osCommerce Blog

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