Blog catchup
Lots of email to go through that even though saying that I am trying my best is good, it's just not the greatness we've come to expect of myself 
. Gotta find a better way to manage my email. Actually, it's not really managing of the email it's just to much to respond to at once. Part of the problem is that my neglect lets it buildup with promises of thoughtful reply. Unfortunately the next thing I know it's been 4 weeks since a response. This is just not fair to people! Today that stops! I'm going to answer at least 3 emails thoughtfully everyday. So I should be averaging a smooth 60 emails a month or 720 emails a year. Realistically, realistically.. I will probably end up in the 2.x range and being optimistic it will probably work out to 600 thoughtfully replied to emails a year... Right.
Quick responses:
This pic is not dummy code it actually works; unfortunately there's nothing to release here it's just a content-type, nothing special. It's not ever been used but for those interested there is a post I am working on that describes a simple standard-defacto setup of Plone that uses Plone, Content-Mirror, Django and/or Grok to illustrate a setup that would work for your magazine/newspaper/organization whatever. The biggest hurdle is documentation and use of the tools for most people. With content mirror you can pretty much nip that whole thing in the bud. Maybe i'll throw in some Deliverance stuff in the mix but maybe end of Feb, early March i'll post. All of this stuff exists today in 2009 and will work for your company or content management team! If you are thinking about migrating towards Plone and want to keep agile or you are just starting a new CMS project and are thinking about Plone it should be helpful to you.
On, PHP content management systems. The reason I don't recommend any of the PHP content management systems is primarily because of the language itself. It's not always the case that choosing lets say Joomla or Drupal is the incorrect option. The problem lies in what one actually wants to do and feels comfortable with. PHP as an object-oriented language to me is lacking in comparison to say Python. Also in regards to working together on a team or with other programmers Python "enforces" at least some structure that is universal. Also, It is my experience that the breed of programmer is of a higher caliber. That said not to detract from PHP or Perl or whatever, that's just my specific ad-hoc observation. Yours obviously may differ and all of that opinion is subjective. In a different environment my opinion may change
On, Barack Obama. I'm big into politics with myself. Politics is one of those subjects that I feel are personal to people based on their experiences over their own life-spans and how they have benefited or "feel" they have benefited from the policies, ideas and general behavior of those currently in-power and the experiences, prejudices and ideas from those around them. So, I tend to do more listening and am open to things I may not understand or ideas I consider brain-dead. If only because I would have my own prejudices and experiences and to wantonly shut someone else out is dumb-retarded. That said I'm a rational person and vote based on the closest thing I can get to in regards to that rationality. Again, views are subjective.Â
On, the Speed-Limit. Speed limit laws need to change. Currently having a standard posted speed limit of 55mph or less depending on zone is based on an outdated and inadequate system. Having a stand in still system of traffic control has proven to be a complete failure. There are times where a road would be able to support speeds of 75mph and times where it will only be able to handle 45mph. So why aren't speed limits flexible? In the United States our infrastructure is so far behind what we are actually doing and capable of. There's more I want to say about this so I'll save it for another time. Suffice to say after my license suspension and coming to grips with my speed addiction I am going to fight to be a small foot note in the change that needs to happen here. Was I doing exorbitant amounts of speed? No, it could of happened to anyone. (Yes, there are times where I used to do exorbitant amounts of speed but my suspension wasn't for any of that, well only one of those times but not because of exorbitant speed it was like 75mph or something on a CLEAR strip..)
On, A Little Off-Beat. Yeah sounds a bit off-beat to me as I said the exact first time you asked, and I said "Sounds a tiny bit off beat to me". How you are now coming to this realization after all this time is amazing to me. It's still hot though but yeah just the video itself is greatness!
Plone 3 Intranets Review
Víctor Fernandez de Alba
When Packt asked me to review this book I have to honestly say that I wasn't looking forward to it. Plone as a product has a notorious track record for what I believe to be not the friendliest or most accessible documentation. Regardless of it's technical superiority and usability, it's a glaring deficiency. This is getting better with time but there is still a lot of work to do. Unfortunately my apprehension was filled with curiosity and I agreed to do so at one of the busiest times for me. That and the fact that instead of going on another tirade about documentation it would probably be useful to use my own guidelines in reviewing the book.
Nutshell for the impatient.
For those of you that cannot wait, have ADD, or TLDR syndrome here's a short summary. Actually, this may come as a shock but I really enjoyed the book. My initial wanton and disregard was primarily for Chapter 8 but clearly it was simply due to context. Packt should really not use that as a sample chapter for this book, it's a complete turn off for several reasons. I will pass that gripe along. That said, there are some tidbits in this book that really make it a good reference manual and a keeper for at least a little while. In regard to technical documentation that means it's something you probably want on your shelf if you're doing anything with Plone and intranets in the forseeable future. Quite frankly the book should be updated in minor fashion with a subsequent release for Plone 4 as not much has changed and it will help to get the book in hands of more new administrators and users of Plone. With some very minor changes this book could be called Plone 4 Intranets. This issue was most likely do to time constraints as Plone 4 has only recently been released. The intended audience for this book is administrators or new users who tend to do their own administration and I think it's successful in reaching that audience. That said on a scale of 1 - 10 I give the book a strong 7.
Chapter 1
The introduction gives a good general background to Plone and how it came into existence. Discussing the excellent security track record of the CMS and it's general history up until present. It then begins to segue into the more complicated but powerful features of Plone. Workflow, States and Transitions. This chapter also covers and introduces Python and ZODB (Zope Object Database) and why they are useful not only to Plone but to the entire content management space. It's short-and-sweet providing just enough information and background to make it useful to the reader. There is also a nice overview of the Plone community which introduces the reader to the entire community with a great handshake and welcome that is actually quite refreshing. An introduction on the fine line between extranet and intranets and how the spaces merge in some use case is a great cap for this chapter.