CMS – In 2024, should you be using WordPress?

The irony is not entirely lost on me, as this site is currently hosted on WordPress.

But considering the fact that powerful CMSs have been gaining some weight in the past few months, I’m going to take a look at a few of them in the coming weeks and what they have to offer.

Stay tuned.

There’s an issue with ReFS compared to ZFS

This is an account of my trying ReFS.

So… what happened? Yes, you got that right – I borked my fileserver. Well, actually, my fileserver has been an experiment since my old „RAID in the disk box“ died on me unrecoverably. There wasn’t much data and it was all duplicated from elsewhere. Since I was having some issues (performance and quality) with OmniOS and CIFS, I decided to bite the bullet and test Windows Server and ReFS.

It’s a good thing I did. See, ReFS really isn’t a bad thing. But the Windows device handlers are so shoddy that ReFS never stood a chance. My setup is: DL380G8 with:
* 2 disk mirrored on the HP controller for the OS
* 6 disks in RAID5 for a single array of 4TB
* DELL Dual-Channel SAS HBA to connect the JBOD
* HP 6G SATA JBOD (12 3.5″ drives)
and it is good. With OmniOS and ZFS it has been a dream – except sharing with Windows was a hurdle. So…

With Windows 2022 (yes, legit license!) I set it up as a file server. Both arrays ( 4T from 6 2.5″ disks on a HP controller and 24T on the 12-disk JBOD) went up fine. The HP controlled array never had any issues, but ReFS data retention kind of is defied by the HP RAID – ZFS is good exactly because it knows where the data is and where to move it to. But ReFS has no knowledge of this with the HP array. But I still didn’t experience any issues with it, which is good.

But the JBOD was a different story. One drive had hiccoughs. No bad issues, just a sector it didn’t like. And that was enough to endanger all the array. And when the disk was replaced, we saw the data go up in flames. Like… *POOF* Your array is GONE. Sucker!

Understandably, I didn’t like that, so now I’m evaluating two routes.
a) Don’t do CIFS, only NFS with OmniOS and use a second machine as NFS to CIFS bouncer, or
b) Get an HP P800 series controller for the DL380G8 so that I can still run Windows there.

I’m kind of certain that family members and others that need to access the data eventually stored there see the most benefit in going route „b“, so these days eBay and „Alli frændi“ ( cousin Ali[Express]) are being scoured.

If you want further information about my experience on the matter, feel free to contact me.

The problem with translations

This post will be about translations. More precisely, it will be about translations that are performed without proofreading by a person that understands the target language and without the kind of quality control that saves the translator from the shame of a badly translated system. This is actually a wide-spread problem when it comes to computer systems where the target language is a small language like Icelandic. So I’m going to use Outlook.com as a prime example for bad translations (somewhat in the hope that they will pull themselves together and fix that which is broken).

In this post I will first post a problem, and then I will attempt to explain just why it’s wrong or broken. Please remember that I’m not a linguist – I’m just better than average when it comes to languages. Not much better – just a bit.

Days, dates, time and spelling.

Calendar ( Dagbók ) => Yfirlit => Fyrsti dagur vikunnar (first day of the week).

first day of the week

When you have a list of days where you can pick a specific day, the day would end in „-ur“, as in „sunnudagur“ – a sunday, not „sunnudag“ which means you’re talking about the sunday, but not specifying it as a choice; Icelandic rules are
* (Nf. Hér er) sunnudagur ( here is sunday, this is sunday )
* (Þf. Um) sunnudag ( about sunday )
* (Þgf. Frá) sunnudegi ( from sunday )
* (Ef. Til) sunnudags ( to sunday )
All the days in that list take an „-ur“ ending ( dagur )

Same screen: Sýna vinnuviku sem: (show work week as)

spot the odd one out

All of the entries are correct – except the odd one out.

Still the same menu – „Útlit viðburðar“ (Look of event (?))

How does the event get displayed?

„viðburður“ is a male gendered word. „Ljóst“ is a neuter gendered adjective (it should be „Ljós“) and „Feitletrun“ should be „Feitletraður“ („Feitletrun“ is boldface but „Feitletraður“ is something male gendered that boldface has been applied to.)

(This paragraph has been edited) And the last choice in this section is something that was translated as „Altæk dagbók“. Why someone would call something an „Absolute/Universal diary“ is lost on me – but it is absolutely not proper in any way. I suspect it is originally „General calendar“ which would be more properly translated as „Almennt dagatal“ or „Almenn dagbók“. As for the last option in the picture; „Velja gerð dagbók:“ – this is incoherent at best. The title uses incorrect forms of the words („Velja gerð dagbókar“ is more proper but still lacks the correct reference – the reference to a calendar format). The choices are „Gregorískt“, „Hijri“, „Umm Al-Quara“, „Hebreska“ and „Saka tímatal“. The title could be „Veldu tímatal fyrir dagbókina“ or „Veldu í hvaða tímatali færslur í dagbókinni eru færðar“. Additionally, if these are all types of calendars, then either add „tímatal“ at the end of each and everyone, or none. And „Hebreska“ is a reference to the Hebrew language. „Hebreskt“ is a reference to something of neuter gender being Hebrew (like a calendar).

Interestingly enough, I started this post because I found the date formats to be wrong. The shortened month was written with a capital letter – which is incorrect in Icelandic. But now, only a few hours after I mentioned it – it’s fixed.

This used to be wrong, but isn’t anymore. Wo-hoo!

Then there’s the „it’s not wrong, technically, but…“

„To see a list of all hotkeys you should press the key of the questionmark (?) or click here.“
Really?
„Til að sjá lista allra flýtilykla skaltu ýta á spurningamerki eða smella hér.“
Much better.

I haven’t gone through all options in all menus – I simply don’t have the time. But this should give an idea as to just why it is so important to hire a professional linguist with a verifiable track record to oversee translation work. You just can’t trust something like Google Translate or ChatGPT to translate the text for you. Translations from a language that is largely neuter and only has two forms (with and without a possessive suffix) to a language where all three genders are used and 16 forms are always goind to be complex and they will always have to be done in context of the translation. Machine translations will – for now – be nothing more than an approximation. A human must have a hand in place.

Bætt diskakerfi

Í den ráðlagði ég fólki að nota Illumos og ZFS til að hýsa stór diskasöfn. Illumos varð síðan svolítið poster child fyrir þróun og það varð millibilsástand þar sem ekki voru í boði Illumos afleiður sem hentuðu í daglegan rekstur. En ég get með ánægju sagt frá því að OmniOS er alveg að gera góða hluti! Við erum komin með það í rekstur á 2 stöðum og gefst bara vel. Það mun meira efni um OmniOS koma hér þegar fram líða stundir

Nýr vefur, nýjir tímar, breyttar kringumstæður

Staða

Það er helst að vefir TTK og OrkuNetsins taka breytingum þessa dagana. Undanfarið ár hefur verið fordæmalaust á fleiri sviðum en bara Covid-19. Við lentum í gagnatapi – þrátt fyrir virkilega ítarlegar varúðarráðstafanir, vefirnir okkar fóru niður – og tímaskortur hamlaði því að þeir færu upp aftur. Innviðirnir hafa líka tekið stakkaskiptum. Nú notumst við jöfnum höndum við Linux og Windows – og leggjum meiri áherslu á cross-platform .NET þróun (.NET5 og erum byrjuð að skoða .NET6). Nú með rénandi Covid-19 vonumst við til að bjartari tímar liggi framundan – og að lífið eigi eftir að leika við okkur öll. Gleðilegt sumar 2021!