A new snapshot is available for download now. This release will hopefully catch when you don’t have mod_rewrite enabled sooner in the install process.
If b2++ works fine for you, you may want to download the data package as it adds the templatehelp.tpl file, missing from previous releases. (Thanks Jim for finding that one!)
Monthly Archives: May 2003
Web Fire Escape
Browsing your blogs at work are you? Then the Web Fire Escape could come in handy!*grin*
XPde desktop environment
I’m posting this from within XPde. It’s not bad. There’s no way I’d use it for day to day activity, but it might be useful for bringing over some of the masses to Linux!
Anyone who’s used to Windows will be immediately at home here. Like Windows, you have “My Documents”, “My Computer”, etc on the desktop.
Just like a virgin install of Windows you can’t do much with it either. There aren’t many applications on the desktop menu.
I’m already missing ALT-dragging windows however. That’s one aspect of the Windows GUI I’ve always despised. No doubt there’s a way to get that working but I CBA!
To cap it off, XPde is one to keep an eye on, and may be very useful in the future! Well worth checking out!
X2 – Xmen 2 review
Mark went to see Xmen 2 and reviewed it on his blog. hmm. Not decided if I’ll go yet. Maybe some evening when I want mindless drivel and the soaps aren’t on tv. hehe.
IRC snippets
Just so you know that Linux users don’t bash on Windows users alone. We bash on other Linux users too! Thank you Kevin for keeping this recorded.
<kelvin> any slackware users around?
* martin raises hand
<kelvin> i have a question on it…
<martin> kelvin: Alot of people here are un-socialble muppets who use red hat. lol
<kelvin> oh, so no one knows slackware?
<martin> red hat, use there up2date, apt-get, and loves rpm based distro’s
<martin> kiddiot’s dream
<martin> gues it takes the learning out of things eh?
<martin> kelvin: I said I did.
<kelvin> ah, good. then you can answer a question on slackware?
<martin> sure
<kelvin> ok, so why do only lame muppets from kerry use slackware?
<martin> wanker
(Apologies to my readers from Kerry, and Slackware users!)
B2Links – link organiser for b2, and other updates
I mentioned B2Links before but it’s been renamed. The one final feature missing from it is polling weblogs.com to see if each link has been updated in the last x minutes/hours. I might take a look at this next week!
On the b2++ front – I discovered a bug when new users register. Sometimes their blog template isn’t copied over properly. Just login (at the b2login.php url sent to you in the email) and choose another template. A fix will be in the next snapshot, maybe tonight.
I should also make more checks for mod_rewrite in the install process, as at least person had trouble with it. That should be a simple 3 line fix though!
Tim mailed me a long list of features he’d like to see in b2++, as well as suggesting a name change for the project as it’s diverging quite a bit from the original b2. Leave a comment if you have any ideas!
I’d also like to hear from b2 mod/hack authors as the plugin system of b2++ will make it quite easy for original b2 hacks to be incorporated and distributed. When I get around to Smartyising the backend, it’ll be much easier to add stuff there!
Windows supporters on #linux
I’m not saying the ILUG is a rabid anti-Microsoft crowd, not at all! Many of our jobs rely on them crashing, eating harddrives, their networking problems.. etc. But when 2 ardent .net/win2k3/latest ms buzzword supports show up on the #linux IRC channel it’s bound to cause some trouble. hehe.
Thankfully, the main protagonist, martin, has gone running off somewhere..
imgSeek
imgSeek is a most useful application! I’m importing my photo collection in there. That’s taking a while, as there’s a few gigs of data to work through! Sketching is fun, and could be useful as you can refine your sketch and it’ll keep updating the matching photos. Selecting an existing photo, and looking through the similar photos it like the first time you went online.
You find a photo, it displays “similar” ones, right-click on another photo and find similar ones to that which displays more photos.. It’s a nice way to look through a huge collection of photographs!
What are you still doing reading this, go try it out now!
imgSeek is a photo collection manager and viewer with content-based search and many other features. The query is expressed either as a rough sketch painted by the user or as another image you supply (or an image in your collection). The searching algorithm makes use of multiresolution wavelet decomposition of the query and database images.
(via Ice Walkers)
ssh login attack
Looking through my log reports this morning I was shocked to see lots of failed logins for users such as root, ftp, nobody, apache, operator, amanda, mysql, etc. All originated from one host, ns1.webmediaworks.net, A visit to their website explained everything..
TechTeaM OwnZ u box dollarz@bol.com.br
Unfortunately, the whois db seems to be down so I can’t even contact the webmedia site owners..
model view controller pattern
I’m still working away at a registration process using the MVC pattern. It’s coming along very nicely in fact! Here’s an article describing it in some depth.
I’ve hijacked the idea somewhat for my project. I have one controller, and multiple views/models. There’s one model and view for each page. The view is split between PHP code and Smarty templates. The PHP code doesn’t do much beyond assigning variables for the Smarty templates but I wouldn’t put those assign calls into the model, as then the model would have to know about Smarty. This makes it easy to figure out where something is going wrong, and where I need to _put_ code.
How many of you have “super” classes with thousands of lines of code? That sucks for maintainability.
While some of the Java examples I’ve seen redirect the browser to the new view, I simply unset the old model and view and create the new model and view. The single solitary display() call at the end of the controller takes care of displaying whatever view is active!
Must post some example PHP code later.