The direction of ACal 3.0 has completely turned around. Instead of being based on MachCMS I have started it from scratch for one simple reason. Simplicity.

The MachCMS code is complicated. Although it is stable and writing a module is easy.

MachCMS also does not currently have a database abstraction layer. It only support SQLite and PHP 5.

With ACal 3.0 it will initially support SQLite and MySQL by using a database layer. This just means I need to learn MySQL quick

I am going to use object oriented programming a lot more now to make things better organized code wise. I want to write the code in a manner that will be easy to maintain, a learn how to write a good db layer at the same time.

Another idea just popped in. What about allowing plug-ins in the calendar? Maybe later.

View a tutorial on how to use PHP for command line scripts over at spymac.net.

2005 is coming to a home near you anytime now.

I’ve been learning the darwinports portfile system. That way I can get into that. I am doing a Firefox port just to get a hang of it and then will do a flightgear port.

I released MachCMS 0.2.1 to fix a minor bug. Some more work was done on the trunk.

If you would like a web site built for you send me a note. I’ll start a service for that soon. Prices are low but quality high.

In the quest for an easy way to create to release versions of MachCMS and other software stored in a Subversion repository I wrote a simple script called svnmkrel. Here’s the code:

#!/usr/bin/php


function read() {

if (!defined(’STDIN’)) {

define(’STDIN’, fopen(’php://stdin’, ‘r’));

}

return trim(fgets(STDIN));

}

echo “Url: “;

$url = read();

echo “Path to Repository: “;

$path = read();

echo “Name: “;

$name = read();

echo “Version: “;

$version = read();

// Check it out

$command = “svn co $url/$path $name”;

system($command);

// Create the tarball

$command = “tar -cf $name.tar $name”;

system($command);

// Compress the tarball

$command = “gzip $name.tar”;

system($command);

// Remove the directory

$command = “rm -rf $name”;

system($command);

?>

It works fine on my Mac OS X 10.3.7 system using bash and Subversion 1.1.2 and PHP 5.0.3.

I used it to make MachCMS 0.2.1 and used a script much like it to create the 0.2 release.

I am going to work on the Mac OS X installer package yet before I release MachCMS 0.2.1.

Subversion 1.1.2 was released recently.

I released the FlightGear 0.9.8-pre1 package for Mac OS X on the 23rd.

People are acting so cheerful because it’s Christmas. To me it’s a pagan holiday that has been twisted all sorts of ways.

I have not been working on MachCMS or ACal 3.0 lately. I’ll get to that soon.

Anyone want to buy me an x86 notebook computer?

The ACal Project has now had 100,000 hits on SF.net. Not much, but good considering it’s current lack of development.

Amaya 9.0 snapshot released.

I will be releasing a Darwinports package installer soon, because nobody else is.

PHP 5.0.3 was released.

Can’t think of anything else right now.

I have recently started FlightGear Mac OS X. The goal of this project is to make FlightGear user friendly on Mac OS X for the average end user. I have already done this and will be releasing a FlightGear 0.9.8-pre1 package today.

So all you Mac OS X people, check it out! And if you are so inclined, join the project and help promote it.

I now have more experience with GNU/Linux. This time Gentoo PPC 2004.3. And I’m afraid it’s not good.

It would have been good, or at least a lot better if the developer(s) remembered to include PPPoE (ADSL) support with the livecd. Even if Debian doesn’t allow you to configure ADSL during installation, at least you can do it.

So maybe I’ll try Gentoo again later, but for now Debian does the job much better. Of course I’m not going away from Mac OS X as long as this iMac works.

I have started work on ACal 3.0, which will be released by the ACal Project when it’s done.

It is based on MachCMS 0.2+1 which is version 0.2 with one bug fix. This allows me to get right on the calendar without having to work with a database, template system, etc.

And good changes made to the base system will be back ported to MachCMS.

Work on ACal 3.0 is going on in the ACAL3 branch. Here’s details on how you can obtain the latest source code using SVN.

To checkout the calendar do this from command line:

svn co svn://artooro.dnsalias.net/svnroot/machcms/branches/ACAL3 calendar



To checkout the MachCMS trunk do this:

svn co svn://artooro.dnsalias.net/svnroot/machcms/trunk machcms

It will be nice when SF.net supports Subversion. You can also always find my packages for Mac OS X on my Spydisk.

First watch this from BBC if you will. (Requires RealPlayer)

That video actually makes it sound like if Arafat was a good person! It also makes it sound like Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians are the harmless people being bullied around.

I’m going to try to set things straight here.

Yasser Arafat was a wicked terrorist. He was a Muslim. All Muslims are terrorist even if it doesn’t seem like it. Their religion makes them a terrorist.

Every day the Palestinians go around killing innocent Israeli’s. Israel has to protect them so they go after those terrorists.

The wicked fall of course and people here in the west somehow make the mistake of thinking Israel is bossing the Palestinians around or something, when in fact they are simply defending themselves.

In Muslim schools they are teaching that Israel is actually a Palestinian state and that Israel has no right to exist. What does this do? It creates more terrorist of course.

According to the Muslim religion, they benefit from killing innocent Christians and Jews. They are all as bad as Adolph Hitler himself, thinking that they are doing the world a favour by killing off the Jews.

The good news is that they will always fail. God’s word will stand forever!

Israel has tried many times to make peace, each time the Palestinians deny it and respond with more violence. What does this say? There will never be peace until the day when Jesus Christ comes down in all His glory. Isaac and Ishmael, they will keep on fighting until then. Just look at History.

Late yesterday evening I released the MachCMS 0.2 milestone. The Mac OS X installer has been improved quite a bit, it even has an installer package for PHP 5.0.3 included.

The MachCMS package checks the PHP version, if version is sufficient installs MachCMS is the web server documents, makes a data directory for the SQLite databases, starts Web Sharing if needed, and finally opens your default browser to your new web site.

The PHP 5 package installs the PHP CLI and Apache module and PEAR. Then it modifies the Apache configuration file as needed for the PHP 5 module to work as expected.

I have also built a web site that’ll do for now. It basically reads the news RSS feed, prints it out on the page in a nice HTML format, there’s a menu to everything from documentation to screenshots. It’ll work for now.

Also I’ve almost got the GIMP 2.2 preview release going on Mac OS X.

I have uploaded the installer for MachCMS 2004-12-15.

What’s new?

1. A working phpBB2 modules with few trivial bugs. (phpBB2 2.0.11)
2. You can change the location of the SQLite databases.
3. Installer is smarter.
4. You no longer get a lot of errors the first few times you run it. In fact you shouldn’t get any.
5. The page title use contents.xml.
6. The tabs link correctly to x1 modules.
7. The SQLite database path is set correctly for Mac OS X in the installer.

And that’s all I can think of right now. Not much needs to be done before it will be a worthy 0.2 release.

In fact, this release is what I hoped version 0.3 would be. You can check out the road map on the MachCMS web site.

I still do not recommend it for production web sites. It’s simply not ready.

Installing MachCMS is really simple already as it is, but not so simple on Mac OS X if you do not have PHP 5 and Web Sharing is not turned on.

So I have made an installer package of MachCMS 2004-12-14 which checks to make sure you have PHP 5.0.0 or later, installs MachCMS into the web documents directory, and if Web Sharing is off, it turns it on.

For the 0.2 release I will make it so you can install PHP 5 along with MachCMS if you choose to do so. This is all on Mac OS X only of course.

I might make a Debian package later on as MachCMS matures.