Archive for the ‘Site news’ Category
Back Online
Well, it's been the biggest downtime ever for this site. A few months ago the server we rented with friends had a disk crash and the hosting company went under at the same time. Fortunately I had a recent enough backup, so not much data were lost but I was really busy with work so it took me almost 6 months to get things back to normal.
I'd like to thank all the people who contacted me to inquire about the situation.
Now resuming the normal flow of operation, I do have a huge backlog of news and photos to post.
All I got for christmas was a site update
I just uploaded the new version of this site, removing all the custom code I wrote and now replacing it by using Wordpress as a CMS for all non-blog related parts. Also, the photos are managed by Gallery 2 and integrated in Wordpress using WPG2, a wordpress plugin. With all this now I can:
- Upload photos from iPhoto directly, just select the photos or album, click share -> export : gallery2 and I'm done
- Make this nifty box at the right with the random image and album
- Integrate albums and photos links in posts with some markups
- Synchronise WP and gallery2 users ( altougth it doesn't seem to work right now )
This is still some rough edges, and some regressions, only one css is usable right now, I need to use/make a WP plugin to change the css on the fly.
The only custom parts are now all in the WP theme/templates I made, so I'll be able hopefully to update wordpress more easily.
And now for something completly different.
A lots of change happened since my last update, not one of theme significant enough to warrant a news post.
The photos gallery saw an almost complete rewrite, there is an hierarchical display of the galleries, the navigation between pictures is easier due to the display of the thumbnails of the next and previous picture at the bottom of the currently displayed picture. Also, some galleries where taken down and placed in the new private section as some of my friends pictured there didn't want their face plastered all over the wide internet (sorry to disapoint there was nothing ranchy, move along).
Speaking of the galleries there is a lot of new stuff whith more coming very soon ( as it is actually one of the worst summer I saw in paris I didn't do much photos ).
You may have noticed that there is a new default theme, which was supposed to be less regarding on the browser used to display it, but alas, unfortunnatly it doesn't render well at all on some who shall remain unamed. It seem that it's now possible to use IE6 under wine so I may try to get around this. As usual feedback is appreciated especially if it doesn't display as it should
Chritmas in April
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Why christmas in April you ask ? Because I just got new toys to play with, that's why ( yes, I'm still a child at hearth ).
Anyway, I recevied a 12" iBook to replace my old laptop and it's a very nice toy indeed, very silent and I installed all the tools I need quickly. My only regret is that I should have opted for the maximun RAM option as it badly need it. Otherwise, it's so nice it replaced my second pc, with a good monitor a real mouse. It's featured in my latest screenshot.
I also got a second hand Olympus E-10 digicam as I needed a camera with some decent optics. It's quite a beast to lug around but I'm determined to make some photo galleries very soon.
Speaking of gallery, a new one is available, it's from shots I took while strolling along the buttes chaumont park in Paris recently.
Also, I decided to put the original content of this site under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 1.0 license which should make the copying/distribution/modification guidelines of the material present here more clear. You are free to contact me for any question on this subject.
The night is still young
I didn't post a news before, but I did some work on the site again, now it should be XHTML 1.1 (Strict) compliant on almost all page. It took more time than anticipated as I had to update most of the content for this. Fortunately I was able to use tidy which made the process quite a bit easier.
I also added the first draft of the transtlation of a document I wrote what seems years ago, it is a simple gpg tutorial and you can find it here
Don't expect it to be flawless, it is still very rought.
I decided that I shall go to an India-Asia trip in the next few months, so I'm trying to scrape some funds and I started looking for jobs there. I did some web gigs recently but sadly it doesn't pay well enough yet. I'll keep some updated and I plan to take a lots of photos of this trip. Maybe even a "photo blog" even if this term has been much malified recently, I like photoblogs. (And I have the right to create my own inept one dammit)
I tried Orkut recently, my profile is here. I find it quite interessing thought somewhat lackluster feature-wise, but it has potential to become a good ground for web based discussion.
On a final note, breaking your foot sucks. (Especially if you did it by yourself during kung-fu training.)
A new theme, lots of tweaking and some fixes
Well, the first week of online presence for this new version of this site, I received some feedback, mainly about the awful rendering on Opera Browsers. So after lots of head scratching ( and opera segfaulting ) to find what exactly was wrong ( actually opera support well css but you have to be more explicit about all the values you define), this site should display correctly on Opera.
Second item of interest, I added a new theme dubbed Earth which should proove I'm not colorblind and can actually use colors when I make a design. The Background photo is of the place I used to lived in Austin (and Damm I miss this place ), there is a small bug in the theme selector dropdown box with mozilla which is know and should be fixed in future releases ( A lot of thanks to lithrel for helping me pinpointing this bug ).
A lot of small fixes where done here and there, the "intro" box added, and the light theme got some new graphics.
Recently, I have been thinking about moving to india, bangalore more precisly, being of Indian descent will make the administrative work much easier for me than other countries and I've got contacts there. Anyway, it's just a project for now, I'll keep you informed.
Finally, some old content was reinserted into the new database, old news are avalaible in the Archive below, all screenshots are now in the shots section.
The rumors of my demise have been greatly exagerated
No really during all this time I wasn't dead, or trapped in a cave or something, I just forgot to care of this site. As 2003 didn't see any update at all, I thought I ougtha make up for this, so here is a totaly new demenzia.net. Totally new code, and the content has been updated and corrected (I didn't thought I spelled so bad but my spell checker differ). The look also took a major overhaul, if you missed the old one, you can still select it using the nifty theme selector box. By the way I added a few different themes some of which are quite different looking and some are maybe even decent.
Anyway, I now use a mysql backend instead of flat text files for the dynamic content. Not one line of code from the old version have been reused ( fortunatly, as just rereading throught this code has brought me nightmares, yes it was that bad).
For the graphic design part, I heavily use css ( mostly css1 but also css2), nothing fancy but some braindead browsers doesn't play nice with standarts and so, if you use Internet Explorer or one of its variants, you wont be able to see this site in it's full splendor (granted, you are not missing that much but still.If you what to see how it should display check this screenshot:
CSS is an amazing technology, for those who may not know what I'm talking about, the HTML code is identical for all the different themes, only the css file change which allow me to make a different look and layout very quickly ( and as you can see from the number of themes, I had quite a lot of time on my hand at this moment).
I'll also try to display more content more regulary now that the backend is all ready and nice ( And I intend to fullfil this promise this time). Also, the news will be regulary updated as more content are added, and a rdf stream is also available here.
On a more personnal note, I quit my previous job and I'm currently looking for a new one, so if you are in need, or know some who need, a Linux/BSD Sysadmin, I'm currently available in the Paris area. I would be also interessed about a job in Asia (A long time interest for me). My resume is available here.









