Tomas Liubinas

This is the minimal PHP code required for OXID eShop initialization
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So true

Source

You never would have believed of having a chance to congratulate somebody with millennium anniversary. But here we are. Exactly 1000 years ago, in 1009 the name of Lithuania was first recorded in writing. “[In 1009] St. Bruno, alias Bonifacius, archbishop and monk, on the eleventh year of his conversion, smitten to head by pagans on the Russian-Lithuanian border, together with 18 of his brethren ascended to heaven on 9 March” (Quedlinburg Annals, c. 1009). On this occasion, may poor Bonifacius rest in peace, I would like to congratulate all Lithuanians and fellow Samogitians. Hopefully the world still hears from us in another 1000 years.

Recently I’ve been tagged by Lars Jankowsky on 7 things. So here are some random facts about me:

1. My first computer was ZX Spectrum 64. My father assembled it manually. It took really long time to tune it up. And as I couldn’t wait before it booted for the first time, I’ve learned BASIC and started writing programs on paper.
2. When I was a child, I was examined by a doctor due to poor pronunciation. It turned out my tongue was shorter than average (that does not apply to other parts of my body if you wonder).
3. Two of my favorite fiction characters are Benders. Bender from Futurama and Ostap Bender.
4. I trust derivatives more than numbers. (This is another way to say i like maths and physics).
5. I try to keep myself on the low information diet. And I fail.
6. I am a PHP programmer. Nevertheless I am a Microsoft fan as well.
7. From time to time I harvest timber in my family forest.
And a bonus fact: I understand artists and socialists, even if I will never be one of them.

Now, if you are reading this, I am tagging you to write 7 things about yourself. The rule is to link the person who tagged you in your blog and to share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.

After two years of a halt with new releases I am glad to inform you that finally today OXID released eShop version 4. As a team member and eShop developer I am really proud of this product. I could tell you a lot about new features and general improvements such as massive refactoring and automatically tested code, performance improvements, ultimate search engine optimization, new Web 2.0 functionality or customizable Look’n'Feel engine. But all the details you can find on official OXID eSales site. I’ll just want to make a long story short and the Big news first. The most interesting and exciting part is that OXID eShop since today goes.. OPEN SOURCE! Yes, that’s right now we are fully GPL, you can download and use our software for free or even join the development process and contribute the product yourself!

As for me personally and the team, we enjoyed a short period of relax after the release stress, raised a few glasses of beer and now we are back to development again. We’ve already got some reports on minor bugs and hope to release the first fixes soon. I definitely promise that you do not have to wait another two years for the next release. As I mentioned before we fully automated eShop testing with unit and acceptance tests. That’s why version release process shrank from a few weeks of nightmare of testing, fixing, testing and fixing again, to a few hours procedure.

Short facts:

OXID eShop is PHP and MySQL based standard online commerce system.

OXID eShop Community Edition is an an open source GPL product.

Demo shop online

Demo shop admin (username:password - admin:admin)

Download OXID eShop CE 4.0

Today I’ve read an article about some british craftswoman producing baby-like dolls. She is really good at her job, and makes her best to manufacture as realistically looking dolls as possible. The dolls can even breathe. Do you already expect some cute looking little wonders? Wrong. A single reaction from people who commented the article was they were fucking freaked out. Indeed the dolls look really CREEPY (pics). And it is no surprise. Cathy Newcombe starting this business probably has never heard about it, but there is a theory called uncanny valley hypothesis. It basically states that, the more you try to reproduce artificially nice looking human the better chance is you get an opposite reaction. Interesting isn’t it? So back to what I wanted to say. If you are in toy, robot, CGI, gaming or sex doll industry and plan a human looking product, you will fail. Don’t do that. (Unless, of course, you are Ron Mueck and love scaring people).

Remember what was Tunguska meteor? It exploded over Siberia on June 30, 1908, exactly 100 years ago. I am really excited waiting for Century Protal reporting the event. Century Portal is Lithuanian web site announcing exactly 100 hundred year old “news”. Due to Julian calendar shift and news traveling not as fast as today there might be some delay before we can read it, but I can’t wait for those serious century old intelligentsia journaslists covering such an extraordinary event

80% of good ideas are bad.

Rimvydas Paškevičius reported a way to access private and protected vars from outside of class scope. Do you think it’s a PHP bug? It works for me on PHP 5.2.1 Read the rest of this entry »