This month I found out about the free software advertising network. I took the opportunity of moving my blog to Drupal to add ads for ethical computing, approved by the Free Software Foundation: "The Free Software Community now has an ethical alternative to ad networks that promote proprietary software".

Damn, I'm even tempted to click on these ads myself!

WordPress is a great blogging platform. I've been using it for a couple of years now for my blog. However, with some small exceptions I haven't really dived deeper into it. Since most of my professional time (and a lot of my hobby time) goes into Drupal I started looking into moving my blog to Drupal. I've also been thinking about how I want to publish more about the work I've been doing.

Sites that show up quickly on a user's screen tend to keep the user's attention for longer and also rank better in Google. So when listening to the excellent Lullabot Podcast 80: Top 40 Drupal Modules Revisited I was caught by Drupal experts stating that Memcache would even speed up your site if it's not a high traffic site. It could off-load the database. I decided to give it a try on a relatively low traffic site of one of my clients.

Intal's CiviCRM needed some customizations. So I delved into CiviCRM's templating system, which is based on smarty.

11th and 12th of December.

"Aard Dictionary is a multiplatform dictionary and offline Wikipedia reader. It runs on desktop computers, notebooks and netbooks with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X as well as Nokia Internet Tablets (N800 and N810) and anywhere Python, PyGTK and ICU are available.

In 2005 I spent some time ICT volunteering for Geekcorp Mali.  And in 2001 I traveled in India and had a great time in the North.  Now, a ICT volunteer is actually needed in Dharamsala.  Contact me if you have the skills, time and you feel like an amazing experience:

AirJaldi, a nonprofit dedicated to harnessing the capabilities of the internet for the benefit of rural communities in developing countries, is looking for a highly-motivated and experienced person to take a central role in carrying out an innovative research project aimed at de

It's clear that dashes (-) are better than underscores (_) for search engine optimization. So people have looked for ways to make MediaWiki use -. Wikihow is one of the few MediaWiki sites that behaves this way, but unfortunately even they don't seem to be running an extension for this. I tried my luck at changing the MediaWiki core (Title.php) but I'll leave this for now.

My unlimited MetroCard was still valid for a day and a half so I left it to the poor soul who was robbed from all of his belongings in Lower Manhattan - he was also staying at my host's place in Williamsburg. I had a good flight to Dublin, where I had a very pleasant stay with Dublin's superhost. The guy has been hosting more than 1000 people. Now I'm back in Amsterdam, and it feels good to be among friends. It was just a bit annoying to find out that a "1 zone" tram ride in Amsterdam costs 2,60 euro these days. I boycotted that and walked instead - with about 25 kg of extra weight.