The Atlanta Web Design Group recently held a discussion about PHP basics for web designers. Here are the slides from the presentation.

The team that puts together Linux Mint announced the other day the first release candidate of Linux Mint 6, which they are calling “Felicia”.

I have not yet downloaded or tested Felicia, as I will most likely wait for the “upgrade tool” they plan to release to make it easier to upgrade Elyssa to Felicia.

I am impressed with the list of new features, but am a bit on the fence as to whether they are really enough to be a new landmark release. I am very interested to see how the new version performs, though.

Circuit City recently filed for bankruptcy. The electronics retail giant announced the other day that they will be closing 155 stores across the country. The company appears to remain hopeful, issuing the following statement on their Web site:

“We are pleased to have obtained court approval for our first day motions, a critical first step in Circuit City’s reorganization process,” said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive officer of Circuit City Stores, Inc. “These approvals will help position us for a more successful holiday selling season and allow us to operate our business and serve our valued guests without interruption as we work to emerge from Chapter 11 as quickly as possible.”

A week or two ago, Google began the first in what they are reporting to be a series of beta-level improvements to the service.

According to the blog post from Google, they are:

Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports, a data export API (private beta), integrated reporting for AdSense publishers (private beta), multi-dimensional data visualizations called “Motion Charts,” and an updated user and administrative interface.

If you haven’t logged into your Analytics report in a few weeks, you should check it out.

For those of you that might have missed it, the folks that put together Gallery released a new version a few weeks ago. Gallery is a fantastic PHP-based, open-source, free application that allows you to easily create and manage photo galleries on your Web site.

The new feature list for Gallery 2.3 is fairly impressive. They seem to have put a lot of effort into improving the comment feature, the administration area and much more.

I upgraded one of my Gallery installations in a matter of just a few minutes, using their “pre-installer” script that automatically downloads, unzips and installs the software on your server. Whether you are upgrading an older installation or installing a whole new photo gallery, I would highly recommend using the pre-installer.

It’s recently come to my attention that FTP (file transfer protocol) can cause some serious security concerns when developing and maintaining a Web site. Apparently, when files are uploaded or downloaded via FTP, all ASCII files are transferred as plain text. Therefore, anyone trying to spy on you through your FTP connection can easily see the content of any files you upload (including all of your passwords, etc. that you might have embedded in your files). Apparently, even the username and password you use to login to your FTP server are sent as plain text, making it rather easy for someone to pick those up while spying on you, as well.

The Beta 4 version of OpenSuSE 11.1 was released today. I’m thinking of downloading and trying it, but I haven’t decided where and how I would install it.

I just recently replaced OpenSuSE 11.0 with Mandriva 2009.0, so I am not sure I want to put OpenSuSE actually back on my hard drive, quite yet. I will probably install it through VirtualBox, though, and give it a spin.

If you’ve tried OpenSuSE 11.1, please let me know what you think; especially if you can compare it to some other popular Linux flavors.

A few weeks ago, after a very long development period, I finally published the new Ten-321 Enterprises Web site. The reason that site took so long to go into production was simply the fact that I was working on so many other projects at the same time.

I want to take this opportunity to invite everyone within travelling distance of D.C. to register for and attend MAGFest VII. I have gone to MAGFest for the last three years, and fully intend to make the pilgrimage again this year.

MAGFest (formerly the “Mid-Atlantic Gaming Festival”; now the “Music and Gaming Festival”) is the greatest weekend of the year for anyone that enjoys video games. Unlike other video game conventions, MAGFest focuses on the gamer and the fun aspects of video games. You will find a handful of vendors at the festival, but the place is not overrun by them. For that matter, many of the vendors at the festival are incredibly unique, rather than the standard collection of guys selling really expensive imported video games (though, there are usually one or two of those, too).

A little less than three weeks ago, the Mandriva team announced the official release of Mandriva 2009.0. I downloaded the “One” live disc the other day, and, after a few minor issues (a blank screen on boot and some issues getting my hard drives backed up) I got the OS installed tonight.

At first glance, the new version looks nice. It will be interesting to see if Mandriva’s decision to hold off on KDE4 until this release will prove wiser than the inclusion of KDE4 in OpenSuSE’s previous version. I haven’t really kept track of what improvements have been made to KDE4 over the last six or eight months, but I am hoping they are significant.