Building A Website That Does Not Use Databases

I read an article on alternatives to Wordpress, and one of the suggestions was to build a site using GetSimple CMS.

I already had a spare domain hosted on my favourite web host for shared hosting, so I FTP'd into it and cleaned out the files and folders that were in there.

Then I downloaded the GetSimple folder and uploaded the contents to the server. The site was up and running in about 10 minutes.

There Was A Hitch

There was a hitch because the email that was supposed to arrive with the login password, didn't arrive. And I was locked out of the site.

I cleaned all the files off the server and was ready to put the whole thing down to experience.

But then I asked on the forums and saw that I needed to salt the config file. There's a GetSimple wiki for how to do that - it's very quick and simple to do.

So I started from scratch again and uploaded the package contents to the server. But before I logged out I opened the config file via FTP and salted it.

Now it worked because I could log in and log out and in again. I must ask on the forum whether, if I had salted the config file before uploading it to the server, the email would have arrived with the temp password as it should have.

Impossible Kickstarter Project

Turn iPhone photos into Polaroid photos with the Instant Lab.

Details here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impossible/impossible-instant-lab-turn-iphone-images-into-rea

I guess and alternative would be to use the Polardroid app and get the images printed.

http://www.poladroid.net/

Past Uncertain

Reading about Nassim Taleb's Black Swan theory - that we are disposed to think that events are predictable and that we reinforce this with hindsight.

Wikipedia cites an example Taleb uses to explain his theory is the events of 11 September 2001. Namely that

"the attack on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon using commercial airliners was virtually unthinkable at the time. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it has come to be seen as a predictable incident in the context of the changes in terrorist tactics."

I beg to differ. If security analysts had thought in terms of 'what powerful destructive force could a terrorist get his or her hands on?' then an airliner would have been on the list.

Currently Reading

Just finished 'Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad.

It was when I heard that name 'Kurtz' that I looked up Apocalypse Now and discovered that the film was based on Conrad's book.

A lot of Heart of Darkness is written with beautifully-described insights into the human mind.

I am now reading 'Thinking Fast And Slow' by Daniel Kahneman.

Changed the style of the blog

Minimalist, small font size, everything in Arial Georgia. Let's see how it goes.

Trevor Noah - Comedian At The EdFringe

Rarely do I feel as emotionally involved with a comedian as I did with the story of Trevor Noah as he laid it out in his show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Go see him if you get the chance.

Edinburgh Fringe - The Weather

I was amusing myself thinking how people coming to Edinburgh for the Festivals must be thinking to themselves that the weather was great.

Saturday was sunny all day. Yesterday it rained and today is shaping up to be another miserable day.

Ah, balance.