News (blog)

From Organic Design wiki

24 June 2011[edit]

Posted by Nad on 24 June 2011 at 11:45
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SimpleSecurity 5.0 released[edit]

An issue with our SimpleSecurity extension (bug 29525) cropped up with the newly released MediaWiki version 1.17. The problem is due to changes in the load-balancer that are incompatible with the DatabaseHook used in SimpleSecurity.

To remedy the issue, major changes have been made to SimpleSecurity.php and SimpleSecurity_body.php which makes SimpleSecurity 5.x incompatible with versions of MediaWiki before 1.17. I have moved 4.x into the OD extensions repo so that users of these older versions of MediaWiki can still use it.

For more detailed information about the problem and the new SimpleSecruity 5.0 solution, see our local Extension:SimpleSecurity article.

9 March 2009[edit]

Posted by Nad on 8 March 2009 at 11:14
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OD moves operations over to wiki organisation[edit]

Over the weekend we migrated all our discussions, tasks and current work over from various talk pages and email in-boxes into our new wiki-based organisational system. This is currently in our private intranet wiki, but after we've worked with it and improved it over the next week or two, we'll create a wiki article package from it which can be imported into other wikis to serve as an example or template organisation.

We're working with a number of other organisations who are very interested in using a wiki-based organisational system, and this migration of our operations will give us an excellent repository of existing structure to work with in implementing in-wiki systems for them.

The initial record types we have operational are Person, Role, Project, Organisation, Activity and Issue. When used in conjunction with the CategoryWatch extension these give us a basic workflow and time management system through which we can collaborate on projects together and evolve them through feedback from the clients and users.

We're in the process of standardising our Role's portals so that they contain useful queries to aid in productivity such as the ability to quickly access current work they've been involved in or any issues assigned to them.

Other records which have been created are Lead, Account, Document, Procedure, Computer, Network, Order, Product, Transaction and Invoice. These will be made operational over the next few weeks and will mean that we can move our remaining procedures that involve the spreadsheet into the wiki. In preparation for this the ods2wiki.pl script has been developed which allows us to import our Open Office spreadsheet information into wiki records.

02 May 2007[edit]

Posted by Nad on 2 May 2007 at 00:04
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Calendar updated[edit]

The Simple Calendar extension has been updated due to a good idea from a user at mediawiki.org. Firstly it's changed to use named parameters instead of an ordered list as there's a few different parameters available for calendars now. The new functionality added is a parameter called query which allows extra query-string information to be appended to the links for days which don't exist. The main use for this would be to allow some preloaded content in the newly created calendar articles. For example,

{{#calendar: query=preload=Template:NewDay }}

This example uses the new query parameter to pre-load the NewDay template article into newly created dates. It looks a little confusing, but what it's saying is: add "preload=template" to the links.

Also, a format parameter is now allowed to specify the format used for the title of the date articles, see the strftime entry in the PHP manual for details on how to specify date formats.

The Organic Design news has been adjusted so that the Create news template is preloaded into newly created dates to save on typing or remembering the news template syntax.

22 October 2008[edit]

Posted by Nad on 4 November 2008 at 04:28
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Wikipedia for Schools[edit]

Monday saw the latest edition of the vetted version of Wikipedia, which is aimed at educational use, go quietly online. The extensively revised version covers over five thousand topics, targeting the eight to seventeen years age group. Partnerships with the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Hole in the Wall project will see it distributed in South Africa and India as well as copies being available globally via the offices of SOS Children UK's umbrella organisation, SOS Kinderdorf worldwide.

First launched in 2006 as a 4,000 article edition, the extract of Wikipedia has employed hi-tech distribution methods, as well as offering a website version which has steadily climbed up in ranking to above other reviewed Wikipedia rivals and copies; the 2007 version was available on the BitTorrent peer to peer network to keep distribution costs down and was equivalent to a fifteen-volume printed encyclopedia. Monday's release is compared to a twenty-volume print edition.

22 September 2007[edit]

Posted by Nad on 21 September 2007 at 22:57
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New Zealand's daylight savings time changes this year[edit]

It was decided a couple of weeks ago (as of 10:55, 22 September 2007 (NZST)) that New Zealand's daylight savings time changes this year at 2am on September 30 instead of October 1. If you run Linux you can check if your system has updated to the correct change-over date with the following command:

$zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
/etc/localtime  Sat Mar 17 13:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 18 02:59:59 2007 NZDT isdst=1 gmtoff=46800
/etc/localtime  Sat Mar 17 14:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 18 02:00:00 2007 NZST isdst=0 gmtoff=43200
/etc/localtime  Sat Sep 29 13:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Sep 30 01:59:59 2007 NZST isdst=0 gmtoff=43200
/etc/localtime  Sat Sep 29 14:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Sep 30 03:00:00 2007 NZDT isdst=1 gmtoff=46800

This output is from my Ubuntu Fiesty installation and shows that the change will happen on the correct date, so it must have updated itself at some stage over the last couple of weeks.

11 November 2011[edit]

Posted by Nad on 20 November 2011 at 01:16
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The Thrive Movement Launches![edit]

Thrive.png
The THRIVE movement launched today! Thrive is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what's really going on in our world by following the money upstream — uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, Thrive offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.

Thrive is an extremely well thought out "save the world" project - possibly the best we've come across. Head to thrivemovement.com where you can educate yourself on the state of the world and how it's come to be in this situation, or collaborate with other experts on solutions to the global problems.

3 March 2008[edit]

Posted by Nad on 3 March 2008 at 03:23
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Treeview 5 released[edit]

Treeview 5.0 has been developed over the last few weeks by Sven. It was the same code as Nad's Treeview4 for handling the wikitext bullet structure and transcluded sub-tree's. But the JavaScript and main rendering code were rewritten to use the dTree JavaScript tree menu.

Treeview 5.0 has been updated to 5.1 by Nad over the last few days. The original Treeview4 code has been replaced because it used voodoo which failed in the new MediaWiki 1.12 version. The new code is much more robust and should be completely version independent.

For more information on the new Treeview 5.1.x, see MW:Extension:Treeview regarding installation and usage, or Extension talk:Treeview5.php for an explanation and details of the new code.

21 June 2012[edit]

Posted by Nad on 21 June 2012 at 18:53
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"God particle" found?[edit]

CERN Compact Muon Solenoid.jpg

Source: Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery
One of the biggest debuts in the science world could happen in a matter of weeks: The Higgs boson may finally, really have been discovered. Ever since tantalizing hints of the Higgs turned up in December at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists there have been busily analysing the results of their energetic particle collisions to further refine their search.

The Higgs boson is the final piece of the Standard Model — a framework developed in the late 20th century that describes the interactions of all known subatomic particles and forces. The Standard Model contains many other particles — such as quarks and W bosons — each of which has been found in the last four decades using enormous particle colliders, but the Higgs remains to be found. The Higgs boson is critical to the Standard Model, because interacting with the Higgs is what gives all the other particles their mass. Not finding it would severely undermine our current understanding of the universe.

See also:

3 September 2007[edit]

Posted by Nad on 3 September 2007 at 07:05
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FileSync II[edit]

The FileSync extension has been developed to a complete enough stage that it is now in use here on the OrganicDesign wiki as a convenient interface to our OD/Wikia configuration. This replaces the older version of FileSync (file.pl) which was used by our robot Bender to syncronise configuration. The new version is more responsive as it updates files at the time the article is saved rather than pushing the jobs onto the robot's job queue, and it also works bi-directionally so that changes made directly to the file from the file-system are added to the article history when the article is viewed.

The FileSync extension allows wiki sysops to set up relationships between wiki articles and files in the local file-system so that when the article is modified the file's content is also updated. Also if the file in the file-system is modified, then when the article is next viewed, it's content will be updated and the revision added to the history as if it were edited in the wiki. Whenever the article is updated from the file, or if the file doesn't exist, the user viewing the article is notified with a warning message. If the article is deleted, then the corresponding file in the file-system is also deleted, and if a synchronised file doesn't exist when its article is saved the wiki will attempt to create it.

22 January 2012[edit]

Posted by Nad on 22 January 2012 at 18:44
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Independent cellular network available[edit]

Photo 072408 001.jpg
OpenBTS is a Unix application that uses a software radio to present a GSM air interface to standard 2G GSM handset and uses a SIP softswitch or PBX to connect calls. (You might even say that OpenBTS is a simplified form of IMS that works with 2G feature-phone handsets.) The combination of the global-standard GSM air interface with low-cost VoIP backhaul forms the basis of a new type of cellular network that can be deployed and operated at substantially lower cost than existing technologies in many applications, including rural cellular deployments and private cellular networks in remote areas.

In plain language, we are working on a new kind of cellular network that can be installed and operated at about 1/10 the cost of current technologies, but that will still be compatible with most of the handsets that are already in the market.

See also: