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musings of mark since 2001

Think I’ve decided not to bid on the Municipal web site with their RFP as it stands now. They have a laundry list of tools that are wanted, which in itself is no problem, but the descriptions of the tools they are describing could be any of a dozen different interfaces and types of software out there. I went through the entire globe of Content Management Systems and did find some that would probably fit the bill, if there wasn’t anyone but web developers adding content to the site that is. There really is no simple CMS that does almost everything.

The only real way to do it is to build them a web site and create a custom content system for it with the extra software/programming added on as needed, but their budget is pretty low for that when you consider how much time it’s going to take to get some specs out of them and keep everything in scope. It’s a budget large enough to cover the IT time, but won’t nearly cover the training time and I don’t think I want to spend the next year going up to the Municipal building every other day.

Oh well, give ‘em a quote for the hosting and be done with it. Spent since the day before Xmas on it without coming up with a solution that wouldn’t put me in a hole and just can’t see one, so at least the hosting will get my foot in the door. There may be no one that steps up to create a CMS for them, so maybe there’s still some custom programming in the future from the Muni on individual projects for me, that would be more lucrative anyways I think.

Picked up the RFP for the Municipal web site the other day, it’s lacking in details but the main thing that stands out is that they are looking for a Content Management System of some sort judging by the long list of tools they wanted included on the web site. Off I go to the CMS Matrix to see what there is that will fit the bill in the Open Source world. Choosing Mambo, PhpNuke, OpenPHPNuke, PHPWebSite, Drupal, and Typo3, it was Typo3 that came out on top.

Off to the web site, the first thing that hits you is that this is some serious CMS here with all the bells and whistles. Like most of the others, the usual warnings about the complexity etc. were there, but undaunted I downloaded the Win version to test locally. Set up went okay with out too many hitches, the main one being ImageMagick didn’t want to be recognized even when I specified the file path to it’s executables. Didn’t want to bother updating my autoexec.bat file for the umpteenth time so downloaded a stand alone version and it worked fine. The site loaded into the download came up okay too, but the app was running incredibly slow on my old ‘puter. Keeping my fingers crossed it’s not the same way on a live server and plowing through tutorials with the Dummy site, a second download that starts you out from scratch, much better than the “full” version to learn from.

The Wow! moment for me was when Typo3 parsed an html template and inserted it’s own >!—###DOCUMENT_HEADER### begin—< elements into the html output, this means that any designer can give you a template for a web site and without changing the template AT ALL, anywhere you want dynamic bits like menus, body content etc. you can have them. Did I mention you can run multiple web sites from one installation? Everyone is looking for the holy grail of CMS’s of course, this one is seriously in the running with that feature alone.

UPDATE: After using Typo3 for almost two weeks, have come to the conclusion that the interface for the web site admin and other end users is way too complicated. Weeks and weeks of training for the main site admin alone, more for the content providers, too bad…

This has got to be wrong, is it ever right to kill unarmed people on the street? Apparently when your trying to bring democracy to Fallujah it is:

“US-backed government put rebel losses at more than 2,000, although unit commanders later revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed..”

No wonder the report is actually about the mental health issues the returning soldiers are experiencing, you just can’t go around killing innocent people for too long without it messing up your head, if you’re sane in the first place. How do these people sleep at night? – most of them not very well it seems. And they won’t be for a while, with only 2,000 “rebels” killed that leaves over 3,000 of them according to the Army’s reports that there were over 5k to begin with in the city. And that’s a city of only 300,000 people, Mosul to the north is something like 1.2 million and it’s still a “no go” for the US storm troopers.

Great article in the New York Times this morning about Firefox and Internet Exploder. Some of the choice words:

“Gary Schare, Microsoft’s director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago.He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account “all the factors that led them to choose I.E. in the first place.” Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn’t I.E. come bundled with Windows?

Mr. Schare has said that Mozilla’s Firefox must prove it can smoothly move from version 1.0 to 2.0, and has thus far enjoyed “a bit of a free ride.” If I were the spokesman for the software company that included the company’s browser free on every Windows PC, I’d be more careful about using the phrase “free ride.”

Trying to strike a conciliatory note, Mr. Schare has also declared that he and his company were happy to have Firefox as “part of the large ecosystem” of software that runs on Windows. In fact, Firefox is ecumenically neutral, being available also for both the Mac and for Linux.

Mr. Schare may be the official spokesman, but he does not use Internet Explorer himself. Instead he uses Maxthon, published by a little company of the same name. It uses the Internet Explorer engine but provides loads of features that Internet Explorer does not. “Tabs are what hooked me,” he told me, referring to the ability to open within a single window many different Web sites and move easily among them, rather than open separate windows for each one and tax the computer’s memory. Firefox has tabs. Other browsers do, too. But fundamental design decisions for Internet Explorer prevent the addition of this and other desiderata without a thorough update of Windows, which will not be complete until 2006 at the earliest.”

So, now it’s time to get a new browser. I’ve been using Firefox myself since last spring and they definitely have the bugs worked out of it with the release candidate that came out this fall. As the NY Times article implies, it’s time to download Firefox for everyone.

Got a Xmas card from Dad with $ and one from Brenda with this week, almost that time of year again. Mad Mabel put on her wonderful play about what Christmas and life in general is about, and how there is magic in everything, especially blue bottles and ketchup.

Not too many dry eyes in the audience at the ending, another swell performance by Jackie Minns and the new cast members that included Corbin Keep, Katalina Bernards, and Peter Montgomery’s daughter (can’t remember her name) playing Anna.

From the North Shore News’ Martin Millerchip:

‘The Mabel in question claims to be over 100 years old and spends her days recycling bottles, cardboard and anything useful from the local garbage dump. She also lives there, in a simple, self-made heaven with Raphaella, a cat who has forgotten how to love. Mabel’s closest friend in the real world is garbageman Dave who runs into her quite a lot in his line of work. Dave has a precocious 10-year-old daughter, Anna, whose spirit of Christmas runs only to a long list of presents she’s willing to trade for a $450 purple-and-gold hip-hop jacket from Gap.

Adults can probably figure out what’s coming once Anna runs into Mabel and, in a fit of temper, breaks her “magic” bottle. Sent to replace it, Anna destroys Mabel’s shelter at the dump. But David perseveres with Anna and so does self-sufficient Mabel – and the happy ending is never in doubt.

Despite the predictable outcome, the set-up is good enough that the pay-off carries emotional weight, helped by honest performances from the small cast.’

I think it’s not despite, but because of the predictable outcome of Anna finding out Christmas isn’t about clothing from the Gap, and gifts as simple as ketchup and blue bottles are around you everyday that the ending hits everyone so well.