Think I’m learning the lesson here. I just ended a 19 months long relationship with a girl I met at the university. Can’t really talk about her but I’m sure I did some mistakes here and there…

So today I found these two interesting blog posts, one on Dumb Little Man and the other on ZenHabits.

With today’s divorce rate climbing faster than you can swallow a slice of wedding cake, it seems that we need a lot more than just a bit of love to make our relationships go the long haul.

There are 6 ways to improve your relationship and 7 Deadly Sins of a Relationship.

Let me sum them up here with the 6 hints…

• Give exactly what you want to get
• Remember your partner is not a band-aid
• Being in a relationship never made anyone blind
• Say what you mean, mean what you say
• Always assume your partner’s intentions are good
• Remember the virtues of friendship

…and with the deadly sins (which are now 8)

• Resentment
• Jealousy
• Unrealistic expectations
• Not making time
• Lack of communication
• Not showing gratitude
• Lack of affection
• Bonus sin: Stubbornness

Enjoy your relationship. Have fun. Life is good (no… really!)

Since I’m moving this site (and this site alone) to another hosting provider, I’ll be doing some tweak and fix… so there will be downtimes and service interruptions. As you can see I no longer have categories: I’m going to re-categorize my past posts (and delete many of them) while moving towards Wordpress 2.3. I’ll be adding tags as well.

Meanwhile this blog should remain 80% usable. Happy reading.

Street Fighter IV has been recently announced. It’s the continuation of Capcom’s long-running Street Fighter series, one of the most famous games ever created. It’s been announced yesterday in London at a press conference Capcom was holding.

The teaser trailer showed Ryu and Ken squaring off in a pre-rendered 3D brush stroke-painted style, but no actual gameplay was shown. Capcom has stated that the game recently entered development. It is currently unknown which Capcom studio, designer, and producer are involved.

Speculation has commenced on whether the game will feature 3D CGI-style graphics or traditional Street Fighter 2D hand-drawn animation.

- Street Fighter IV on Wikipedia

I’ve installed both scripts on my Windows XP Professional Desktop Computer for a University project. I use Apache2Triad for all my local testings, designs, developments and setups.

Less is more

The Joomla setup file (tar.gz) is about 1.9MB for version 1.0.13 and 3.12MB for the 1.5RC2. This is well above the 733KB and 935KB of Drupal version 5.2 and 6.0 beta 1 respectively. Joomla 1.5RC2 is 9.79MB when unpacked while Drupal 6.0 beta 1 is 2.87MB.

I’ve chosen the RC2 and the Beta 1 from Joomla and Drupal.

Setup

The setup went on quite smoothly with both products. Drupal even asked me to choose among pgsql or mysql. Joomla is bound to mysql (like wordpress, another tool I use a lot). I’ve studied pgSQL at the university and I’m pleased to see it in action somewhere, anyway, for the sake of comparison, I’ve chosen mySQL for both platform.

With Drupal the database must exist on your server before the script can be installed; Joomla created it. Also note that Joomla database, right after the installation, is about 200KB in 35 tables while Drupal is storing a good 700KB of mysql database in 46 tables.

Manual Adjustments

Remember to delete the installation folder after installing Joomla. Note that both scripts returned some sort of warnings: on my Windows machine, with the Apache2Triad server bundle, I had to set up chron jobs for Drupal. You have to change some apache/php setting for Joomla too but both will work just fine even if you “simply install them”.

Front-End

The Drupal initial layout is clean and tableless while Joomla is a little bit more “cluttered” and willing to “show off” all of its sample content. Drupal is XHTML 1.0 Strict while Joomla uses the Transitional DOCTYPE. Also I can see tables in the main template for Joomla.

Back-End

The back end interface of Joomla has a lot of options and can be confusing while the Drupal interface has a lot of powerful options presented in a clean and neat way. Both scripts come with lots of themes and modules to expand the scripts capabilities.

More on this topic

As I just finished installing both scripts, I’ll start using them and exploring their flexibility and features. Maybe I’ll post more on this. My advice? Try them out.

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. For decades the Burmese regime has fought off pressure–imprisoning elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy activists, wiping out thousands of villages, imposing forced labor, creating refugees-

But last Tuesday Buddhist monks and nuns, revered in Burma, began marching and chanting prayers. The protests spread as hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and public figures joined in, finding the hope they’d lost. Now they’re facing crackdown – so please, show your solidarity to this movement towards reconciliation and democracy and sign the emergency petition supporting the Burmese people — it’ll be delivered to United Nations Security Council members and international media all week.

In the past, Burma’s military rulers have massacred the demonstrators and crushed democracy. The world must stand with the Burmese people at this time, to show the military rulers that the world will not tolerate repression and violence.

Right now, global leaders are gathering in New York for the annual United Nations summit. In speeches, press interviews but also in real actions, we need them to show Burma’s military junta that the global community is willing to act in solidarity with the protesters.

Show your solidarity to this movement for peace and democracy and sign the emergency petition supporting the Burmese people. It’ll be delivered to UN Security Council members and the UN press corps all week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/

Also take the time to digg the news.