“It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me. I mean, when you try an’ operate one of these weird black controls which are labelled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to tell you you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of intergalactic hyper-hearse?”

Back when I was a young Turk, I played a lot with a series of blog platforms and content-management systems (CMS) — early PHP/MySQL “LAMP” — called Nukes.  There was PHPNuke and my favorite, PostNuke.   I used PostNuke for my personal web site and for early variants of Memes.org.  Well, it’s been a long time but PostNuke has come a long way, baby, and is now called Zikula.  I am going to be seeing if I can find ways to use it, both for personal and professional projects.  You should surely check out Zikula, too.  Download it now and check it out: Zikula-1.2.0.zip and Zikula-1.2.0.tar.gz

Main points of this release

• New language management system utilising gettext
• UTF8 support (just mentioned in the upgrade script now)
• Support for internationalisation (correct date and currency display)
• Fully indexable multi-lingual content
• Right to left display support
• Full review of language strings
• CSS and Templates improvements
• Centralization of css classes for Zikula forms (z-form)
• Usability and consistency
• Reworked SeaBreeze theme
• Dozens of bug fixes
• CSS/JS on-the-fly optimisation
• Simplified upgrade process from Zikula 1.1.0+ to 1.2.0
• Improved UI of installer and upgrade scripts
• General facelift to the user interface
• Auto update checker for the core
• Users module introduces an API to let the site’s Profile module to handle the dynamic user data in the Users’ forms (see system/Users/pndocs).
• Outsource further VA modules
• Optimized module installation workflow

Download link:

Zikula-1.2.0.zip (5.45 MB)

MD5: 180425f0a9c3eeab8cdd742a608e9ee2

SHA1: a079331f622020150ab6333cca79b1855b11a4b7

Zikula-1.2.0.tar.gz (4.26 MB)

MD5: a019ea98a85b8d05afb19d2af23fbd5a

SHA1: 451cd39c816ac463f0e96ea31c4d68a6e625f387

Changelog link:

http://code.zikula.org/core/export/27416/tags/Zikula-1.2.0/docs/CHANGELOG.txt

Developer documentation and videos

http://community.zikula.org/index.php?module=Wiki&tag=TranslationIndex

While I love Drupal, it is not the focus of Abraham Harrison, just part of a campaign here or there and the engine behind our AHLLC website. That said, I am a Drupal geek and fan. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to attend DrupalCom in DC, just down the street, this year.  I was blue — until now because all 102 sessions are available for free online to watch, TED-style!  Watch ‘em while they’e hot! Via DrupalCon:

Videos of all the sessions that were recorded at DrupalCon DC – all 102 of them – are now available to watch online. So if you missed a few sessions you wanted to see or couldn’t make the conference, take a day this weekend to sit back with a big cup of coffee to watch some amazing Drupal presentations.

You can access the videos in several ways. You can browse the session descriptions on the DrupalCon site and find links to videos in the comments, you can review the list of sessions on Drupal.org and in Archive.org, or you can check out the Wall of Videos that Aaron Winborn created. We’re also working on integrating the videos into the DrupalCon DC website, so stay tuned for more on that.

Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to Michael McLay and GWU, we have a place, a time, and a date for the next Zope Python User Group Meeting. The next ZPug will meet on Saturday, 21 September, 2002, at the Tompkins Hall of Engineering on the GW campus. Rejoice!Michael McLay wrote in a recent email:

I confirmed with Tony Stanco that we will have a room available at GWU on September 21st for the ZPUG meeting. The meeting room is in Tompkins Hall of Engineering on 23nd St. A campus map is also available. We can have the room every month on the third Saturday. Tony said if we only use it every other month that the PerlMongers will be using it on the alternate months. (I’m not making this up) Perhaps the move to Saturday morning will have a positive effect on the regularity of our meetings. The Tompkins Hall building is a few blocks from the Kennedy Center and from the Georgetown. If the weather cooperates this would be a great family outing opportunity.

Are there any volunteers to give a status report on the development of Zope3 or Python 2.3? If not, then perhaps a line up of mini-talks would be interesting. Please suggest a python package or module that you found particularly useful and prepare a few slides that describe it’s use and benefits.

I can give a presentation on the PyGtk 2.0 GUI package. James Henstridge has done an incredible amount of work on automating the generation of C code wrappers for the Gtk+ 2.0 and Gnome libraries. The 2.0 release of this package takes avantage of the new features of the C API for Python 2.2. The Gtk wrapper written in Python is gone. The entire GUI module is written in C.

I’ve recently spent some time trying to use ZSI to implement SOAP, in conjunction with the PyGtk GUI interface. Unfortunately ZSI was designed with httplib, which does not share a mainloop well with the Threading module, so I tried replacing httplib in ZSI with asyncore. That was an interested several days effort. Finally I decided to make life much easy on myself so I switched to Pyro instead of SOAP. Harmony has been restored to the Universe. Picking the right tool for the job can save lots of effort.

Another topic for discussion is the upcoming Open Source for E-Government Conference. I been asked to give a presentation at the Conference. I’m interested in gathering examples of government use of Open Source software (Python in particular).

Volunteers for other subjects? And please don’t be shy. about suggesting alternatives. (Chris, I hope you don’t mind my jumping in with a proposal for the meeting.) I’m just trying to get the ball moving again. Hopefully some more interesting subject will be proposed and I can postpone my contribution until October.

Image via Wikipedia

Squeak Squeak! The Rat is dead! Which old Rat?
The Wicked Rat! Squeak Squeak! The Wicked Rat is dead.

As Tenant of Grotto City, in the County of the Land
of DC, I welcome you most regally.

But we’ve got to verify it legally, to see;

To see?

If he,

If he?

Is morally, ethic’lly,

Spiritually, physically, Positively, absolutely,

Undeniably and reliably Dead!!

As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And
he’s not only merely dead, he’s really most sincerely dead.

Then this is a day of Independence for all the Grottoids
and their descendants!

If any!

Yes, let the joyous news be spread the Wicked Old Rat at last IS dead!!!!

Squeak Squeak! The Rat is dead! Which old Rat?
The Wicked Rat! Squeak Squeak! The Wicked Rat is dead.

Wake up – sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Rat is dead.
he’s gone where the goblins go,
Below – below – below. Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Squeak Squeak the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know the Wicked Rat is dead!

Hey, remember this: Item 8: Coelaboration Well, maybe not, but the gang from EFA, TMN, and I used to write some pretty cool hyperfictions and I put up a web zine called Coelaboration hoping to be able to do that at a very good scale but in the past I had no coding skills to be able to do it right, but I am getting closer, so if you have any ideas or this appeals to you — having a space for posting your writing as yourself or anonymously as well as starting and being part of hyperfictions? Its sort of memetic to see which seed attracts, etc…

Well, it seems pretty easy to be able to make a PHP+MySQL (or even flat file) collaborative writing tool that is basically a combination of PHP-Nuke, Blogger, etc, that is not a VC so much as a PHP-Nuke site that has the front area (where people start their collaborative hyperfiction/hypertext) is an “article” like on a Nuke/Slashdot site, but then when you hot “more” you see something more like http://www.memoid.com/archive/00000019.htm#comments and then when it all is finished (or larger) it looks like this, and is flat-linear and not threaded, looking like this:

8:227) Netiva Caftori 05-JUN-98 16:40

Wicked, wicked, are we wicked? All we want is love…

8:228) Hope O`Keeffe 06-JUN-98 3:44

Under the floorboards upstairs, the construction crew has found a worn black notebook.

Most of it is lists of accounts, the costs of bread and coal in the

1920s, monies owed from the boarders, all in picil. A woman’s hand, I

am sure.

But on the flyleaf, in pencil, it says:

Birds I saw at the birdbath Saturday May 1930

Tanager, Robin.

beautiful longtailed brown thrush

Smaller speckled thrush bathed and preened his feathers

2 catbirds. Blue jay.

I can’t imagine a place being more heaven than my front porch, morning,

afternoon or evening, in May. I wonder if there is such a thing as being

too thankful. Seems I was before I lost dad and I was so thankful. It

seemed I had come to rest.

Even when your body sits still and rests your mind goes on automatically

thinking dreaming wondering —

****

Later, on the same page, in ink:

This house is cold. Why? Oh I think winter is the time to visit. Of

course one does not have the comforts of home. If I go some where or if

some body comes here we don’t find it like home in any way, and of course

we are bound to howl. But since howling is our nature, why not?

***

There is no more.

I MUST find out who this woman was. And, of course, I must build a pond,

if only as a birdbath…

8:230) Katherine Blanke (KAT) 07-JUN-98 0:47

She remains such a mystery to me, even though I’ve known her for so long.

Why does she do the things she does, why did she do the things she did?

@!KAT

8:231) Netiva Caftori 07-JUN-98 16:04

History facts should be reported…not just the price of bread that is

documented but especially the names of birds that passed by in the 20′s….

this is more than a legacy to Hope, but a legacy that should be shared w/

everyone…

8:232) Red 07-JUN-98 19:12

The only one. I’m the only one for him. He says it so confidently. I put in

his CD, to his favorite song and felt bad.

I love you. He says it almost everyday. hints at it, sometimes comes out right

and says it directly. I snapped at him and told him to knock it off. He sounded

so sad on the other end of the phone.

I wore his shirt today. The track and field one from Parchment. It wasn’t

the same thing as him, but it was better than nothing. I was warm even though

it was cold outside.

He said he didn’t want to fight anymore, about whether or not he loves me.

He didn’t like to fight with me about it. It mad him sad that he said it and

all I did was yell at him. He didn’t know how I felt. That’s when i started

crying.

Ozzy is not a good thing to be listening to right now.

Why can’t he be like the other ones? Why does he have to insist that he

loves me? Why can’t he just take advantage of me and leave, like everyone else.

It’s only been two weeks…it feels like years…or at least more than 14 days.

“..Time after time, line after line you broke my….”

She called today. Mortality had slapped her in the face. Skin cancer. She said

it so matter of factly, as if it wasn’t the important thing. It’s just there.

On to the salvation of a community that was nothing without her. I wrote it out

and posted it like she said. No one else seemed to notice either. Maybe not a

big thing, since it’s so easy to remove…but still… I felt as if I was the

only one crying….

8:233) chris abraham 08-JUN-98 10:47

The rumor mill hit me upon arrival at work. “He must have a trust fund.” “He

must have a silver spoon in his mouth.” “He must have another income, how else

can he take 21 unpaid days off of work and miss nary a step?” The rumor mill

as filtred through a colleague who knows me as chris and not Mr. Abraham. A

friend. She told me of the prying questions asked, the threats and the

posturing: “I have been working here for almost 10 years and have never taken

off three weeks.” They call it my vacation, but it was not that. It was a

crusade for a holy grail; it was not unlike a quest. It was for love. That

sounds terribly cliche, but there it is. The grail, love as pesonified by a

woman, as personified. Moving. Flying. United. Hawaiian. A dog named Suzi,

a roomate, Bret, a friend, Bryan, and a smallish ramshackle wooden house in

Kaimuki. Housing a wonderfully complex flowering woman. Yes, the silver of

rings. Yes, the alien weighing my hand, pressing my finger, signifying m

Where did those three years go? Where were you? Where was I? I really

cannot account for 1997. I am sure it came to pass because this is 1998. I

know I was on a plane, living off of stock returns and a passport, in 1996.

1995 was a year of change, a year of mourning, a year of sickness and

madness, or tight body and crazed eyes. A dark time. 1996 was a time of

embracing and hurting and the bright wet red pulpiness of open wounds –

spittle and puss, healing this way and that, showing jagged scars and a rough

wound. Words of death, of love, of melancholy intercourse abroad and

cigarettes, wine, whisky, debauch, poetry, ashtrays, trains, ships, planes, and

whatnot.

1997. *****. don’t know.

1998. Bob’s death day passed and on that day I made images of Willow with

Mary, a friend of Bob, and held my love in my arms, held her and rejoiced.

Never really mentioned it, but writing words for Bob is meaningless. Burning

film, flexing the Nikon, shooting a model in Honolulu, being with Mary,

making image is the way to go. Let go. Remember but let it go. Feel and

release.

But to love. To care only of the future, to feel the present completely, to

feel touch, to hear word, to see body, eyes, hair, nose, brow, teeth, chin,

tongue, chest, shoudlers, back, arms, legs, feet, hands, fingers, ring. Let

the past go. Be egoless. Be selfless. Love for love’s sake. Expose the

belly, expose the neck. Sleep soundly. Love completely. Feel the ring on the

ring finger of the left hand and let its weight and silver circle remind me,

enamour me, seduce me, excite me.

Appreciate. Explore. Want. Desire. Know. Enjoy. Love.

Wednesday afternoon, I shall embrace a roomate soulmate partner lover love

girlfriend friend into my washington, into our apartment.

what luck, what a lucky ***** am i!

8:234) Barry Bluestein 09-JUN-98 23:53

There was no doubt, the Boy had it bad, real bad.

8:235) Aaron Webb 24-JUN-98 23:24

If there were ever the perfect place to test all

your thoughts about humanity, it is the subway.

Tribalism, cunning rivalry, racism, love,

unexplained hate, all in abundance, and exposed

by and eye which is bored for the wait for the

next stop. I sit down across from a man dressed

like a nice guy. In his hand, is a brocure he’s

reading. A retreat for quakers or something

like that. Suddenly glances up from his reading

and catches me watching and examining him. He

glares through thick glasses at me, and I drop

my eyes in the age old instinct of animalistic

submission. His pinkish hat says “friends”.

A man is sitting a couple seats behind where I’m

going on the subway. He is obviously retarded,

eyes uncrossing and crossing at my entrance to

the almost empty car. He grunts and blinks as I

smile and nod in his direction as I do for

everybody who I see. He talks to himself loudly

throughout the ten minute ride,but all I see of

him is a brief glimpse over my shoulder. You’re

not supposed to look around you see? I risk

this subway taboo, making an exception for this

odd man. In his hands is a small coupon

advertising an ornamental knife. His eyes widen

slightly when he notices what he is holding. He

smiles slightly, and smartly flicks his gaze

toward mine. I turn as he drops the piece of

paper onto the subway’s carpet.

As I sit, the subway stops and lets in a new

batch of passengers. A young man walks in. He

is about 6’1″ and obviously is very strong, with

muscles straining at the seams of his shirt. He

twirls his bloated wallet apon a pivot created

by his thumb and middle finger. As the train

screams toward the next stop, he notices me

stand and gather my things. I meet his gaze,

instead of dropping it like I had for the

‘friend’. His answer to my instinctual

challenge? To step over to his left one half

step, into the space near the door, insuring

that I would have to break into his personal

space to get near the door. As the door opens,

he steps out, and up the stairs without a sound,

probably subconsiously satisfied that he had won

that battle. I catch myself doing the exact

same thing seconds later in line for the

outbound side of the ticket processor.

On my way back home tonight, I saw a couple

kissing as they parted on the train’s doorway.

I yearned to ask the next attractive girl on the

subway ‘where you from?’ ‘where you going?’

‘whatch up to?’ as I had with the girl in

Sorrento, and the fellow freshman at western

who’s room number now burns insistently in my

back pocket. But on the subway, I know the

answer. She’s from the last stop, she’s going

to another stop, and she is busy playing the

sport of solitude in the big city.

8:236) chris abraham 21-AUG-1998 10:38

living underground is not like

death. it does not have me feeling

maggoty or decomposing. better,

the feeling is like hibernation.

or burrowing like the way she burrows

into my chest or the way I burrow under

the duvet, into my sleep. in a world

wherein i am all abuzz, where i feel

always pursued by madness, success, failure,

expectations, and need, telling myself that

the bedroom is the place for peace, for

sleep, for solace isn’t nearly enough.

when i open the wooden gate and lock it

behind me, i must pass pots of budding

plants. consciously toeing into the

stairwell, squeezing past the a/c, standing

before the glass-faced door.

always cool inside. always dark and quiet.

always getting light from above, always seeing

designs on the floor from branches moving, people

passing, rain falling.

the dark, the quiet — never enough O2, always

a little sleepy. If we were to ever leave on the

gas after making a stir fry, we would be goners,

my shell and i.

have yet to turn on a PC; have yet to login, check

in, read in, jack. just touch. just looks and seeing

and the warmth of cooked food, the cold of perspirant

class, the slickness of body aroused, the tightness

of tired bodies looking for the sleep, protected from

the EMF, protected from the sirens and public passions

of trumpeting city busses, ambulii, engines that could

and doo.

soon, a dog named sue; soon, soirees and whole food and

the slickness of body aroused; the harsness of a body

aroused, the swallowing of self: the gate swallowing

you and me; the stairs taking us, the coolness of under

ground consuming, the sheets, the bed, the eating,

matications, taking onto lips into mouths, the flick

of a pink tongue, and then the swallowing only to merge

and find not death but restful sleep.

8:237) Hope O`Keeffe 28-AUG-1998 15:23

He bleats a bit, and I switch him to heart-side. They swirl all around us

in the underground food court: sunburnt tourists, field-tripping boy scouts,

office workers skipping out for a Friday afternoon break. I dunk my thumb in

the cup of icecream and he slurps it in with his small pink tongue, confused by

the new sensations — cold! sweet! sticky! He sucks with tiny furrowed brow

and enormous concentration.

Patrick Martin Thomas Langello is three days old. The cycle begins, and ends,

and begins again.

8:240) chris abraham 31-AUG-1998 16:41

the stories cannot be confirmed or denied.

what is an history? what makes things

act yoo al? versus fick shi nall? after

three years of knowing, after three years

of following and exploring the truth, here

comes the vulgarity and yet there is no way

to know for sure — no boner fiday way of

knowing the incessantly sworling swohrling

whorling whoring debilitating mesmerising

destroying supporting mucous memories of

times past, of inebriations or was it getting

toked on hiphop jes grew jes grew it in the

back behind the rosemary, behind the Oray

Gan Oh (oh, to pronounce certain things like

a brit, oh to know smugly what it is to be

a man who is from hawaii who attended uni

in a small campus on a small bit of land by a

lake in farmland in norwich, norfolk: oraygahnoh)

corgettes. rahthah. so, where was i:

the slipery eel reality, the cumstained rag

of memory: is it mine, is it yours, is it

swimming with virus, are there pieces of baby there

is there you or me, was it him? who’s baby?

was there shaving cream involved? was there a

state of undress? what does a state of undress

look like when you stumble upon it as a cleaning

lady in a swanky resort and country club — and

moreso, what is the number of jc? wwjd? wwjd?

writhing, writing, pawing, slippery majesty and

playing the horn, rubbing the nub, eating eating

out eating out necklace de perle. perle. wipe.

cumstains show up elegantly as ghostly white under

the sweeping arc of the black light, the UV bulb.

ghost white. used at rape scenes. looking for the

came and went; he done ***** and went, where dat bleeding

black light. the biograph was never illuminated in

blacklight because the seating might have shown like

the galaxy: innumerable white flecks upon a dark field…

With the 8:12 thing there, with the name linked to an “about” page like nuke (http://memes.org/user.php?op=userinfo&uname=greyskies) and the “topic” can be Poetry, Prose, Rant, etc… and each person can either allow comments or not… when they post. I wonder if that is possible — so that each person who contributes can decide whether they want the comments, whether they want a collaborative text, or what. I think that what http://www.memoid.com is built from, called Greymatter (http://noahgrey.com/greysoft/) and its very Blogger — but Anonymous people should be able to post and reply (allows people to be more open) and also register. So, maybe it would take a lot of customization — because the comment thing is not where I want it to be… there always has to be a comment box when you look at the “more” view (http://chrisabraham.com/article.php?sid=68&mode=flat&order=0) — like this: (http://www.memoid.com/archive/00000010.htm#comments) and the entire karma thing — I don’t know if I like it because it makes it too competitive and too much like a slam.

Anyway, I hope to be able to relaunch coelaboration.com real soon — and it will look and feel a little like the old one (http://www.coelab.com) but be new.

*SMOOCH*

Chris

cc: ChrisAbraham.com