osCommerce Blog

Just a short note to say that it is snowing in Arkansas! It started yesterday and is still lightly snowing today.  My dog Maggie is using her nose as a snow shovel so that is pretty funny!

I have been pretty busy as of the first of this new year but hope to do some more work on the docs soon.

Everyone take care and spring will be here soon!

Just want to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

What a joyous season of the year! It even snowed here a little. My dog Maggie was outside using her nose as a shovel for the snow so that was funny … she was running around with the snow on her nose.

The docs are slowly being moved to this wiki and still in progress although this will slow down during the holidays.

Take care if you are driving or flying to family and enjoy the season!

Hi Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend! I cooked a chicken instead of a turkey this year and had my special dressing and homemade cranberries … wow am I full! I get a brand of chicken that does not have chemicals in it and is only around in certain areas. The brand is called “Smart Chicken” … that chicken wasn’t too smart if he ended up on the table!!! LOL

Anyway, I have started moving the doc information from the knowledgebase to the new wiki confluence site and cleaning it up. The new wiki is really nice because you can type in the “Rich Text” box area and the code is automatically extrapolated into the wiki box. Also the wiki editing is much easier than other wiki sites I have seen. As I understand it the new wiki site will send pdf files of the text so this is a plus.

I really thank Harald a lot for making this so nice and easy for all of us! Thank you Harald!

I look forward to getting the docs ready for ms3 and ask the community to send me ideas or changes to look into.

We all need to work together!

Hi everyone, I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving. I just got back from shopping after attempting to buy several tech items. One of which was a 250 gig external hard drive. After getting to the stores at around 8 am I had no luck Lines were long and stores did not have enough of the advertised items. How many people believe in shopping on Black Friday? Is it worth it anymore or is it just better to shop online? Do you offer Black Friday specials on your osCommerce store? I am beginning to think it’s better to just stay at home especially with my experience today, not being able to get anything that was advertised. And after you get what’s advertised you have to spend time filling out rebates!

More info on Black Friday

So I was at a restaurant yesterday and we ordered a dish with vegetables. As soon as it comes out and I begin to dig in and guess what I see in it? It was a green caterpillar! With all the news in the US about e-coli and raw spinach and this recent incident that I had, I suggest paying careful attention and make sure you wash your vegetables prior to cooking or eating it. Have you ever found something really weird in your dish at a restaurant? This was defiantly a first for me!

On a side note, I finished the final stages of a project I have been working on. As a webmaster looking for link exchange have you ever wondered if a site is a reliable reciprocal or paid link partner? I have created an organization QLEW (Quality Link Exchange Websites) which allows webmasters to leave comments on websites that offer reciprocal or paid link exchange. Membership is free but all QLEW members must abide by a strict code of ethics. If you have an osCommerce store that has a link directory please check out becomeing a member of Find quality link exchange websites.

I returned from a 3 week break on the weekend, yes just after getting 3.0 Alpha 3 out the door, and am in top spirits to continue full-time work again on osCommerce. I did not make any public statement about this as I had my notebook and mobile phone with me to be able to take care of important issues during this time.

This was the first experience for me at connecting online over a mobile phone and did not face any technical problems doing so. The only negative aspect I had with it was when checking my inboxes due to the amount of spam I receive. Even using IMAP and only downloading headers took a while to complete but was sufficient in picking out the emails that looked important enough.

I was also able to bring the development site up during this time after it crashed a couple of times. There is a threading problem with ClearSilver (which Trac depends on) and FreeBSD/AMD64 which occasionally causes the web server to crash. Fortunatly Trac have moved on to their own templating engine called Genshi which the developoment site has been recently updated to (0.11-dev). Although a risky move, I hope this brings an end to the downtime of the development site.

I mentioned briefly in a blogging entry in March that I would be going to Tegernsee/Bayern again in September for the Oktoberfest. I went for a week in March and was there again for 3 weeks this time. The major difference being ofcourse the seasonal change where everything was now green instead of white. And ofcourse what you order after a long walk (beer vs hot chocolate drink)

Here are two pictures of the same temple I took pictures of in March, on top of Wallberg mountain:

   

Now that the sea was free of ice I rented a small 2,000 watt electric boat and took it for a spin:

The Allianz Arena soccer stadium:

And ofcourse some pictures of the Oktoberfest:

(on the Star Flyer, about 50m high)

      

(on the Ferris Wheel)

   

(on the Olympia Roller Coaster (with 5 loopings), yep, look closer to see me on it )

I also went on the EuroStar Roller Coaster - both rides were too short in my opinion.

(on the Flying Circus (the ride I enjoyed most; and yep, look closer at around 39s to see me on it ))

mvi_0454.MOV

(me with a Maß in my mouth)

(follow these outside the tents to find the toilets)

With the fun and social experience at the Oktoberfest there was another experience that topped it that occurs normally in nature. After reaching a restaurant during one of our long walks through the forest, we were able to witness a group of young deers in an opening and were able to hear the adult deers deeper inside the forest. This was a rewarding experience after a long walk, enjoying a beer and seeing this not far from where we were seated:

mvi_3887.MOV

Overall a great holiday, and look forward to the next Oktoberfest next year

I’ve been spending this week catching up on work and will start committing some changes on the administration tool next week for the alpha 4 roadmap entries. I started on modularizing the administration tool during my break and look forward to finalizing the work involved as the access levels implementation depends on it. The modularization of the administration tool makes it even easier to install administrative contribution add-ons without the need to edit core source files.

In Germany we usually start to see Spekulatius in grocery stores around Christmas. This year seems to be different as Spekulatius has made an early appearance.

I’m not complaining about it - I just had to double check in my mind what month we were in. I ofcourse picked up a packet to buy

My acknowledgment that it was indeed too early for Spekulatius came at the checkout, where the cashier said “Wow, you can actually buy these now?”.

mmmmmm… Spekulatius dipped in coffee..

So, while I’m here enjoying some Spekulatius, I’m still hoping that the summer is not over just yet.

.. and what’s new on the development front? I’ve been doing some robot work of standardizing the framework and moving from the old tep_ function format towards the new osc_ namespace.

That isn’t just a simple search and replace one can do to rename tep_* functions to osc_* function names, as it would still be the same under the hood and wouldn’t warrant a milestone release to be made.

As an example, the general.php functions file has been slimmed down from ~48 functions to 18. The functions were either deprecated or moved to the new class definitions.

All html_output.php functions have been standardized, with the Catalog, Administration Tool, and Installation module all using the same file.

The address related functions have been moved to a new osC_Address class, and it is now actually possible to administrate the address formats. The format strings have been moved to the countries database table making it easier to administrate them.

This allows the address format to be very specific for the country it is assigned to. Examples here are European countries that add a country letter code in front of the post code (eg, D-54570 Kirchweiler, for Germany).

Nothing here can be shown in a movie though as the work being done is in the framework, which can all be seen over at the Development Site.

The 3.0 Alpha 3 release is also nearly ready and am looking forward to addressing features again for the Alpha 4 release.

mmmmm.. Spekulatius…

Or maybe it is just me being a goofball… but I have just spent a bunch of money trying to make a Betta happy. Bettas are those colorful fish you see in Walmart or petstores that most people keep in a small bowl. Well, the other day my husband and I were in Walmart and we were in the pet section getting food for my dogs and I spotted the Bettas all lined up in these tiny little plastic bowls with white covers. I am such a softy and talked my husband into letting me get one. Like we need another pet. We have 4 dogs and 2 cats as it is. Anyhow, to make the fish happy I HAD to have a bigger tank so we got a 1 gallon tank, some pretty glass stones and a plant. Not bad, everything included about $40.

Ok, get home fish is in the new tank and happy. I am happy cause the fish is entertaining. Had to name him because Bettas have amazing personalitys. Like little bitty dogs or something. So anyhow, named the fish Bart. He seems really happy for a couple of days. Wouldn’t you know it though… poor thing get’s bored and keeps attacking his shadow and swimming in circles. I have had several Bettas in my life but never one that had so much energy so I had to have a bigger tank for him. HAD to. Did I mention I am a goofball?

Now, 3 days go by and I talk my husband into taking me to the pet store to get a bigger tank but I don’t feel good so he goes by himself. He comes home with a 5 gallon tank, another plastic plant, a big rock, more gravel and an algae eater Yay! Get Bart, that’s the Betta, into the new tank and he is like so psyched. He’s swimming in the stream of the filter like some little under water surfer having loads of fun. I am happy cause he is happy. 2 days go by and he is no longer swimming around all happy but spending most of his time bugging the algae eater trying to make him swim so I think he needs some friends. I really think he sees “sucker” written on my forhead.

Two days later after watching Bart act all depressed we go to the petstore and get him 4 friends. No idea what kind of fish they are but they are small and kind of cute. Well, Bart doesn’t like two of them so we have to give them to the sister in law. So now the tank has Bart, Zig and Zag… two speedy little yellow fish, and the algae eater without a name.

You would think things are perfect now but no. Things are great for about a day and a half. Because it is a new tank and plastic plants the algae eater has nothing to eat and is like acting nutso so the husband stops at a petstore on the way home from work today and picks up 2 live plants and algae eater food. omg who ever heard of such a thing? And because the fish won’t eat the food that falls to the bottom he also picked up a crab. Yes, a little crab. I named him Gary. That thing can eat and eat… he hasn’t stopped since we put him in the tank.

Well so far so good but it has only been a couple of hours. Bart is loving one of the plants the algae eater is liking the other. I have to wait until later on to put the tablet food in and see if he will eat that. Zig and Zag are well…. zigging and zagging all over the place and Gary the crab is cleaning the tank and pretty funny to watch.

So to make a Betta fish happy, this insane sucker of a woman has spent just about $150. I think I need to see someone about my softness but it is almost my birthday so I have told the husband he doesn’t have to get me anything. Like he was going to after spending all this money on a fish anyhow. They are fun to watch and sitting right here on my desk so that is a plus. I catch myself just sitting here watching them for long periods of time. Kind of relaxing and honestly more fun than most of the stuff on tv. Zig and Zag like to chase my led light I shine in the tank and Bart comes up to the surface and “kisses” my finger if I put it in the water… yes, I am easily entertained. This story should have already clued you in.

As a side note… anyone who tells you Betta fish can be happy swimming in a bowl the size of a coffee cup is just plain old wrong. They just don’t know any better.

I returned from my break on the weekend and greatly enjoyed the time I had off. The thoughts of having a lot of snow here was smashed when experiencing the amount this corner of Germany receives.

I was in Bayern for a week at Tegernsee, with the break starting off with a delay due to the clutch needing to be repaired in my car and due to some havoc weather Bayern had that weekend. The good luck in the bad of needing to have my car repaired at the last minute, was to not experience the long traffic jams the bad weather had caused. There was a person on the news who said it had taken him 19 hours to drive from München to Köln, where it would normally take around 6. This was exactly the route that needed to be taken and was lucky to have taken it without any problems leaving a couple of days later.

This changed the week at Tegernsee from Sun-Sun to Tue-Tue and meant a lot of driving on the way back as I wanted to (still) catch the last day of Cebit at Hannover on Wednesday, at the other end of Germany

The week at Tegernsee was full of sightseeing, walking, and drinking. It’s great walking for hours when it is snowing, ageing slowly with white hair, white eyebrows, and rosey cheeks, to have some hot chocolate in a restaurant at the top of a mountain

These pictures were taken at Wallberg, which is about 1,600m above sea level:

      

The last picture is of Tegernsee.

Here you can see the amount of snow that was on the side of the walking paths and on top of the roofs:

The obligatory snowman ..

and drink

That was at the Hofbräuhaus in München - a valid candidate for a public meeting location

As a week wasn’t enough, we’ve booked another break there again for the end of September, to experience the area in another season and to catch the Oktoberfest

The day at Cebit wasn’t quite my thing but did have a quick chat with the people from Ogone concerning their payment solutions and our next release, specifically the work for the next alpha release regarding payment modules.

The night in Hannover actually made it worth the drive there and had a great time at Brauhaus Ernst August and a quick stop at an Irish Pub before finding the way back to our Hotel So next year I’ll just skip the Cebit part and go straight to the pubs

I was hoping to have caught up with other payment providers at Cebit for contact reasons, but didn’t find any others - atleast any that I knew by name. The payment modules is what I will be working on next for the next 3.0 alpha release, and look forward to catching up with the contacts made to actually get the most out of each payment gateway to actually process orders on the Administration Tool rather than only approving/disapproving them.

A change that is now occurring is my focus on team management having priority over development. I had this the other way around in the past to get the releases out the door but now that we are getting closer and closer to a stable release (3.0), the team needs to strengthen itself due to the increase of responsibility the stable release will bring. This may seem easy from the outside, but it’s not Managing a group of volunteers brings more grey hairs than managing a group of employees This is something we are slowly moving towards, which also brings in its own layer of difficulty to deal with at the same time (to keep everyone happy; community members included).

What fun would this be though if it was a piece of cake? There’s enough hard work here to earn my next break in September

Although I’ve had my digital camera for a while now (since the first public meeting in Köln/Germany) I’ve only just taken the time to take a few shots turning around in a circle, to stitch together on the computer to put a nice panoramic shot together.

My Canon Digital Ixus 500 camera has a nice panoramic mode that shows you half of the last picture taken on its display, to take a near perfect shot of the next section in view. As this was the first time that I played with this function, I didn’t put much effort into taking the shots, however am pleased enough with the outcome that tomorrow I’ll take additional shots of my town I used a shareware app on the Mac (DoubleTake) that I gladly registered for, that took care of the hard work of stitching the photos together.

Here is the final shot I took today (resized ofcourse) of the side of my town:

Tomorrow I’ll take one from the front of the town and hope the sun will shine like it did today. The obligatory shot of our lake will also be made later in the week

Update

Here is a panoramic shot of the front of the town. What was just the tip of the church in the side photo is now full in view in this shot.