50 years of independence, and let's keep it that way!

Frameworks take longer to understand when initially developing, but when something uses a single standard framework, fixes and updates are a lot easier across the range of Plone add-on products.

PloneSurvey is a great online survey application, complete with branching, sub sections and export as csv/html of results. All a user needs to do is click and add different types of questions.

I've created  a patchset that applies to the current svn trunk version of it, that updates it for Plone 3.0 compatibility. I'm currently testing it, and so far it seems to work ok.

In keeping with Inigo commitment, all development is made available as FOSS and any changes are submitted upstream whenever possible.

http://plone.org/products/plone-survey/issues/37

In other news, a local SME, Central Management Catalogue Agency Sdn Bhd have successfully deployed Plone for their Intranet use as a replacement for SharePoint. Their IT project manager has gladly allowed their details to be shared and I will be providing a write up of their experiences.

IOSN ASEAN+3 is running with the support of InWent a programme called FOSS@Work which supports FOSS usage in SMEs in this region. I think a case study section for this project would be good to share experiences.

Using the ever useful grep, with -l option, it outputs only the matching filenames:

grep -rl --exclude '*.svn*' CMFCore *

vim loads multiples file in one line separated by spaces. So I need to join the multiple lines into one, separated by space. Here we have the paste command. For each line, put a space as the separator:

paste  -s -d " "

Finally I wanted vim to load this in GUI mode with tabs, so we put it together:

gvim -p $(grep -rl --exclude '*.svn*' CMFCore *  | paste  -s -d " " -)

• the part inside the $( ) is the output of the command.
• using pipes | the output of grep (the list of files) is read by paste
• the - in paste is telling it to input the stdout output of grep

I then quickly have my editor setup for work,

Reading some news regarding the large increase of exports of Opium in the English media today, I find it interesting that they conveniently ignore Britain's involvement in the Opium trade. They only cite a UNODC stat that says it's the largest opium farming production since 19th century China. Now if you didn't know about the history, you would think that the British had nothing to do with this. Ironically it's British troops today that are supposed to curb this activity in Afghanistan today.

To quote Wikipedia article on the Opium Wars in the 19th Century.

"As a result of high demand for tea, silk and porcelain in Britain and the low demand for British commodities in China, Britain had a large trade deficit with China and had to pay for these goods with silver. In an attempt to balance its trade deficit Britain began illegally exporting opium to China from British India in the 18th century."

Feel free to enlighten yourself with details of the two opium wars, and find out why Hong Kong was a British colony for so long.

Our 7 year old microwave oven, kicked the bucket a few weeks ago, and we replaced it with one of those combo ovens with a steam function. So I gave a go at cooking steamed fish.

There were a few recipes on the Internet, just like open source, while you can follow stuff step by step, you should get an understanding of what the ingredients do, to become a a better cook. With cooking, this involves a bit of experimentation, and after a while you start getting the hang of things.

I started of from this recipe. I changed a few things though, by stuffing the fish with chopped ginger, garlic and shallots. To make the sauce inside the dish tastier, I also liberally covered the base with onions and shallots also. Ikan merah (Red Snapper) works well for this. Instead of salad oil, I replaced it with sesame seed oil.

The autocook microwave+steam feature undercooked it, so I make it a note to increase the weight next time by a 100 or so grams next time. So in total it's about ~20mins.

It turned out ok. For improvements on the next version, I think I would add some pickled green chillies (in vinegar) to the sauce to spice it up a bit.