Bajkowski.com

On occasion there comes a time when one has to face the music and realize that what used to be a stellar product simply is no longer that. Case in point is the Mambo open source content management system (CMS), which I use for this site. At one point it was one of the best open source CMS systems out there, but presently it has very much become dormant as developers have largely abandoned it in favor of other projects. As such, it is time to move one, and so while browsing around and gathering information on the current crop of open source CMS products, I ran across this free report by CMS Wire, which examines the market share of the top 20 open source CMS systems. As expected, WordPress, Joomla (fork of Mambo), and Drupal are dominating the CMS landscape. Nevertheless, the report is pretty interesting examining the rate of adoption as well as the brand strength. The former consisting of download rates, evaluation/trial usage, and third party support, and the later consisting of page ranks, mindshare reports, and reputation indicators. While the individual ranking and ratings are interesting in themselves, I really had two major takeaways. First, there are several CMS products I’ve never even head off, even though I’ve been meddling in the web development space since the late 90s. Second, the most likely reason for why I didn’t know about these system is that in the CMS world there are the big three PHP based products mentioned above, and then there is everyone else. I did not realize that the gap between PHP and systems based on other languages/platforms was that significant!

On a different note, I personally find that open source projects particularly for the web tend to suffer from several major things: a) excessive forking and user base fragmentation, b) lack of a good automatic security updates mechanisms – there are simply too many web-sites that have been developed with systems that have been diagnosed with serious security issues, but never updated, c) a lack of reliable import mechanisms that would allow one to move from one system to another in a flash. Sometimes it is even painful to upgrade from one version of the same product to another! But all these are topics for another discussion.

Anyhow, none of the above really makes the decision in which direction to take this site any easier, but hopefully it was an interesting read. I’m a big fan of Joomla, not so much for the project’s technical accomplishments, but rather for their logical accomplishments. For example, of the three major CMS systems, Joomla’s directory of extensions is far and away the easiest to navigate – Hence one finds what one needs significantly faster. I’m not really a big WordPress fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve evaluated it plenty of times for several projects and even used it for quick proto-types, but in the end I just find it a bit too rigid. Making it do what I want and need it to do is more difficult than it should be at times – or maybe I’m just inept? I’ve not worked with Drupal, but I know several developers that swear by it. I’m tempted to move bajkowski.com onto the Drupal platform simply to get my feet wet. However, I’ve heard that is so infinitely customizable that one can spend an eternity playing around with the details and never actually deliver a final product – knowing myself that is a trap I could easily fall into. Then there is Joomla which I use for most projects. I definitely would like to have my own site running it as well just so that I have a live system on which I can test things before deploying them somewhere else – ahh, decisions decisions!

Sometimes things just don’t fit a common theme, in which case it is much easier just to clobber them into a paragraph of random updates, as is the case here. Anyhow, I finally picked up a PlayStation 3 (PS3), more or less as a Blu-ray player than a gaming console, but in case I do feel like playing a game I can always choose to do so. With that said, I did try my hand at FIFA 09 the other day, and to make a long story short, I truly sucked at it. Maybe I’ll get better with time, although I’ve always had issues playing games with gaming controllers for some reason - nothing like a mouse and keyboard in the end. Overall through I’m pretty happy with the PS3, mostly due to the fact that I no longer have my big ugly PC box sitting next to the TV in the living room which I used as an home theater PC (HTPC). And with Netflix streaming coming to the PS3 later this month, the PC box will not be missed at all. Having an Intel Extreme Quad Core processor it was an overkill for movie playback and internet browsing anyhow. Now it can serve its rightful purpose as a recording and composition system in the upstairs music studio.

Continuing along the computer and software side, the other day I upgraded my Vista laptop to Windows 7. Looking back this might have been a little bit premature, for although my laptop seems to mostly work, it is also showcasing problems with some very basic functionality. For example, for some reason the Windows Media Player (WMP) no longer wants to play some of my .wav music files. No other media player seems to have issues with the very same files, but WMP simply freezes for no apparent reason. Now if that was not annoying enough, I’ve already managed to crash Windows Explorer several times, simply by trying to delete some files. You would think, a basic thing like file deletion would be thoroughly tested, but alas this does not seem to be the case. Oh well, maybe I should have waited a little longer, but I simply could not take the sluggishness of Vista any longer. Nevertheless, in a final product, bugs like these are really unacceptable from a customer experience standpoint of view. I’m tech savvy, so I can usually find a workaround without much trouble, but I can totally see that a regular user might get really frustrated with issues like these and possible give up on Windows altogether - way to go Microsoft!

On a totally unrelated note, I’ve gotten fed up with my Dunlop Aeroget 100 tennis racquet that I picked up about a year ago. While a decent racquet in its own right, I simply could never quite put it to as good of a use as my old but trusty Head Pro Tour 280 – too bad that head racquet is impossible to find these days even on auction sites such as eBay. Anyhow, I decided to go back to the Head camp, and ordered the Head MicroGel Prestige Midplus today. It should be here within a week or so. We’ll see then if it was really the racquet that was inadequate, or maybe it is my tennis game that is no longer what it used to be. Although, I’m pretty darn sure it must be the former :)

As promised, and faster than usual, the rest of the pictures from our European trip are up. After leaving Spain, we flew into Warsaw Poland to attend my grandma’s 90th birthday party that very same day. The party was absolutely fantastic with great food and drinks, and had a very nice atmosphere overall. My grandma seemed to enjoy herself immensely which obviously was a good thing, and even at 90 she is stil a force to be reckoned with. Of course, seeing the extended family, people you might have not seen in years or that you might have never met in the first place, was absolutely priceless. Catching up with cousins, uncles and aunts, is always a fun time as well. Not wasting any time, the next day we headed out to visit my dad’s side of the family in Monki, a small town located in eastern Poland about 100km from the Belarus border. Visiting Monki always guarantees two things: First, you are going to gain several pounds whether you like it or not because the food and treats or some damn good. Second, the hospitality is so amazing that no five start hotel can match it. It was very relaxing indeed: we spent time walking in the fields, visiting relatives, we were treated to a live musical performance, courtesy of my uncle Janek’s daughter, and overall had a fantastic time. Later that evening we headed back to Warsaw where we caught up with Evan and her men for dinner and hung out around the town, before catching an early morning flight the next day to Prague.

With respect to Prague I must say that I was absolutely blown away by the city’s medieval and bohemian style architecture. Which probably explains why we took more pictures there than of any other city on our entire trip. We spent a good three days in Prague, and yet it felt as if we barely just scratched the surface as to what the city had to offer. Every single house, church, and street seem to have a story to tell. And while our hotel was rather a disappointment, hotwire failed us on that one, everything else about our stay was fantastic. We hit up the famous castle, visited probably a dozen churches, ate more than a person should be allowed to eat in three days, squeezed in a Jazz boat trip, and of course did quite a bit of shopping. As you might expect, all of this involved quite a lot of non-stop walking, which seems to be the only explanation as to why I actually lost some weight while touring Europe, even though I feasted like a pig. Anyhow, I can only express so much with words, so go ahead and check out the pictures. Also, big thanks to everyone that helped us out during the trip, whether driving us, helping us make reservations, or offering us a place to stay – many many thanks.