81 North Blog

As I was writing a blog post this morning, I received an email that made me stop what I was doing in order to take a look.

It was from the Varien company, who created Magento Commerce. They were releasing another update for the still-beta magento commerce system. Beta version 0.7.15480. This release gave us PayPal standard payments as well as the much anticipated “Template Path Hints.”

This week, I’ll start working on my first Magento template. I have designs ready, but have been waiting for the public release of both Magento and Zen Cart before comitting anything to code.

Zen Cart’s team have promised the 1.4 update by no later than February 5th. That’s just one week away. As soon as this version is out, the template design begins. The same goes for Magento. Although I can practice on the current beta release, nothing can be finalized until v1.0 is released to the public.

The new Magento, Zen Cart and LiteCommerce templates will be available here when the final software packages are released by the developer teams.

Last week I cancelled my Kindle eBook reader order at Amazon. It felt a bit strange doing this. And I knew that if I should change my mind, the delivery wait would begin all over again.

Why did I cancel? Lack of books that I required. These are books that are work-related and hobby related. Books on xHTML, CSS and standards. The current ones. Books on Apple’s OS X Leopard - the latest operating system for my Mac computer. In searching through the Kindle eBook offerings, I find only OS X Tiger.

As of today, Amazon lists 5,065 ebooks in the Computers And Internet category. Of those, 138 titles are listed in Operating Systems and a mere 7 for Mac OS. When you drill down, you find two titles that are specifically about the OS. The remaing titles are more concerned with programmng in Cocoa and learning about XCode. There are no current ebook titles that cover Leopard (OS X 10.5.x)

For one week, I searched for books that I wanted to read - mostly computer or hobby related (I like to make soap in my spare time). I found none for the Kindle. It was not a good sign. I read so little fiction - and this seems to be the area where Kindle shines.

So it was with much regret that I logged in to my Amazon account and began the cancellation process. I know that I will probably order one again, but only after the publishing houses and authors are able to come to terms with this option and release their current titles right along with their print editions. And perhaps also when generation 2is released.

Someone on the thyroid board I monitor posted about this. The link to the original article is at the bottom of this post.

“ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2008) — Low blood levels of vitamin D have long been associated with disease, and the assumption has been that vitamin D supplements may protect against disease. However, this new research demonstrates that ingested vitamin D is immunosuppressive and that low blood levels of vitamin D may be actually a result of the disease process. Supplementation may make the disease worse.”

This is frightening, indeed. 17 months ago I was able to stop smoking for good. I decided that along with daily walking and running, I should also take a really good liquid vitamin. I found one at my health food store. It was awesome in it’s scope of vitamins, minerals and nutrients as well as being expensive.

A short time later, I was severely hyperthyroid. And my thyroid never recovered. It seems that I must have always been teetering on the brink of issues with that little butterfly in my neck; the vitamins just helped bring it to my attention. But ever since that time, I am extremely wary about taking self-prescribed vitamins and nutrients. In fact, I take none. I try to get what I need from my food, because I know it would be too easy to mess with the thyroid again, and as long as I am taking thyroid medications, it’s going to remain that way.

A fellow Graves disease sufferer began experimeting on himself in an attempt to heal his condition. The vitamin and supplement regimen he used to bring himself back to health is now known as “The Johnson Protocol.” For females diagnosed with Graves disease, supplementing copper was very important. But Johnson also listed vitamin D as part of his protocol, with a vague note stating:

There is some evidence indicating that excessive amounts of vitamin D, possibly only the synthetic form added to foods, may be a problem.

Here’s the link to the article on the dangers of supplementing vitamin D:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080125223302.htm

The Johnson Site (supplement list for Graves Disease):

http://ithyroid.com/supplement_list.htm 

With support for PHP 4.x coming to an end, the new Zen Cart v1.4 will be out soon. This version supports the latest PHP and mySQL versions and promises to have some nice upgrades. In fact, the minimum requirement for installation will be PHP 5.2.If you are on shared hosting, your hosting provider has probably already rolled the newer versions, with the current stable version number at 5.2.5The folks at PHP.net asked the question; “Ever Wonder how popular php is?”  Check out their answer here.