cms + offline edition, anyone?

I am currently looking for a suitable Content Management System (CMS) for a website which is able to create an offline version of all pages to be run directly from a CD or DVD.

The only working solution I can currently think of is something where you’d have a (virtual) local server running which then provides the dynamics for an attached database, but I was hoping that maybe someone out there knows a better solution, maybe something where a script creates static versions of each page and then copies them into a folder (~ cron job every night).

Joomla? Drupal? Typo3? Anyone?

Any help is appreciated! Thx.

test your faulty usb stick

Some of you may remember my blog post from March 2007 about fake USB sticks: A friend of mine had gone to China on a business trip and bought two 8 GB sticks for EUR 11,- each, only to realize at home that he had actually acquired two 16 MB sticks. The problem is that you can only verify the real capacity of such sticks by writing data on them and then reading it back to the computer. Obviously, this best works with an empty stick.

Back then I even mentioned some progs that may verify if a USB flash memory stick is faulty or not. Germany’s c’t (Computer & Technik) magazine has now come up an alternative programme that works just fine and does a great job:

h2testwscreenshot(screenshot of H2testw – and yes, that’s my desktop wallpaper :-)

It is available in German and English, free of charge, small (zipped ~ 220 kb) and “writes data in chunks of 1 megabyte”. H2testw.exe doesn’t also require an installation, so you may want to add it to you selection of useful tools on a usb flash memory stick (i do that + i have a folder designed for such purposes which contains also other goodies such as a free virus scanner + recent update packages that kill popular threats). It took this useful tool about 15 minutes to write and 3 minutes to read back data on my (freshly formatted) 2 GB stick.

I am mentioning it here because I know a lot of ppl are aware of faulty sticks but don’t know how to check them with the right software (there are some nasty “freeware” tools out there that do more harm than good). Also, since this nice little prog also fits on the smallest stick (hey, the above mentioned 16 MB sticks are still available, i heard :-), you may want to take it to the dealer and test it right there before purchase.

AOB: What happened to the Raila virus, btw?

the hijacked post

Kenya.

I do not understand why ppl are wasting their time online at various forums, spreading hateful comments on this or that group. Just like KP, I’ve also deleted some comments here which were just too insulting. I take it that those who have managed to get online are smart enough to draw a line between the things that need to be said and those that aren’t shared with the rest of the world. If you are having some aggregated anger – keep it to yourself or go and do some sports.

And believe me, I am also extremely pissed at the (current) situation in Kenya. Hell, everyone is! Relatives are telling me: Thx God you’re not in EAK these day, JKE. Oh, well…. what do you do when things are breaking up and you’re feeling so damn helpless because all you can do is donating money and praying that this “crisis” will soon come to an end?

“Germany”, my Austrian landlord told me today, “is a country where ppl aren’t directly helping each other. Only through anonymous donations…upon which they will receive a (tax exemption) receipt.” Hmmmm. I know many other cases where this assumption doesnt apply to – but coming back to Germany, I am reminded of this issue ppl had after WW2 when the following generation asked the same questions: what did YOU do to prevent this? Really nothing?

Fast forward in 2008+. Let’s hope that moods will have settled a bit by then and that business is “back to usual”. What will happen to those who did crimes? Will they be able to live with this guilt? Or will they come up with the infamous “i was obsessed with daemons” phrase?

And what will happen with those who lost relatives and property during the recent “post election”-violence? Forgive and forget?

…

Fuck.

I wanted to blog my new Leatherman sheath and I end up talking about Kenya again.

Ok. *cough*

Remember my Leatherman Wave 2004 sheath issue? Well, in 2005 I had bought a successor to my old LM Wave (pre 2004 model) which came with a bitset. Unfortunately, both the LM Wave multi-tool and the bitset do not fit into the sheath that came delivered with the tool (or rather: it was way too bulky), so I ended up making my own version:

newmod11

#1 attempt (there’s Kenyan canvas underneath the blue brocade!)

As for the AAAmaglite: who needs this in times of luminous LEDs? Dismissed.

newmod9

#2 attempt i’ve used this version up to today.

After almost two years of daily usage and various trips, this very same cover now looks like this:

29012008143 cut

Can you see dim holes, maaan? Pretty useless like this, as the front cover may fall apart any day soon. So I was in dire need of a suitable substitute. Checked the inet again for alternative solutions, but nothing seemed to be right. Then i popped into a bunduki-selling shop in Frankfurt Kaiserstraße today (which is like buying arms in Eastleigh) and found the right sheath between all those Hatori Hanzo Samurai swords, air rifles, hunting knives and scary 9mm pistols (btw, there’s a new law in Germany these days which requires stricter setups – similar to what used to be the rule @ the Firearms Department in Nbo ~ gun safe @home + having the OCS of the nearest police station coming over for inspection, etc – so that many ppl are now desperateley trying to sell their rifles & pistols for which they will never manage to obtain a proper licence…):

29012008144 small

Voil? , attempt #3 in my quest for the ultimate tool sheath!

29012008146

Old and New.

29012008148

It fits, it works, it wins.

mp3 album covers

Did you know you can include an image of the album covers of your (ripped) music cds within the ID3 tag of an mp3 file?

It started two years ago, when I was given this 30GB mp3 player – only to quickly realize that around 3/4 of all my mp3 files did not have proper ID3 tags and thus only appeared under the “unknown artist” category on my mp3 player. This of course depends on the player, and while some are capable of reading this basic information from the file name, others rely on the ID3 tag of each music file to identify the artist, album name, title, track and so on.

I’ve been using Mp3tag, a small program to automatically edit metadata (~rename filenames, ID3 tags, etc.) – and just realized that they also offer the integration of album covers via Amazon.com. Nice!

sht main

Maybe I am a bit old-fashioned – but which player & music software are YOU using to listen to your music collection on your computer?
That is, I dont like iTunes and even Winamp has started to suck. These progs take ages to load and sometimes even mess up my mp3 collection. I’ve been using foobar2000 for some time now and am quite happy with it. A fast & slim player that instantly loads on this WinXP machine. Oh, and it also scrobbles my tracks to last.fm, so what else could I ask for? Album art isn’t shown on foobar2000, ok, but beautifully displays on my mobile phone’s player.

Reason for mentioning this: I like it how the mp3 format has so many options for saving meta data. I wish the same usabililty, with which ID3 tags are supported by various players & displays, could also be used for implementing metadata into image files. There’s this utility I tested the other day which writes tags right into an image file (*.jpeg, *.gif, etc.), but it wasn’t that stable (there’s a much more stable build available now). Pandorado also seems to be an interesting alternative I’ll still have to test.

There are (at least) 3 completely different approaches for storing image metadata:

  • Using a Database. This is what Picasa (and others) do. The problem with this approach is that only the database program is aware of the context between metadata and images. Thus, metadata can get lost when files are copied or transfered.
  • Using ADS (“Alternate Data Streams”): This is a feature of the Windows NTFS file system. ADS data is stored in hidden files which are attached to the visible image file – as long as this file stays on the NTFS file system. ADS data will get lost when, for example, you copy the file to a CD-ROM or a memory stick or when you transfer it over the Internet. You typically access ADS data by the Windows Explorer “File Properties/File Info” option.
  • Using IPTC and EXIF: Metadata conforming to one of these open standards can be stored within the image file itself. If such a file is copied or moved to another location, the metadata stays with the image; there are no redundancy problems which typically arise with database or ADS storage.

These 3 approaches are not compatible with each other. (src)

I wonder why this approach to implement metadata via IPTC isn’t pushed any further? I mean, even iPods only store any metadata within an extra file and not within the music or image files. Metadata needs to be stored within a file – and not in an extra file. Imagine an online photo management site like flickr which automatically sets up titles and descriptions based on metadata directly from an image file. Hmmm….so who’s already using this?

Water is a gift

Sorry for posting yet another video (pole to those who aren’t on broadband), but we just got this forwarded from a colleague at work and I think it’s a nice video to share – especially since I really dig the Arabic…

[youtube btWcXNSvOHw]
“Awareness video on water scarcity with nice animations and effects produced for Yemen and the National Water Resources Authority NWRA..”

Do we need a similar version on water conservation in Kenya? Hmm. Maybe for the protection of surface water and groundwater tables in urban areas…

qik

Qik. Streaming video right from your phone.

Saw some live coverage from the MacWorld earlier this week where ppl used this service to directly stream video from their phone to qik.com. Something like YouTube, but with the difference that everything is streamed live from the phone (Nokia N95) onto their servers. Meaning: you’ll need a decent broadband network connectivity for this to work fine.

4999cad66fd700600a8b663569bb4d61
(browser screenshot via browsershots.org)

Signed up for this service (which is still alpha) on tuesday evening and just received an invitation. Don’t know about 3G speed outside, but here @home with DSL 2048 kbit/s down & 192 kbit/s up maximum speed it’s just very charming. Haaiaa. Will need to test it again outside tomorrow in daylight and see how it is performing.

And yes, I am bit shy on camera. That’s why I haven’t really made use of seesmic so far (the “video twitter”). You may have seen it in action earlier last month when Robert Scoble blogged about it.

Why is it interesting? After all, I wouldnt want to put myself online. It’s interesting because a) it enables true LIVE coverage and b) memory space is limited on some phones, so with a service like this, ppl can just report until the battery is drained. As for the “live” part: I pressed the F5 key to refresh the user page right after I had stopped recording and there it was, my video. Dead simple.

Which phones are supported?
The latest Nokia range, imho those who are based on the S60v3 platform.

Citizen Media, here we come… muahahahaha!

(video isnt included at this time as i just can’t stand the way the “embed object” code is implemented in WP + my video plugin doesnt support qik so far..)

EDIT: Loic just twittered that Seesmic is now compatible with mobile phones via Shozu.com. Shozu! Has anyone tried it so far? Had it running on my mobile some month ago but it quickly drained the battery, also due to some autostart scripts that load when the phone boots (!) up. – I guess all these tools only make sense when your phone is within a 3G or better network and when everything is interconnected, i.e. feeds that pull content from your various multimedia resources online and aggregate them on your blog. Should be an interesting task for a WP plugin (hint, hint :-)….something that pulls content from your video & microblogging platforms and creates a blog post out of it. In short: what I would like to have is a smooth way to blog-on-the-go and have it appear on my own blog (and not somewhere on flickr, vox, seesmic, qik, YouTube, etc.). Possible? Maybe one day (soon).

EDIT 2: QIK works fine even via a normal (= slow) GPRS connection! Awesome. I will use it more often now.