LTNS, no?

Tags: dksystem, download, dudette, linuxawy, people, php, psycho
Written by: kamasheto

I look at the time of my last post and I see the posting time, 6th June, and think to myself wow, it’s only been a month - recently time seem to last longer than it really is, I believe it’s because it takes longer to spend boring times; I wonder why that is, we always think of the summer vacation as the only thing we will ever want through our entire life.

Anyway, let’s see what has happened in the past 30-days

• Kuwait # The flight misery. Two weeks vacation
• dkSystem v2 # Let Us Unite
• Seat Ibiza # ya far7a makemletsh

Kuwait

Lots of people (well, strictly guys, you’ll know why in a moment) keep counting the days until they reach their 18-years-old-mark, I was one of ‘em I guess, but on Friday June 8th, I wished I were young again. Having to travel almost 150 Kilometers to Alexandria and back again just because I didn’t have a flying permission from the Egyptian Army (which is only issued to 18+ Egyptian Males) was a terrifying experience, especially when having to deal with two of the worst types of human species alive combined, police officers, and Alexandrian Citizens!

I’m not so good at saying Good-Byes, and having to do it twice for the exact same reason is quite inconvenient for me. Having to come all the way back to Mansoura on that day didn’t feel good, although I wanted as much time as possible, but it still felt bad. On Saturday I went to the Egyptian Army place close-by to extract the flying permission, and after a bit of a hassle, I had the hard copy; now I went over to EgyptAir to book me a new seat on Sunday 10th flight to make sure I don’t miss my 13th June deadline of having to enter Kuwait (residential issues). The Alexandria airline had only 1 flight per week, although very cheap, we couldn’t wait that long.

After going through all the arrangements again, we took off to Cairo this time -el7amdolelah ya rab. Knowing a few high ranks in Cairo airport helped in the process of me taking a first class seat instead of an economy class seat, amazing how someone you know can save you so much cash First class was a totally new experience to me. Long story short, having a touch screen all for yourself is a very persuasive thing one can do to get people to keep giving positive feedback!

I reached Kuwait at around 11pm that Sunday, and man was it HOT! Having found dad, which then I haven’t seen for about a fortnight, I hugged him like there was no tomorrow. Dad is one of the few people on this planet that I will tolerate anything he does, absolutely anything, I may argue, but I will take it and get over it sooner or later. We went back to our place, and ordered dinner! That’s the good thing about living without a lady around

The next couple of weeks were quite dull and repetitive, except for…

dkSystem v2

The thing with PHP is that it is pretty, in fact, very, time consuming. It’s easy to follow and tweak around, but it’s very time consuming. Because everything has to be done your way, and because there’s plenty of other ways one thing can be done by, you always end up doing repetitive work. Whether it is copying a form application, showing a specific bulk of output, it always has to happen again.

During the past six months, my PHP skills have grown a bit. Having to use a few complex systems on a daily basis did quite help, and given the fact I adore my code being neat and unique, having a go at a new technique is always the best way to learn it. After taking a look at WordPress’s modularity, and having enough time to get something similar done, I tweaked enormously to make dkSystem a modular system, where anyone can contribute to. To install a new component all that has to be done is place the proper php file in the specified folder and edit a specific file to tell the system to activate that specific plugin, and tada - you’re done!

Ahmed Soliman (msh 3aref ala7e2 warak menen ya 7ag :P). He invented “Let Us Unite”, and I gladly followed. Let Us Unite, in one open source system developed by Arabs, that can one day become a famous CMS, developed by Arabs, Muslims.

I’ve upgraded dkBlogs which is the main component that everything else will hence use, and dkBiography - I still have dkForums and dkCalendar to upgrade to the new code structure. Although I do not want to release it until both the Forums and the Calendar are finished, I wanted some developers to have a go at trying out the Drag’n'Play® feature, who knows. ANY components (however minor they may seem), edits, contributions, tweaks, advices, hacks, glitches, errors, bugs, security issues, ANYTHING, can be emailed to me directly at kamasheto@gmail.com.

Psycho suggested to create an installer for the system, but I don’t believe it’s time for that now; first things first. You need some basic php background to get this to work, when this is finished completely, hopefully the noobest of the noobs will be able to install this system without any trouble, insh2alah. Here’s what you should do to get it up and running:

- There exists a db.zip file, this is a blank database with some default rows. That needs to be imported through phpMyAdmin. Once imported, it’s name should be “dksystemv2″. A root administrator is by default inserted in the system, username “root” password “password”, use those to login to the system.
- You need to copy the contents of the sub-folder called “dkv2″ which has all the necessary files for dkSystem v2 to a folder inside your Apache directory.
- Once in there, edit info.php to suite your information, where DB_USER is the database user, DB_PASS is the database user’s password, DB_DB is the database’s name, in this case dksystemv2. You should also change the pre-defined URLS, the only thing you should change at this stage is the URL definition, if your systems folder is still dkv2 you don’t need to change anything, but for example if you decided to place the system in another folder, let’s say “cms”, you’ll need to change that value (highlighted below) to:

if everything works properly, when accessing http://localhost/dkv2/ (or http://localhost/cms/ depending on what you chose to change your folder name to) you should see the system up and running.

Now if you’re a developer and you want to create a component, there is a folder called components/ where all the components sit inside. There’s a example.php (which is ignored by default) that will show you how to get things done. A very simple example of a component is dkBiography, bio.php. You can check that to figure out how to get things done. Any questions can be posted either here or emailed to me. To activate a component, you need to manually enter it’s show value in components.php, in the root directory.

Good Luck

Seat Ibiza

When my two weeks at Kuwait were almost up, dad suggested that we need a new car because our only car does not usually take all seven of us, if you know what I mean. Last year around the same time as it is now, my parents were about to get me a new car until, the accident - then my dad told me I wasn’t going to get one until at least one year; and guess what, the year was up!

So we had a little chat about what we should get and when, and we settled that I will buy it as soon as I arrive to Egypt, before he arrives Egypt, five days later. I took a look at the options, Opel Astra 2007 was awesome, yet pretty expensive for a first-time car, there was the Toyota Yaris hatchback too, but that wasn’t the best looking car I’ve seen. Then I saw it, the new Seat Ibiza. I admit I previously saw it, but not never did it imprison me that way - settling down at 92,000 LE, with 1400cc and 96Hp, it was the optimum car for a driving maniac; umm I meant me. The car is wonderful, being very stable and has some excellent options.

After having to deal with a selfish bastard in the cars agency, we had to travel back and forth to Cairo 2 times (so far) to get the papers ready to license the car, and still, one paper needs to be authorized first!

The bad news is, yesterday (Thursday), when I was heading home after dropping Ahmed Ali’s bag to him a motorcycle was driving on a very high speed in a wrong direction, which happened to be my right direction - and he hit me on the side, he slided trying to avoid as much damage as possible. I called my parents to come and see what happened, and to not blame me for what happened (I knew it was going to happen) and to see if they want the guy to pay for the damage done to my brand new car, or not. Dad being the good guy, he let him walk away.

Hopefully tomorrow (Saturday) I will pay some worksman a visit to see how much it will cost to fix the damage, hff.

Anyway, that’s all. Nice to see me blogging again