.

So I had web pages.  I knew HTML.  The web got more complicated.  Sites like fortunecity or geocities offered free web space, and had “web page builder” software.  The web got even more complicated.  Not only did the web page builders fall short of meeting expectations, but writing a web page by hand got more and more tedious as the HTML and CSS spec started to demand higher quality pages.  And then came blogs, or web logs.  I thought they were retarded.  It was a throwback to the old personal home page days (and actually I was kind of right about that too), where people would narcissistically post things about what they did in their everyday lives as if we were interested in reading their personal diary.  I really didn’t like the word “blog” either.

But eventually I started looking for ways to not have to write all that HTML, CSS, and PHP code anymore.  (Honestly, I guess with PHP included headers and footers, I probably spent less time creating websites back then than I do with upgrading WordPress and installing plugins now.)  WordPress was pretty nice, but I didn’t have any use for an online “diary.”  My first “blog” was just a simple web log that I kept as notes on Linux configuration that I had done to the server I was running.  So all the entries looked roughly like this:

New IMAP Certificate

Generated new IMAP certificate:

openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem -keyout /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem -days 365

Yeah, that’s it sparky.  But at least I had found some use for blog software.  And the great thing about it was, I could quickly post new content without having to fuss with making a web page.  And that is the secret about blogs. They reduce the complexity of making web pages that even the page builders couldn’t do because the page builders tried to let you do too much.  In other words:

Blog software provides the structure for your content, making it consistent and easy to both post and navigate.

Forget about diaries.  Your “blog” is just a web page, if you want it to be.  This is true especially with WordPress.

My next blog was “Angelo’s Notepad” and I appropriately selected the Rubrick Theme which had been pretty popular at that time and fit the blog title pretty well.  Angelo’s Notepad was really just a place for me to throw up things I didn’t have time to format and put up more “formally” on my websites.  But then, WordPress did the best thing it could have done for people like me:  it created wonderful support for “pages” as well as “posts” and allowed you to set a page to be the front page.  This is all you need to create a website.

So I use WordPress to build websites.  Does that make me a blogger?

First copy the contents of the CD to a directory

auto-boot/
|-- VERSION
`-- isolinux
|-- alt0
|   |-- all.rdz
|   `-- vmlinuz
|-- boot.cat
|-- custom.msg
|-- isolinux.bin
|-- isolinux.cfg
|-- memtest
`-- target.msg

To change default auto configuration file, edit:
isolinux/isolinux.cfg

To produce a custom boot CD:

mkisofs -R -J -o auto-boot.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
-no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table ./auto-boot/

• C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
• C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Notice how they kept the etc/ directory? Hmmmmm

Here is how I installed it for my own user. You will need the cpio utilities installed including ‘cpio’ and ‘rpm2cpio’ which are installed on many rpm based systems.

1. Download the gzipped rpm files from OpenOffice.org
2. Unpack:

   tar xzvf OOo_2.2.0_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US.tar.gz

3. You should now have a directory similar to OOF680_m14_native_packed-1_en-US.9134/
   cd to the RPMs directory inside this new directory and unpack the RPM files locally:

   ls *.rpm | while read file; do rpm2cpio $file | cpio -idmv; done

4. You should see the files from the RPMs created, e.g.

   ./etc
   ./etc/.java
   ./etc/.java/.systemPrefs
   ./etc/.java/.systemPrefs/.system.lock
   ./etc/.java/.systemPrefs/.systemRootModFile
   ./etc/init.d/jexec
   ...
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/header.xsl
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/master_chapter_numbering.xsl
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/master_document.xsl
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/master_refs_workaround.xsl
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/master_usability_links.xsl
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/ooo2xhtml.xsl
   opt/openoffice.org2.2/share/xslt/export/xhtml/table.xsl

5. I like to keep all of my personal packages in a single directory. Usually I make a directory in my home called pkg/ which I will move openoffice to. So first, move the openoffice directory under opt/ that was created above to ~/pkg/:

   mv opt/openoffice.org2.2/ ~/pkg/

6. I also like to use symlinks for my current most updated version of a software:

   cd ~/pkg/
   ln -s openoffice.org2.2/ openoffice.org

7. Then I create some scripts in my ~/bin/ directory that I include in my path environment. The first one is openoffice.org itself. I create an executable file called ~/bin/openoffice.org that looks like this:

   #!/bin/bash
   exec ~/pkg/openoffice.org/program/soffice "$@"

8. It’s also nice to create one for the openoffice.org printer administration gui. I create an executable script called ~/bin/openoffice.org-printeradmin that looks like this:

   #!/bin/bash
   exec ~/pkg/openoffice.org2.1/program/spadmin

Now, if you have ~/bin/ in your PATH environment you should be able to load files using openoffice.org <filename>