Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

So we doodled and now we have a Date , a Location , and a Page to Sign up for the evening.

The majority of votes said we should meet on monday October 22 the which is what we'll do. I figured out that Kasteel Steytelinck in Wilrijk would be a good location with parking space and easy to reach from different highways.

And we also have a Wiki where you can Sign up for the event so we at least have an idea a how how many people will show up

Pete and Dave are starting a trend that comes back every 2 years.

How long have you been using Linux ?

It must be the We're getting old week. With /. turning 10 etc

I recon it's pretty difficult to remember exact when and how after all these years. I do remember my first Linux Workshop in Brussels somewhere 1993 I also remember that when I started out writing a new project my first version always was 0.98 because I think that was the first Linux kernel I ever used ..
And yes it was an SLS and yes I remember going over to some friend before a Datalink meeting with a stack of 1.44 floppies then having to wait for another week since one of the floppies went bad and I had to make a new copy of that disk. We've come a long way :)

So when did YOU start with this Linux and Open Source thingie ? :)

So this thursday we'll be celebrating the 10th birthday of /. amongst other locations in Antwerp.

Might I suggest that at each party the partygoers buy drinks all night for the person with the lowest /. id !

So Koen, how does that Bus by SMS thingie work ? :)

Every once in a while you start with something new.. you're used to being rather expercienced on different topics in open source , having written an article and a book left or right but there comes a day when you will feel a total newbie again :)

About 10 years ago I was mostly into technical webdevelopment , perl, php, oracle plsql , java servlets , coldfusion stuff like that.. I stopped building corporate websites about 7-8 years ago when I realised I was spending more time helping people to build the infrastructure to host those sites than actually building the sites. (That and the fact that I really got bored with people wanting greener green)

So fast forward to about 5-6 months ago where I suddenly felth the need again to start writing code for a small pet project of mine.

I wanted a framework where I could jumpstart with different features I needed such as usermanagement and a blog feature.

As I mentionned earlier this week .. everybody seems to be using Drupal these days and has similar newbie feelings :)

Dag is posting about his experiences on how to use Drupal as a personal blog. So my current project is different.

For a personal blog I wouldn't be using the blog module either has he describes, but as I wanted different authors .. I understood I do need it.

I had the same problem with the Vocabularies and Terms .. Upon starting I really didn't understand what they meant for my blog. So I recreated the categories I had in dotclear in there. I deleted them from my database after a month, when I figured out how to use tagging in the blog :)

So what do you need when you want to go one step further, like getting content from a database. So here is where the I probably went totally wrong and where the documentation could use a hand.

I started out writing my own module where I use some drupal functions and custom php code. Turns out there is something like CCK but I`m still not sure if CCK is the thing I need (or how to use it)

I`m pretty sure the way I`m writing my modules totally wrong also.
I'm having 1 big file in which I do everything.. Pretty crappy if you ask me but I don't really find another way .. Or should I create multiple modules ?

Luckily this is just a hobby, won't be big and professional like... It's just a project to learn and I got a different dayjob ..
However my fear is that other people probably won't realize how wrong the
are using a certain technology and will offer their services to customers :(

So I`m nagging some people about a new Drupal User group meeting.
Guess Dag and I will learn some stuff there ;)

It seems like The 10th floor test which I described in my early blog years and which got refused at Wikipdia is also often referred to as the Toss Test

However I must say I prefer to do the test without the part where they throw the engineer out of the window :)

Dag is creating Drupal packages

So I`m wondering if I should look into packaging different drupal modules. Certainly would help me
Anyone interrested ?

Lots of new and interresting stuff on the web these days.

First of all the Centos community has a planet.centos.org now. Were I ran into the brand new feed of Field Commander Wieers Dag was long overdue setting up a blog but he finally made it and he already pointed me to interresting stuff :)

Then there is Peter Vandenabeele who also decided to start up a blog.

And last but not least I ran into Dev2Ops , upon sending that link to a collegue he asked me if I was behind that site .. I`m not :)

Dev2Ops clearly is tackling the stuff I`m involved with on a daily base. How do you deploy and upgrade software and it's configuration for different similar machines in the field.
The have a couple of nice polls on their site which interrest me:
How do you disribute software releases for in-house developed applications? and How do you maintain
system configuration files?. Just go a head and vote . I`m interrested in the results.
My votes were on using pacakges (rpm/deb) using apt or yum and off course Puppet ! ;)

BTW.. It makes me wonder .. who is NOT using Drupal these days :))

Its pretty funny when you announce that you have left your job what kind of ideas people have about your next venture.

The first number of guesses were pretty obvious. Different people tought I was heading to Xensource, other people tought I was heading for Qumranet.
Other people tought I was heading to the US.
I'd love to spend some time abroad working in a different culture so who knows one day..

But I`m pretty much not moving that far yet
Our new venture is called Inuits. I write our as there are different familiar faces at Inuits

Our website isn't ready yet .. we have other priorities.
But as soon as it's ready I`ll let you know

So now you know :)

PS. And for those dissapointed.. yes there is more where this came from :)

Dear Dopplr,

A couple of weeks ago I mailed you folks to ask for a feature to change my email addres.
You never got back to me so I'd figure maybe a blog post would help.
Only to figure out that you actually implemented the feature but didn't tell anyone.

thnx !

So I`m not the world largest KDE fan but I think the fact that Akademy 2008 will be held in Belgium is great news .

Finally some other Open Source event to visit our little country besides Fosdem. I should probably try to spend some time in Mechelen next year in August learn what those guys are doing...

So when Philip started asking for more integration and even joined conferences here is his chance .. no travel requirements just a 30 minute cartrip to Mechelen , at least for him :)