Category: Metal (Technical)

While researching the latest figures for my Wikimedia presentation at *Camp, I was extremely pleased to discover that the Venda Wikipedia had reached 100 articles. Perhaps it’s not yet enough to be ready for a printed version distributed to schools, but there’s been good progress. Compared to the other South African languages, some spoken by… Continue reading Venda Wikipedia progress

This weekend I was at *Camp, which for those not in the know was an unconference about * (and somehow explaining it further seems as useful as explaining a joke if you don’t get it). It was highly enjoyable. So what were the lingering memories? First was a strange ache in some muscles on my… Continue reading *Camp debauchery

I always enjoy reading Greenpeace’s Guide to Electronics, as much for the response from injured fans upset at the depiction of their company (Apple) as for an understanding of what companies are doing. The report is most well-known for its ratings of Apple, and the outcry by brand-loyal Apple fans, grasping at straws in an… Continue reading Apple now better than Microsoft!

I always use a unique email address when I subscribe to anything, so that I can trash it if it gets used for spam, and a number of others who own their own domains do this to. Normally it’s the dodgy forums that use the mail for spam, but I was a little surprised when… Continue reading Spambank at it again

There is no doubt that the eNaTIS website was hacked (in the common usage of the word) yesterday, twice. The attackers, possibly making use of a simple exploit in an outdated, unpatched version of Joomla, a commonly-used open source content management system, first struck with a polite warning in the ‘How do I’ section. When… Continue reading eNaTIS hack attack: DoT denying the undeniable

Version 1.0.0 of the Zend framework was released today. It’s a PHP MVC framework, similar to Ruby on Rails, Django, TurboGears, Pylons, or CakePHP. CakePHP lags behind the more mature Python or Ruby frameworks, but with IBM and Zend both solidy behind the new PHP framework, it’ll be interesting to see how whether this, together… Continue reading Zend framework released

I was pleased to see that OpenWengo 2.1 was released for Linux recently. I’ve already written about why I was excited when I first came across it, and about how Ekiga, the main FOSS alternative stands up. Interestingly, Ekiga is no longer bundled with Kubuntu. Feisty, 7.04, contains no VOIP client by default, while 6.10… Continue reading Is Wengophone the FOSS alternative to Skype?

The mainstream press is trumpeting figures from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) that software piracy costs the South African economy R1.5 billion. Perhaps a more appropriate name is the BS Alliance. On the whole, mainstream media has been found rather wanting in questioning these figures. Rather, they play their all-too-common role of simply parroting what… Continue reading BS Alliance on software piracy

Reading a post by Ryan Boren about the difficulties WordPress has in moving to PHP5, it strikes me that the PHP4/5 conundrum is similar to what happened with Perl 4/5. I’m showing my age by confessing I was coding in the Perl 4 days, but I remember that when Perl 5 came along, there was… Continue reading Is PHP following in Perl’s footsteps?

Friday’s 27-4 dinner (I’m sure the URL will exist by the time you read this, otherwise try this one!) was fun. At the Hotel School, the venue was ideal for its purposes, and there seemed to be a lot more mixing. I gave a shortened, slightly tailored version of my technology and consciousness talk I’d… Continue reading 27-4 dinner at the Hotel School