Guus Bosman

I installed the second beta release of Drupal 7 on my OpenBSD server. Over-all, the beta looks very solid. This morning I spent some time testing and porting modules from version 6 to 7.

One thing I ran into is that Drupal 7 now requires PDO extension to be installed on your server. During the installation I saw this error message (I'm running OpenBSD 4.5):

"Your web server does not appear to support any common PDO database extensions. Check with your hosting provider to see if they support PDO (PHP Data Objects) and offer any databases that Drupal supports."

Here are the steps I took to install these PDO database extensions on my OpenBSD server:

As root, run this:

pkg_add ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.5/packages/i386/php5-pdo_mysql-5.2.8.tgz

To complete the installation add the following two extension to your php.ini (for me, /var/www/conf/php.ini).

extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so

Restart Apache and you're good to go.

Wired had a fun video today about a machine, made from Lego, that can build Lego objects.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/legobot:

"Here’s how the MakerLegoBot works: A feed system that’s about two-and-a-half feet tall and can hold about 35 bricks connects to the LegoBot. The object that the MakerLegoBot is to assemble is designed in MLCad, a modeling program. A Java app that runs on a PC takes the file from the MLCad software, determines a set of print instructions and sends those instructions over USB to the LegoBot.

The machine retrieves a brick from the feed system and places it in the exact location where it should be. It uses an axle-based release mechanism to leave the brick in place."

Just before the weekend Sasha's laptop screen died. When you start the laptop the screen displays vertical, colored stripes.

Dell sent a replacement screen today and tomorrow an engineer will come and install the screen at my work. I could have easily replaced the part myself but it's a nice service.

A while back I connected my accounts of several social networks and tools to each other. If I update my 'status' in one place it shows up in the others automatically. So if I type a status update on my phone, it gets routed to my website, to Facebook and to Hyves (a Dutch Facebook clone).

I maintain two separate streams; I have a separate stream for work-related updates. Those will show up in my LinkedIn account, on Skype and on Yammer, which is a sort of Twitter for companies.

This week I changed the way status updates are displayed on my website. They are no longer limited to a box 'What am I doing?' but they became real nodes on the site, so you can add comments to them on the site.

(Diagram source).

This morning I attended a roadshow by Actuate, the company that created the open source project BIRT. I recently introduced BIRT in one of my products, and I'm very happy with that decision.

The roadshow was in Plainsboro near Princeton and about 40 minutes away from our place. Most of the presentations during weren't very informative -- 'they had a low information density', as one of my friends would put it. I always wonder, am I the only one who feels that things could be told 5 times faster?

The part I liked were the short 3 minute demo's. While my product uses BIRT mainly to generate PDFs and other files, BIRT could be used for dashboard functionality as well. Apparently you can hook in your own Flash library to it, which is nice because we use FusionCharts already.

It's 2010 and I'm still using Windows XP, and I'm actually quite happy with it.

One of the small annoyances is the 'beep' that sounds when you change the volume. Since it's a quiet Saturday morning and the snow is impacting some of the plans we had I googled for a solution.

Howtogeek.com has the answer I was looking for.

Cool demonstration of the possibilities of SixthSense by Pranav Mistry, its inventor.

TED talk

(thanks Mark).