ringvold.nu

So I have some thoughts after reading up on the Thesis/WordPress situation and watching the debate between Chris and Matt. If you need to catch up I found this summary quite good mainly because of the debate video is found there.

What’s up?

So the problem is that Chris Pearson creator of the premium WordPress theme Thesis and Matt Mullenweg, founder/creator of WordPress disagrees about if the themes and plugins for WordPress also needs to be GPL licensed. And theny are lot alone many developers follows this debate and have their roots for the different sides. It all basically boils down to different interpretations of the GPL license (in regards to if a theme needs to inherit the GPL license) and as I understand there is not a certain definition of this yet. For now there is just the opinion of each individual or organisation. And this is why this is so interesting. The outcome of this situation could have a big consequence for CMS that uses GPL license or the theme creators. I say could because it may not be this situation that triggers the final legal definition.

Comments on the debate

I understand both Chirs and Matts side of the situation. Chis is defending his work and livelihood, being completely convinced that he can have his own license on Thesis. And Matt on the other side can not let what he believes is a violation of the license just pass by for other to follow. These sides are not crazy. They are reasonable if you look at their respective views. The one thing I don’t understand is how reluctant Chris is to use GPL even if it would not compromise his work and income. Matt points to that almost all other themes is using GPL and pointing to examples that uses and actually change to GPL and doing very well. Matt even said he would point people to Chris and Thesis if it was changed to GPL. He still would not consider it. Only if he by himself found out that GPL could be used, would he would change. I just didn’t get the extreme reluctance. But I understand that he wants to fight for his opinion and not give in. If that is the best thing I can not say. Maybe in the end he should have or maybe he will go out with his flag up high. We will have to see how it ends.

What to think?

I am not sure what to think about this situation. For now it is just one opinion against the other, backed up by different lawyer or organisations. That being said I find these articles interesting:

http://perpetualbeta.com/release/2009/11/why-the-gpl-does-not-apply-to-premium-wordpress-themes/
http://perpetualbeta.com/release/2009/12/why-the-gplderivative-work-debate-doesnt-matter-for-wordpress-themes/

http://apeatling.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/thesis-and-the-gpl/ http://jane.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/thesiswp/

What do you think? Don’t be shy, feel free to express it in the comments.

So now what?

I could only guess what would happen next and I do not what to speculate too much about it. It could go to curt and be settled there. The outcome will in that case certainly be interesting. Until then we can not much more than speculate, make summaries and express our opinion on twitter and blogs;)

written by harri \\ tags: #thesiswp, Chris Pearson, GPL, Matt Mullenweg, Thesis, wordpress

OK, I’ll say it straight away, I love Google! Not as I love my fantastic girlfriend Tonje, but as you would love your car or iPhone (if you’re into that:P). The following is me venting my thoughts on Google, Apple and what I like and dislike about them. Hopefully you will understand why I like Google.:)

Google and Apple are two quite different companies in different markets. Obviously Android and iPhone is competitors, and more may come, but for now they have mostly different markets. Google does developer tools and web services (main target/market: developers, corporate and consumers) and Apple does hi-end, exclusive consumer products (main target/market: consumers).

Humble

I generalized Google’s and Apple’s target groups, but I understand that that it’s not necessarily the reality. Google is moving over in the consumer market with Android and soon Google TV. The interesting this is to see how they do it and what their attitude is like. In most all aspects of Google (if not all?) they are like “we made this, and are excited to see what you guys can do with it” and really wants user input on what the products is like and how to improve it. They give you a choice, they are open, they listen to user/developers, they empower users and developers.

Arrogant

Apple on the other side I feel is more like “we made this product. its awesome. love it!” and then they hype it and present it in a way that make people think it is it super awesome and that Apple invented everything that is good in the world. Yes, I’m a little negative towards Apple. Don’t get me wrong, they have some great products, but they completely brainwash people to think that they are perfect and God of technology. People will swallow everything they throw at them. Heck, it’s a hell of a good marketing strategy which obviously works very well, but I don’t like it! ;p

So why care?

You could give a big /CARE and, well, just don’t give a crap. :p But I think most people do care about these things. How much may vary but I most do. Do you? I do for the same reasons I use Linux. One of them is principal. Others is that I like to have freedom to choose and not having one man telling me what to think and like. My last tweet encapsulates the essence of how I perceive these two companies (at this moment at least).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Apple. I just don’t love and buy everything they say or do (or sell). I’m actually going to buy a MacBook soon. Yeah, the irony. I know.

You may not feel this way at all. What do you think about it? Feel free to express yourself in the comments.

written by harri \\ tags: Apple, Google, opinion

So I have tried to get ZendX_JQuery working the last hour or so (could be more) and it just wouldn’t work.

I googled all over the place. Read blogs, wikis, the Zend Referance guide, stackoverflow questions and forums. They all say to do the same thing: Put this in your layout: $this->jQuery();

and this:

$view = new ZendView(); $view->addHelperPath('ZendX/JQuery/View/Helper', 'ZendXJQueryViewHelper'); $viewRenderer = new ZendControllerActionHelperViewRenderer(); $viewRenderer->setView($view); ZendControllerAction_HelperBroker::addHelper($viewRenderer);

in the bootstrap.php.

The problem is that it work on the views where I use jQuery, but on the others I get a long error message. Here, share the pain with me:

“Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘ZendLoaderPluginLoaderException’ with message ‘Plugin by name ‘JQuery’ was not found in the registry; used paths: ZendViewHelper: Zend/View/Helper/:./views/helpers/’ in /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/Loader/PluginLoader.php:412 Stack trace: #0 /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/View/Abstract.php(1170): ZendLoaderPluginLoader->load(‘JQuery’) #1 /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/View/Abstract.php(610): ZendViewAbstract->getPlugin(‘helper’, ‘jQuery’) #2 /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/View/Abstract.php(336): ZendViewAbstract->getHelper(‘jQuery’) #3 [internal function]: ZendView_Abstract->__call(‘jQuery’, Array) #4 /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/application/layouts/scripts/layout.phtml(8): Zend_View->jQuery() #5 /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/View.php(108): include(‘/opt/lampp/htdo…’) #6 /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/View/Abstract.php(880): Zend_View->_run(‘/opt/lampp/htdo…’) #7 /opt/l in /opt/lampp/htdocs/mjfregistration/library/Zend/Loader/PluginLoader.php on line 412″

So finally I find this video and in it the code that actually works

$this->bootstrap("layout"); $layout = $this->getResource("layout"); $view = $layout->getView(); ZendX_JQuery::enableView($view);

I’m not sure why the thing that every other tutorial and blog says to do didn’t work, but this did, so at this point I’m happy:D

written by harri \\ tags: jquery, zend framework, ZendX_JQuery, ZF

For now I wil be using this basic theme until I find something else. The blog was very slow and I could not find out what caused it. I actually messed up my server trying to fix it. Thank god for AMIs! It turns out that the problem is the plugins and theme so now I use this basic theme and just the necessary plugins. Twitter tools was the one that most clearly made the site slow. It could just be because I use suPHP but I never had any speed problems when I hosted on domeneshop.no, which also runs suPHP.

EDIT: Edited the theme a little and removed some stuff. Now the theme is a little faster and usable.

EDIT2: And then a beautiful word popped into my head. Cache. So installed some cache plugins. I also disabled Twitter tools again . It very clearly slows the page down.

written by harri \\ tags: load time, plugins, themes, wordpress

Actually rinvold.nu have been running on ec2 for a while but haraldringvold.com is now also pointing here. I haven’t moved completely over for several reasons, but the main thing was that I hadn’t found a good way to make larger volumes.

I tried to have /home on another volume, but php (or suphp spesific) got very much slower so it is not an option untill I figure it out. Which till this point I still haven’t so I had to find something else and it was this great post by Eric Hammond!

It showes you how to create a larger volume, how to replace the old volume and how to expand the filesystem. I have made the commands in Eric’s post into a script I can run every time I need more space on my server. It requires the ec2 tools to be set up on the computer. It will also take down the server for a few minuets, but I just have to live with that for now.

If anyone have a fix for my PHP problems when I move /home to another volume please let me know! Here is a link to the script. All glory to Eric that has made 90% of the code.

written by harri \\ tags: Amazon, AWS, ec2, eric hammond, hosting

This is a test of the Google Wave robot Embeddy, which makes it possible to embed a Wave into a webpage like this blog post. For those of you without a Google Wave account, probably most of you, here is a screenshot of what i looks like

Update: The wave should now be public. Took me some time before I remebered to make it public.

written by harri \\ tags: Awesomeness, embeddy, embeded, Google Wave, Google Wave robot, Test

Jeg har i grunnen lenge tenkt på å ha egen webhosting, eller jaffal drømt litt om det og i det siste har jeg tenkt litt mer på den enn vanlig. Satt oppe en god stund her om dagen og så på forskjellige løsninger, så her kommer noen av mine tanker om dette.

Det vil nok først være litt sånn for gøy og for å teste det ut. For familie og venners sider ol. og viss det går bra så er det jo mulig å utvide.

Det er så mange ting man må ta i betraktning viss man skal begi seg ut på noe slikt (jaffal føler jeg det slik). Først må man jo ha en server og her må man allerede begynte å veie hva man trenger. Hvor skal man ha server? I USA (billig, men tregere) eller Norge (dyrere, men raskere)? Hva slags server? Vituel eller dedicated?

Eller en annen løsning? Ha egen server, men da er spørsmålet hvor den skal stå? Man trenger jo en litt skikkelig internetlinje. Sånn for noen småsider for venner å familie mener min gode kompis, Ari, at en fiberlinje på f.eks 10mb opp/ned kan holde. Det er jo stor sjangs for at det kan være tilfellet, men det vill ikke være nok i det lange løp viss jeg ønsker å utvide. Og så ikke minst en liten detalj (som egentlig er ganske stor): Jeg har ikke fiberlinje.

Få viss man da skal kjøre en server helt selv så må man jo sette seg inn i alt av programmer og sikkerhet og hele den ståa der. Det er jo overkommelig, men vil jo kreve mye. Man kan bli kvitt store deler av det bryet med å ha envirtuel eller dedicated server hos en annen hostingtjeneste hvor man som regel får et ferdig oppsett å jobbe ut fra og support viss det skulle være noen problemer. Det høres jo veldig greit ut og da må det jo selvfølgelig være en eller annen ting som trekker det ned: Det koster en hel del mer. Man kan jo selfølgelig finne hostingtjenester som har gode priser, men uansett, slik kvalitet og support koster penger.

Viss jeg er litt heldig så kanskje jeg har noen kontakter som gjør at jeg får en god deal. Man vet jo aldri. Foreløpig ser jeg på mulighetene og så får vi se hva som skjer.

written by harri

I really badly want an Android phone. Preferably this one

I have for a long time, ever since I heard of Android, wanted to get an android phone. It will probably not come to Norway for some time so I am kinda stuck, but I really want one of those phones! When I get the money I will probably buy one from ebay or something like that. Or I could ask some of the people I know in the states to buy one for me. Hmm. I will probably come up with a way to get a hold of one.

written by harri \\ tags: Android, Google, phone

After a long time of searching and waiting it has finally come a decent facebook application for Windows Mobile. When writing this I have only tested it a few minutes but is already far better than any of the other facebook apps that is out there. I can now finally use facebook on my mobile without feeling held back.

Here is the link to the app:Facebook app for Windows Mobile

written by harri \\ tags: application, facebook, mobile, windows mobile

Earlier i wrote that I had problems using jquery in wordpress. I found this problem when I tried to integrate a registration system (will probably make it a WP plugin when I have the time) I have made with wordpress. I use the jquery form plugin to do the ajax stuff.

The problem was solved by changing the $() with jQuery(). I changed alle the $() to jQuery() and added jQuery.noConflict() in top of my jquery code. It didn’t fix it to just do it with my own code, i had to change it in the jquery form plugin as well (note that I didn’t put the ´jQuery.noConflict()´ in the form plugin so it may not be necessary in my own code). I don’t know much about it other than that it works now. I will probably read some more on it when I have time.

written by harri \\ tags: fixed, jquery, problems, wordpress