The Peele Cryptex

How Twitter Is Selling Out To The Likes Of Malema

2012-01-31T15:54:00.000-08:00

In November 2010, the President of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), Julius Malema, threatened to shut down Twitter after being told of a surge in fraudulent accounts/tweeps impersonating him.

"The ANC YL has in more than one occasion reported these impersonators and hackers, yet no action has been taken against them by the twitter administrators. We will now approach the relevant authorities to report these hackers and call for the closer of twitter if its administrators are not able to administer reports for violation of basic human rights and integrity," the league said in a statement.

“An amusingly misguided bunch” I thought. The rest of South Africa (SA) shared the same sentiment. Not that it was far from truth because it’s highly unlikely that they foresaw the fall of internet “freedom of speech”. Some gut-busting slurs such as the comments posted after the following Daily Maverick article followed.

Just over a year later (last week Thursday), Twitter announced their readiness to open gates for such horse feathers. The cool Twitter, that I thought could never be touched by the man, was now doing a strip-tease for repressive governments. Things get dodgier if you have to consider the current American internet policing battles but I prefer to keep that can closed in this post.

In their blog Twitter announced last week that it’s ready to selectively block tweets in specific countries. How would this work?

If in SA a tweet or account has been withheld and you try to view it, you’ll get an alert box that says something like “Tweet withheld” or “@peterpeele withheld” in place of the affected tweet or account.

Twitter explains that this ability is necessary for them to expand around the world - "If we receive a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to reactively withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time,".

Even though they claim that not to be the case, the power that we attributed to Twitter at the start of the Libyan Revolution last year will now be compromised. You can read the CEO's defense here if you’re interested but to me it’s all ‘suspect’ and we should consider taking our laughs at the ANCYL back. To a certain degree, they can do it!

First Flap

2012-01-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

Today most Chinese people resume their journeys to astonishing the gods. I've decided to do the same after seeing a number of signs. In the picture, a reminder that went off a number of times throughout 2011 in different forms. I'm almost certain it's a bot he's working on and I've managed to ignore it up to now.

In this year of the water dragon, I'm at a stage where my water dragon's body is not its natural colour. I NEED MORE GREEN!
I hope that by the time I post again I'll be more focused on the lovely peachy throat colours... the technology that drives me. Happy New Year!

Why should I use Foursquare?

2011-03-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine and super-user of social-media platforms, like Twitter and facebook, asked me to explain the value of having a foursquare account. Being a Graphics Designer with a social media influence of Klout 50, he’s above the average South African social-media user. I'm therefore assuming that a similar question or concern will hit me again from some of my friends a couple of months from now, as Foursquare popularity picks up locally. Hence I felt the need to blog about it in non-techie lingo and direct them here. Please note that I too am not an early adopter of the tool and am speaking in the South African context. If you already know what Foursquare is all about you can skip to the values section (Why use Foursquare?).

What is Foursquare?

Co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, has mentioned that his company is misinterpreted for just a check-in game. On their website, Foursquare is described as a location-based mobile platform that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. By “checking in” via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges. Foursquare guides real-world experiences by allowing users to bookmark information about venues that they want to visit and surfacing relevant suggestions about nearby venues.

I suppose that's as simple as they can put it. Let's look at a typical use-case:
My friend, AllNation, arrives at Wandie's Place (Restaurant in Soweto) and logs into Foursquare. Using GPS technology, Foursquare determines AllNation's location and gives him a list of all the places in the surrounding area similar to the example in the figure above. No! Those are not places from Soweto!

If Wandie's Place appears in the list, AllNation can then select it and "check in". If not then he can search for it or add it as a new place if not found in the Foursquare database.

When doing this, AllNation is given a chance to publish his "check-in" with a custom message. It is here that he can describe the place, experience or reason for being there.

This is then shared with his friends on Foursquare and he's also given the option to post it to his Twitter or facebook account. Below is a dump of his check-in as seen from my Foursquare account.

Why use foursquare?

Currently there is more value to using Foursquare for merchants than consumers. I'll focus on the consumer values as there are plenty of sites explaining the value for businesses online.

Recommendation Engine (recently added with version 3)
AllNation can query for recommendations or tips on whatever interests him like restaurants, nightlife, shops and entertainment in that area. All this is provided by Foursquare, using others' recommendations or activity captured over time as input, ranked by what’s most interesting to the user.
Rewards
AllNation checks into Wandie's Place (Restaurant in Soweto for those who skipped the intro) and finds that, for that day, Wandie's Place is giving away meal discounts or free dessert to Foursquare users. I'm yet to find a South African merchant doing this but it's a reality in other developed countries. What's in it for Wandie's Place? AllNation is checking in and recommending the place to his friends. In no time I'll be there demanding my free dessert… provided it translates to good beer. I must admit it's not easy to see the value of this in SA at the moment, but I'm certain the situation will be different this time next year. If you're really interested you can check out the following latest and greatest example, or skip to value 3:

Although it might take a long time to pick up in Africa, Foursquare has also introduced some monetary benefits for its users. Have a look at this new Loyalty Special. Together with American Express (AmEx), Foursqaure is offering their users "spend $5, save $5" rewards when they load the special at participating stores and swipe their AmEx cards.

This pilot program offers cardholders automatic savings when they swipe their cards at 60 participating merchants in the Austin, Texas area. I foresee a lot of similar programs being setup and I hope when they come to South Africa it won’t only be the already well-off geeks like AllNation that benefit from it.

“There will soon be seven special types available to merchants: Check-in Specials, Friend Specials, Flash Specials (e.g. the first 10 people to show up after 5 p.m. get a free drink), Swarm Specials, Newbie Specials, Mayor Specials and Loyalty Specials. Foursquare will reveal more details in the days ahead, but the startup is introducing these new special types to respond to merchant demand.”
Quote from an article by Jennifer Van Grove, Associate Editor at Mashable.
Staying Connected

Some might argue that it’s not wise to tell the world where you are as we have a lot of people whose cheese has slid off their crackers. I suspect that is what my friend meant by "4square is creepy".

Like every social networking platform, you have a choice of when and to who your information should be published. Plus, only your friends can see your check-ins (or followers on Twitter & facebook if you chose to share it there). The following are some benefits we get from being connected via Foursquare.

I check into Capital (night-club) and AllNation is checked into The Bank (night-club), across the street. We’re friends on Foursquare, so we’d both see our check-ins and decide to merge the debauchery (free drinks for me!).
I see an unusual number of my friends checked into the same place around the same time. I then contact one of them and find out that I missed an important announcement on Twitter, that Khanyi Mbau is giving away a free squeeze of her silicone front-mounts to the quickest Tequilla downer! A clear win for me!

Like most social networking platforms, the more people you’re connected to, the more value you’ll start to see from Foursquare.

Of course it gets more interesting than this. There is a point system, unlocking badges and chances to be mayor of a place which can earn you extra benefits. Going into detail would qualify this post a failed soap-opera if not the case already.

Please post any other value-adds that I have missed in the comments section below. I just can't wait until the South African merchants really pick up on the business value and I start getting free "6-packs" at every night-club I visit… considering the yearly increase of sin-tax!

You can also follow the opinionated AllNation on Twitter for interesting and often very funny tweets : http://twitter.com/AllNation

The Hashtag (#) And Why It Makes No Sense On Facebook

2011-01-18T02:12:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I was asked by a social media newbie what this # thing was about on facebook. It was difficult to explain that the hashtag (#) had no place in facebook and this made me realize how much work it would take to get people to start using the hashtag correctly... even if misplaced or against hashtag etiquette. As much as it might come off oversimplified, this is how I succeeded in getting my point across and that's how I'll document it.

My "Hashtag for Newbies" explanation went like so:
Say Juju wants to search or keep track of what is said on Twitter about his favorite grocery store, #PickNPayMidrand. He can go on Twitter and search for past posts by Twitter users and also keep track of new Twitter posts with the word #PickNPayMidrand in them. The hashtag (#) helps to categorize these Twitter posts and therefore makes it easier for Juju to get through his search results. This also happens in real-time. For example, a Twitter update by Lerato saying "Just met a hunk called Peter at #PickNPayMidrand" would popup in Juju's search window just after Lerato posts it.

Another example that is commonly practiced by people who use Twitter for simply its socializing aspect and gaining popularity is "The hashtag of the day". Someone may post a Tweet as follows "#MyMotherUsedToSay never misuse a hashtag"; a hundred other people may pick up on that and post tweets with "#MyMotherUsedToSay…". That would then be the hashtag of the day, and a number of imbeciles would follow suit and suck the humor out of it...

Facebook does not have this functionality/feature and therefore the hashtag has no place in a facebook status update. In the forgivable case, the hashtag finds its way on facebook because some people have their Twitter updates (or Tweets in Twitter lingo) linked to their facebook status updates.

There are many other uses for the hashtag and a lot more technicalities that go into it. All of that has been documented on the internet by various authors and is beyond the scope of this post. I can send you a couple of links at request.

Back On The Grind

2011-01-18T02:09:00.000-08:00

I'm going to publish a couple of posts on this blog because my non-techie website is currently down and I'm not sure when it will be back up. Please forgive me for going less technical here... Happy New Year and may the Universe be with you through 2011!

JoomfIsh and the Mambot that was

2010-06-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

Joomf!sh (www.joomfish.net) was inspired by a school of piranhas. That said, it’s a great tool for a multi-lingual website if you want to maintain control over your translations. Simply put, it’s an extension of Joomla which allows you create a website with more than one language version.

Some background

I was working on a booking system with tourist packages for the Soccer World Cup 2010 event. The packages were mainly targeted at Brazillians and, had to be detailed on the website in both Portuguese and English. There are a number of tools for multi-lingual websites that do translations for you automatically. I've found that these tools are horrible DIRECT translators and if your target market shows off degrees of Language studies, then you might need to re-think the usage thereof. By some Googling luck, I found Joomf!sh.

Please go through the documentation or videos for installation steps and tips to get the JoomFish going; It took me about 3 hours (should take you much less having read this blog post); Mine is not to guide you through installation steps.

There’s a secret Brazillian Piranha-God ritual prayer that one can sing when being attacked by Piranhas and the school will leave you unharmed. Like a parrot, that’s not applicable in the world of zeros and ones! The following are some lessons learnt that might save you your manhood:

Lesson1:

The documentation states that JoomFish 1.7 requires Joomla 1.0.7 or above and write access to the following directories:

Mambots/system
Mambots/search
Modules/
Components
Administrator/components
Includes/js/ThemesOffice

This means that if you’re installing Joomfish on a remote server you’d have to change the respective folder permissions. If you’re using Joomla version 1.5 you’ll notice that this mambots folder does not exist! After some more Googling I found that, since version 1.5 the "mambots" folder was renamed to plugins. In the time of finding this solution a gastrotrich had lived a good part of its life!

Lesson2:

After installation I noticed that the default flag for the Brazillian Portugues language pack was wrong (it displayed the Spanish flag). Mierda! If you go to the Joomf!sh “Language Manager” there is a text-field for specifying which image to use. I tried specifying the file location in this text-field and it didn't work. After much fiddling around I changed the “Short Code” text field to 'br' and got the right flag. To get the Short Code for your chosen country, you’ll have to look through the Joomf!sh flag images folder. Sterkte!

Lesson3:

A case of re-occurrence of events whose lessons were mildly taken; What makes it more of an itchy ball is that I also blogged about it a while back. This could be SA Domain specific, but remember that the folder where temporary data is stored should be /var/www/tmp/ in your config file.

Great men leave you hanging...

Uploading local Joomla site to sadomain

2010-06-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

***This post was cracked at some point and I haven't had time to recover the images - 01-02-2012
This post is based on an article I got from Joomla Documentation. I modified the content where I felt applicable to SA Domain. Please excuse the style of writing… this is meant to be a technical post and will remain as close to what my lab notes currently look like.

When you are first trying out Joomla!, it is often recommended that you install it on your local system (e.g., "localhost"), for example with XAMPP, and get your site running locally. In this case, you may do enough work on your local Joomla! site that you want to copy this site to your remote host. Fortunately, this is easy to do.

This article assumes that you have installed Joomla! 1.5 on your local computer, you have created a website, and you now wish to copy this website to your remote host (SA Domain in this case).
Here are the steps:
1 Create a place on your remote host to install Joomla!. This will already be created for you by the Techies at SA Domain after first payment.
2 Copy files and Directories of your local Joomla Directory to remote host.

2.1 Upload all Files by FTP

2.2 Upload a file compresed

3 Copy the contents of your local MySQL database to the host MySQL database.

4 Configuration Site. Edit configuration.php

Create a place on your remote host to install Joomla!.

If this is a new site, it will just be your home directory. If you have an existing site, for example www.domain.com, that you wish to keep while you work with Joomla!, you may be able to create a subdomain , for example www.domain.com/subdirectory to hold your Joomla! site.

Copy files and Directories of your local Joomla Directory to remote host.

You have 2 methods, Upload all files by FTP or Upload only a file compresed by Ftp. I didn’t use the compressed method because it requires command line access of the source and destination systems. Then you can create a compressed archive file containing all the files on the source system and transfer that single file to the destination system where it can be decompressed.

Upload all Files by FTP

Normally, the easiest way to copy these files is using an FTP client program, like Filezilla.

Select all files from directory localhost, with XAMPP the directory will be xampp/www/directory (C:\xampp\htdocs\joomla15), and upload to remote host root directory.

Copy the contents of your local MySQL database to the host MySQL database.

In Joomla!, all of the contents of the site (articles, menus, users, and so on) are stored in the MySql database. You need to copy this information to the host database. This is done by creating an export file on your local system and then importing this file into your host MySQL database, as follows:

Open phpMyAdmin on your local system by navigating to its URL with your browser. On your local system, this URL will normally be "//localhost/phpmyadmin". Note: If you have a password on your database, you will be prompted for it.
The phpMyAdmin screen will display as shown below. Select the Export link.
Select the database you want to export in the upper right-hand list. In the example below, the database "joomla15" is selected. Keep all of the default options, including "SQL" as the export type.
Check the "Save as file" box at the bottom of the screen, and enter the name of the export file, as shown below:
Press the "Go" button in the lower right corner. An Open / Save / Cancel dialog will display. Press Save and select a folder to save the file in. The export will complete and the file will be saved in the chosen location.
Open up the phpMyAdmin on the host server.
Select the Import tab
Click the Browse button under "File to import", then select the database file from your computer.
Click “Go” to import the database

Some things to watch out for that bit me:
The SQL file that you exported from localhost may contain the following SQL query:
CREATE DATABASE `joomla15` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
USE `joomla15`;
You need to delete or comment this statement out. As a client you’re not given the privilege to create databases. In most cases you’ll find that the database has been created for you and you just need to create the tables.
In my previous projects I never had this issue and I wish I could explain why it happened this time. I suspect it’s some configuration setting I changed when playing around with JoomFish. I’m not an SQL guru and my memory has had better days before my encounter with alcohol.
At this point you have installed the database. If you don’t want to do fancy/geeky stuff then you may skip the remainder of this section and move to the next step (Editing the config file).
If you want , to create database copy, you can use also MYSQL command line method. Usually you run mysqldump to create a database copy:

$ mysqldump -u user -p db-name > db-name.out

Copy db-name.out file using sftp/ssh to remote MySQL server:

$ scp db-name.out user@remote.box.com:/backup

Restore database at remote server (login over ssh):

$ mysql -u user -p db-name <>

Editing the config file (configuration.php)

Manually edit "configuration.php" to tell Joomla! about your site. The file "configuration.php" contains settings specific to your system. This file was created for you when you installed Joomla! on your localhost. The settings in the configuration.php file that you typically need to change are shown below. This example is from a Windows XP localhost system.

var $log_path = 'C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\joomla15\\logs';

var $tmp_path = 'C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\joomla15\\tmp';

var $live_site = '';

var $host = 'localhost';

var $user = 'root';

var $db = 'your_local_db_name';

var $password = 'your_local_db_password';

Now, at your remote host system, the settings in the configuration.php file that you typically need to change are shown below

var $log_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/home/html/logs';

var $tmp_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/home/html/tmp';

var $live_site = '';

var $host = 'name your remote host';

var $user = 'your_user_db_name';

var $db = 'your_db_name';

var $password = 'your_db_password';

The following is an example of an sadomain one:
class JConfig {
/* Site Settings */
var $offline = '0';
var $offline_message = 'This site is down for maintenance.
Please check back again soon.';
var $sitename = 'My Site Name';
var $editor = 'tinymce';
var $list_limit = '20';
var $legacy = '0';
/* Debug Settings */
var $debug = '0';
var $debug_lang = '0';
/* Database Settings */
var $dbtype = 'mysql';
var $host = 'domainname.co.za';
var $user = 'username';
var $password = 'passwordSentBySADomain';
var $db = 'domainname';
var $dbprefix = 'jos_';
/* Server Settings */
var $live_site = '';
var $secret = 'UtAcJKMVqYJgv51A';
var $gzip = '0';
var $error_reporting = '-1';
var $helpurl = 'http://help.joomla.org';
var $xmlrpc_server = '0';
var $ftp_host = '196.25.120.17';
var $ftp_port = '21';
var $ftp_user = '';
var $ftp_pass = '';
var $ftp_root = '';
var $ftp_enable = '0';
var $force_ssl = '0';
/* Locale Settings */
var $offset = '0';
var $offset_user = '0';
/* Mail Settings */
var $mailer = 'mail';
var $mailfrom = 'peter.peele@gmail.com';
var $fromname = 'Site Name';
var $sendmail = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';
var $smtpauth = '0';
var $smtpuser = '';
var $smtppass = '';
var $smtphost = 'localhost';
/* Cache Settings */
var $caching = '0';
var $cachetime = '15';
var $cache_handler = 'file';
/* Meta Settings */
var $MetaDesc = 'Joomla! - the dynamic portal engine and content management system';
var $MetaKeys = 'joomla, Joomla';
var $MetaTitle = '1';
var $MetaAuthor = '1';
/* SEO Settings */
var $sef = '0';
var $sef_rewrite = '0';
var $sef_suffix = '0';
/* Feed Settings */
var $feed_limit = 10;
var $log_path = '/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/tmp';
/* Session Setting */
var $lifetime = '15';
var $session_handler = 'database';
}
?>
Note that if you had uploaded files directory joomla for a subdirectory, remember that you are working on subdirectory, and the settings that you need, will be,

var $log_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/subdirectory/html/logs';

var $tmp_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/subdirectory/html/tmp';

var $live_site = '';

var $host = 'name your remote host';

var $user = 'your_user_db_name';

var $db = 'your_db_name';

var $password = 'your_db_password';

Congratulations! At this point, your Joomla! website on your host should be operational with the exact same information as your localhost site. If you installed it on a subdirectory, navigate to that subdirectory to see or administer the site.
http://www.domain.com/subdirectory ( for navigate ) http://www.domain.com/subdirectory/administrator ( login to the joomla admin area with your user and password that your had at your localhost instaled)
and if you installed it on root directory to see the site
http://www.domain.com/ ( for site navigation) http://www.domain.com/administrator ( for logging into admin )

Back to Basics

2010-02-06T12:37:00.001-08:00

It’s been over half a year since I blogged. That translates to “it’s been a while since I had a late night of coding or grappling with a business idea”. Over the past 6 months I’ve been a flame-killer and eventually got lost with keeping up and surviving. I couldn’t have realized this problem without browsing through a copy of The Business Brickyard by Howard Mann. It makes a good quick read and you should check it out: http://howardmann.com/book

I won’t go into the book’s details to avoid a long post but it reminded me that business is about having fun while fulfilling a purpose. I’ve gone back to the basics and the next 6 months should be interesting… LET'S PLAY!

kasiegigs.co.za to target NYDA

2009-06-17T15:59:00.000-07:00

So the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) launched on Tuesday (June 16th) and is promising new funding opportunities and entrepreneur support programmes. NYDA is a merger of Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF) [www.youthportal.org.za] and the National Youth Commission (NYC) [www.nyc.gov.za]. I’ve heard too many different reasons for this merger, so I won’t disclose any out of fear of posting inaccurate info.

Putting politics aside, this merger has given me a new sense of hope and I think it might be the kick kasiegigs.co.za needs. Although this is a low cost idea, there are some issues they could help address. I need a more pimped-up corporate identity as this is an entertainment industry idea. I know UYF used to offer vouchers for such needs. I need high-quality cameras. These are just some of the costs I need to cover and, with economic recession, I’ve been unable to address them out of my own pocket.

I’ve been through this funds-hustling route before for previous projects and gave up with that bitter taste of “you need to be connected to get funding”. I’m going to give it one last shot seeing that the kasiegigs.co.za idea is targeted mainly at the youth and there might be some corruption uprooted from this merger. They claim that the new agency’s integration of skills and expertise will strengthen operations, so I’ll assume that I won’t have to go through the same bureaucratic process I went through previously.

My first step is to draft a business plan that complies to their needs. I’ll post one up soon… so keep checking. Secondly, get the look and feel of kasiegigs.co.za up to a presentable state. The site design is currently more focused on functionality than the bling-factor. This should prove a bit of a challenge since I’m not a graphics monkey. Let’s see… NYDA here I come!

Some Blogging Tips I'm Going to try out

2009-06-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

I’ve been slacking... No photos for kasiegigs.co.za, no blogging, no Joomling, no etc. :-D

Sometimes it's difficult to distribute your efforts equally among your different income streams. kasiegigs.co.za, being one in the making, had to take a back-seat for a while.

I've been reading random stuff though… just to get my mind off the routers and switches that have been getting me home exhausted for the past two weeks. One interesting article I came across had a list of blogging tips that I thought should be shared and swear to abide by from this point on. The summary:

1. Focus your expertise
This applies more to professional blogs but it’s something I’ve had many debates about with various bloggers: If I’m following your blog to keep abreast with breast-reduction technology, then I don’t want to read a full post about your romantic night out with Miss Diamond-Eyes on your blog. I’m still open for debate though…

2. Blog regularly
i.e Don’t be a Peele… enough said.
But one trick I learnt from the author is that you can write more than one blog whenever you get the time to blog and save the drafts for later publishing. I’m not sure if that’s going to work for me, since I plan to blog on my daily experiences with kasiegigs.co.za for a while.

3. Show your personality
This might not work for professional blogs, but I can tell you this: the only reason why I read my Operating Systems textbook in varsity, from back to front, was because of the author’s way of balancing his professional and personal touch to every chapter.

4. Encourage feedback
Something I’ve failed to do on this blog… start a conversation. This would help a lot for feedback once I’ve completed the look and feel for kasiegigs.co.za.

5. Keep updated
Always stay alert of comments on your blogs and respond quickly. It keeps people coming back… RSS-feed.

6. Use photos to sell
We all have a cousin that claims that they don’t read novels because of the lack of pictures and too much text… yeah.

7. Include links to other blogs
No, you won’t lose followers if you write interesting articles.

8. Use proper grammar and spell-check
I think I stressed this enough in an earlier post

9. Ensure readability

10. Be personal
Part of encouraging conversation is never to write in the third person.

I’m back!!! Once I’ve hacked this Joomla template for kasiegigs.co.za, I’ll be begging for your feedback on the look and feel… keep on blogging!

Adding Joomla Extensions to kasiegigs.co.za

2009-05-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

Since my site is a form of gig-photo-gallery site, I needed to add a photo gallery extension to my Joomla package. I searched around for fancy extensions with good reviews and an easy installation procedure. I finally found Phoca Gallery with a SlideShow feature. Check out the following link for more info:

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/photos-&-images/photo-gallery/3150/details

It installed and worked like a marvel on my local site but problems, worthy of a blog post, arose when I tried installing in the remote server. This should be a problem experienced by anyone trying to add an extension to a remote Joomla site without following a few important steps that I’ll highlight below.

Installation issues

With a clean install, upon trying to install any additional extensions, you’ll be slapped with this error:

JFolder::create: Infinite loop detected

So I googled around and found the following link with similar complaints in the Joomla forum:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=429&t=266930

Going through it you’ll find a mix of solutions to the problem and you might be confused as to which one relates to you and which method to try first.

In summary, the issue has to do with access to the temporary (\tpm) and logging (\log) directories. By default, all the files that you upload on a remote server are given read-only permission… even to you the administrator. So to install components you need to make sure that Joomla knows where these directories are located and ensure that they have write access. Specifying the location of these files is done in your configuration.php file. The location of these files varies with different server packages and you can find some of the solutions to these problems in the link above. I’m trying to avoid a tedious blog post here. Mail me if you have any issues and you’re using sadomian.co.za services.

Giving write access to the directories can be done via FTP, as you would do with your Windows Explorer (apologies to all Open Source pioneers). Some people claim that FTP applications don’t allow you to do this and recommend using CPanel directly. I used CuteFTP and my permission changes were not ignored. The trick was to go down to each relevant file and change security permissions from 775 or 755 to 777… do this from the bottom->up in the directory structure. When you make these changes from the top->down in the directory structure then your changes WILL be ignored.

This solves half the problem, but should work for extensions that don’t access other folders besides your tmp and log folder. I’m yet to find such an extension but it seems other people have cracked it this way.

Extension specific folder access
The next thing to do is to find out what folders and files your extension will use for functionality, and give public write access to these folders as explained earlier. Otherwise you could end up with errors like the picture included in this post. (Unable to write entry)

In my case it was the pictures (/images) and relevant components folders since I was using Phoca-Gallery. Mail me for specifics… I can’t put that up for fear of getting my site hacked.

After all the relevant write access changes, it was smooth sailing… I’ll highlight issues experienced while uploading pictures in my next post.

Happy Configuring!

PS: I spent 2 nights trying to get this going… I’m a Telecommunications Engineer by day.

Uploading Joomla kasiegigs.co.za

2009-05-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine (VJ) introduced me to some Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla a while back. I’m assuming anyone reading this has some knowledge of what a CMS is, so I won’t go into details about what this Open Source jewel can do. Back then I played around with it and set up an intranet for company x. That was the most I did… so I can’t claim guru knowledge of the platform. When I decided to put kasiegigs.co.za in motion, Joomla was my first choice to help me realize the dream.

I managed to set up my site with not much hassle on my local machine. All was cool until I had to upload the site to a web server. It seems like ISPs/hosting companies in South Africa are not too familiar with these CMSs. I looked around for a while for a reasonably priced hosting package that included Joomla as a feature. Most geeks would say any company that offers php, mysql and apache should suffice. For a neophyte like me, a package that comes readily configured for me to just copy and paste my local site to the server is the only way. Most companies from overseas offer this and the most geeky stuff one would do is upload the mysql database.

I finally opted for sadomain.co.za… not to say that they gave me the configuration bypass. They have a Joomla package though. I uploaded my local site to the server space they gave and loaded the database using phpMyAdmin… but nothing worked. After a few hours of googling I found a very nice blog/article that highlights some minor configuration changes I needed to make to get things working.

So if you’re a newbie and want to get a Joomla site working remotely, here’s a link to the article that got me going:

http://www.dart-creations.com/joomla/joomla-tutorials/uploading-joomla-to-your-web-server.html

Happy Joomling!

What is kasiegigs.co.za?

2009-05-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Kasiegigs.co.za is a social photography concept that I’ve been holding back on since my varsity days. Back then, I came across a couple of gig guides and social photography websites that I found interesting. None had been centered around townships or the kasie social scene though. So I came up with the idea of setting up a social photography and gig guide specifically targeted at townships in and around Gauteng.

It’s been a rough ride as I’m not a specialist web developer and am not too sure of the profits I’ll be looking at at this stage. I’ve set up the framework and gone through the whole process of domain registration and hosting. For now I’ve just put up the base functionality with not much content. This includes the photos gallery, contacts page and news platform. My next task is the about us page and then a couple of pages on places you can visit ekasie.

You can check out this work in progress at www.kasiegigs.co.za.

The kasiegigs.co.za trip starts here

2009-05-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago I attended a Netweb Event. This is a monthly talk and networking meet-up hosted by an entrepreneur called Mongezi Mtati. I think I mentioned him in previous posts and expressed my reverence for him. He got me again! I left the event with a lump in my throat. When I walked in, I chose a seat in a corner not knowing that that’s exactly where I was meant to be for the duration of the event: in a corner assimilating knowledge. Those guys made me realize how many things I had been doing wrong and I was humbled. Amongst others, I met Gareth Knight from oneafrikan.com, Nikki Viljoen and Doug Vining from Blue Catalyst. These guys have been in the game for a while and have interesting profiles/history behind them. You should google them when you get a chance.

I learned tons of things, but one item that struck me most was "always blog about your business". The Gareth guy made an example of how it worked for him. There was a product he’d been developing and blogging about at the same time. Without him knowing, there had been an investor that was following his blog and by the time he met the investor they were on the same page. It didn’t take much from him to convince the guy to sign a cheque…. figuratively as Gareth put it

So from here on you’ll see a clone of the idea. Hopefully, this will get Mr Motsepe to fund my idea the next time I meet him. The concept I’ll be rambling on about going forward is kasiegigs.co.za…

Post Long Weekend Stress

2009-04-14T05:08:00.000-07:00

I've lost a lot of time and money from this long weekend. I'm therefore on the side of the Asian countries that look down on unnecessary holidays! Most four-day weekends occur in Christian countries that celebrate the likes of Easter and Christmas. Am I safe to suspect laziness from the guy that drafted this calendar? SA politics has made this month worse too! Instead of the 22nd being chosen for national elections, couldn’t they pick one of the many public holidays that have befallen us?

If I don't find a way to escape these long weekends or public holidays, I'm going to be dead broke and behind schedule with all my projects. A friend of mine, who has been waiting for months for a car fix from an accident, is feeling the punch too. He has to wait another 2 weeks just because of these "holidays". If he's lucky that is…

Peele Cryptex Commandments

2009-04-08T03:15:00.000-07:00

I thought I should set out some rules for my blog page to circumvent any future problems with regards to conduct by myself and anyone that comments on my posts. But firstly, I’ll give a brief explanation of the origin of my blog’s title.

Non-Swedish Peele - With a good look at my profile picture, I think one can deduce my lack of Swedish traits. At first sight of my name, Peter Peele, people always expect to meet a Swedish looking chap. I’m used to arriving at meetings only to be greeted with a “You’re black!?”. I’m 50% Xhosa and 50% Tswana. That leaves no fraction for European genes. What!?

Cryptex – neologism coined by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex

Now on to the rules (these apply to both of us):
Rule 1:
You will try your best to use full English words and avoid usage of SMS/Mxit language. I tolerate misspelling but always cringe at the site of “wn r u cumn hm?” or anything to that effect.

Rule 2:
You will not show signs of limited vocabulary by using foul language…

Rule 3:
If you’re going to use any of my posts as reference warn me in advance. Some of the stuff I write sometimes is just vent and can be far from truth/fact.

Rule 4:
Holler back!

Back on the blog

2009-04-08T03:09:00.000-07:00

I’m back… made my first big mistake… that of not frequently posting or updating my profile. This morning I was heavily chastised by an uncle of mine for this negligence. I tried to use the excuse of time and he said something like “You will always have time. Desire and passion is what can cease to exist.” I feel like a king!!! Blogging is my passion!!! All I have to do now is find some context in which to put future rambles… Watch this space!

The Skateboard Broke My Bloginity

2009-03-18T02:23:00.000-07:00

So my bloginity has been broken. This, after a lengthy debate with a discerning marketing chap and avid blogger by the name of Mongezi Mtati. All along, I’ve been a follower of a couple of bloggers, but always threw a crucifix at the thought of blogging myself. I won’t use time as an excuse as many do. You see, I was quick to fall victim to the likes of facebook, orkut, wayn, etc in their early days… not blogging. I felt these social networking platforms gave me enough web exposure. The idea of me blogging was always blocked by the thought of crapping on journalism turf… of which I’ve never been knowledgeable. I restricted my thoughts and opinion to tech forums where rules don’t apply but it’s your tech know-how that blings.

I won’t go into details but the dude, that’s usually dressed like he’s about to pull out a skateboard and kick-flip, convinced me otherwise. I’m hoping one day he’ll write an article about why all entrepreneurs and anyone looking for web presence need to blog.

So here it is: The non-Swedish Peele Cryptex. My choice of title is another long story to tell… or chance to blog. So let’s see how far the saying goes: Once you pop you can’t stop…