the eXternal mind

moved site to mikexstudios.com

moved lots of files

still errors in permalinks

will fix later.

Back again, for a small update before I try to stop procrastinating on the computer.

During the weekend, I was kind of dead in posting here because I was working on my Content Management Script called Xcms. Written in PHP, Xcms would be a very simplistic but powerful CMS based on the following ideas:

1. Content is separated from presentation.
2. Content is stored in a DBMS.
3. Every page can be fully templated.
4. Since the script just takes care of information input and output, the presentation can be totally controlled by the user. (Kind of similar to above)
5. Easily usable. Simple markup.
6. Small, fast….secure.
7. Something else goes here.

Basically, Xcms would take the ease and flexibility of a Wiki, revise the linking structure, create an organization scheme, and add a user login system.

Why am I doing this? Take any of those big name CMS solutions out there today…like PHPNuke, Mambo, and phpWebsite and try to use those on a site might normally be based on a collection of HTML pages. It’s ugly. All of these scripts are extremely bloated in features, and are very difficult to customize (the difficulty lying in getting rid of a lot of uneccessary features). Why can’t there be something as easy as a Wiki or a blogging system (like Wordpress) rolled up into a basic CMS script? Many people are talking about using Wordpress as a CMS…in fact, I’m kind of doing that with this site. However, Wordpress is not meant for creating a web site.

So, I made a bit of progress in the script again. Now, I’m using CVS to control my source, and I got rid of the hooks on to phpBB’s template libraries in order to use a better solution: Smarty. My only gripe with Smarty is the filesize. I want a small script–Smarty is over 100Kb.

Today, I’ve been looking up more information on Neural Networks. I plan to conduct some research in Neural Networks over the summer, either independently or at a university. My brain is in a bit of a whril right now.

Recently Read: Lone Wolf and Cub Manga Vols 1-4.

Okay, before I finish procrastinating, I need to post just one more thing. What I’m going to say is actually pretty funny really.

As you may know, I use the WordPress blogging script. Because it’s an awesome open source script, anyone can pretty much contribute to it. So one day while setting up this script, I was searching for a way to display only one category on the front page. I found my solution the support forum posts and quickly implemented it. However, the current solution they had (which was also in the wiki) had a flaw in that it only displayed that one category in the administration edit function and archives.

Working with the current solution, I devised a filtering method to correct this problem:

if ((empty($_GET['cat']))&&(!preg_match(’/wp-admin/’, $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']))) $cat = ‘1′; //Replace 1 with your category


I posted my solution to the board, and wandered off. Hours later, I figured out that it wasn’t the best solution. A user named Skippy pointed out that by just placing the hack in the index.php file, all of that my-hacks.php junk could be avoided. Therefore, I revised my method and went back to using the old solution but placed it only in index.php.

I updated the wiki to show other people a good method for showing just one category.

Anyway, today I went back to check on WordPress, and some other user created a wiki entry that had my old proposed solution to it. Supposedly, a couple of people thought it was good and used it. Oops ^^;;;. It’s not my fault! I’ll drop a post in the forum sometime telling them to correct their code ^^;.

Anyway, it was pretty cool to see some of my contributions on there.

The end.

So, I’m going to post a quick blog entry since I just remembered that I have a huge paper due in Comp. Sci that I must turn in.

So I ventured into RSS feeds today by actually downloading an RSS aggregator called SharpReader. Using that program, I can subscribe to various feeds and read everything quickly on one screen.

It’s awesome.

It’s like using lynx to browse the web. Feeds load very quickly. I can read a lot quickly. That’s all good :).

The cool thing is that many blog have RSS feeds including livejournal. Now I don’t have to load separate pages to read people’s blogs. Economy of motion = savings on time = $$.

So um, yeah, I gotta run. I’m thinking that since I’ll probably be posting in the home section all the time, I might as well just move the blog there. Otherwise I have to post updates to my blog or something which is kind of dumb.

Edit: Okay, so I did that ^^;. So now this main page is going to be my half-blog, half-site updates. Anyone have a better suggestion?

That above question just made me wonder…Who even visits this site? Post a comment and surprise me.