You’d think I wouldn’t be distracted this much…

Well, I’ve been distracted. I generally think that a post about my cds is now just too late. Here’s a really short description:
Psymeditation from Organic Records is some excellent chill that starts of very strong and somewhat dwindles towards the end. It has at least 3 or 4 really good chill tracks and the rest is decent. “Yours to Enjoy,” the first track, is most excellent. Still a good investment.
The Mirror Formula by Xerxes is outstanding. I have to say that the title track (that was added to the cd version. It’s not in the hellian.org version) is fabulus. It even takes what seems like a boring beat and makes it marvelous. I have but one complaint in the album: The final track is a weak conclusion. It’s not remarkable and doesn’t seem to close very well. This also might be my thoughts because I want more, but I think the final track could have been better. The rest must be heard to understand its excellence. Cardamar Music is sold out. Check the releases page on cardamar.com to find other distributors that might have a copy left.

What has taken my soul (as it seems) is osCommerce.

It’s not that remarkable. Hell, it’s not remarkable. It’s a php3 system that seems to have been hacked so many times it actually does what you want… eventually. I had some specific things I wanted and a lot to modify. It’s legacy code really makes modification annoying. The plugins or contributions are really hacks. They are not pretty and are frequently outdated and need manual modification of files. It seems to be a very dated system that I’d love to start anew and get it right, but that must come later. For now, I’ve hacked it via contributions on the oscommerce site and my own hacking to do the following extra actions:

  1. Display an “Out of Stock” image and not allow people to add items with a stock of 0 to their cart but see the listing. (My hack. completely undocumented in the code. sorry, i was tired and am)
  2. Allow for more ellegant handling of free downloads and items with free shipping and such. This was also modified to work without any login what-so-ever and no information given. (originally a contribution, modified to my needs)
  3. Allow people to purchase things without creating an account (contribution that was modified for free items to login to my guest user, user 5)
  4. Show an event calendar and allow event to be added, etc. (Contribution. changed code to fix error with displaying dates where the end date was null and display link on the mini calendar)
  5. Added bank transfer payment option (contribution. i don’t think i even modified this one!)
  6. Changed languages to only show a babelfish javascript translator so site is only maintained in English (small self mod. this is because if you’re not fluent in the other languages, you just look bad)

I might have modified more, but I don’t remember. The installation of all of this was painful and I think that they generally are nice for most shop owners. As such, I’m going to give a full dump of everything I have in mine (down to the database so you have one that is already set up). You’ll have to modify the config files, but i’ll tell you how. I think I’ll do this tomorrow or the next day. I’ve got some other stuff going on, so I might have to push some things back. I appologize.

FYI, also to be posted about tomorrow, Zimbio is going live tomorrow if everything goes as planned.