Hello, and welcome to miniBB in 2014!
January is over, and this rather has been supposed to appear a New Year greeting. But I was not able to work it out just before, after or during holidays. Let's give me another chance: today the new year started in China.
Actually, I've started my year with a bit of tear on my eye. The reason of it is that my mother became heavily sick. The diagnosis is called "Stroke" and it all started even in the "end of days" 2012, in July, which truly appeared for me in some way a
new Mayan cycle year, because I was forced to leave all of my business and projects and exchange them for carrying of the mother. Never-ending hospitals, drugs, doctors... hopefully none of you could even imagine what this all means when sick are not you. Unfortunately, I'm the only person to take care of her. My father gone years ago, mother's sister died in 2012, no more children or relatives... This saga still continues. Half of January '14 was spent by me in clinic, again, almost offline, just checking emails and sending out the orders. Luckily or not, no more operations are possible and they only could provide a cleaning systems to support the organism. It's a pain to see how the closest person leaves this world slowly, but surely...
Now I hope it explains why there are not so many activities from my end for miniBB project in the past couple of years; but that doesn't mean the project goes down. Absolutely not. This year, which will be
the 13th Anniversary of miniBB, we have plans to release two major things for the software: a
mysqli module, which will replace the expiring mysql module not even supported by PHP dev team in the future; and the self-standing script to
verify external hyperlinks and picture URLs in posts, which should make the content absolutely clean and valid in CEO terms. Also, the new release will contain lots of small and medium fixes. I am not sure if I'll be able to take care of it in the Anniversary month, February, but I will try. Hopefully my mother will give me a minute to rest and work on.
Hard to believe, but yes... Already 13 years passed since we started this project in 2001. "13" in many terms is a lucky number for me. And miniBB appears even more older than MySpace... which popularity extremely went down past year when they drawn off the simple yet effective interface. Even more news and comments coming saying that "MySpace is dead", users can't accept the new layout change. It appears the first popular social network on the planet is going to nowhere.
Not a miracle - I tend to believe that's a fortune of many "social" networks. The "fashion" came to it's critical point. They can't be stable. I was already reported many times by customers that they are leaving Facebook as well. Most of users still prefer to keep their privacy with a guests-possible board rather then being personally watched by Big Brothers. Anonymity was the thing which built the Internet; then what else could continue it?.. It became too many censored, too many ads-based, too lots of suspicious crowd. Too many watched, and it's not just about FB, which is like the 2/3 of abbreviation of FBI.
The logical thing is, that the web is turning back to the original projects and websites, which are kept for years, and which are more stronger than any
controlled resource. I'm looking around for miniBB forums started ten hears ago, they are still alive and become even more active. This impresses me to work on further.
Of course, nothing is stable in this world, and this year, the planet already warned about the global changes. Some day, one of miniBB fans from US went to his balcony and saw this:
Another day, he experienced it again:
This is the sun effect called "halo". I've seen this only once in my life, past year's March, from my balcony as well:
Not sure if it is bad or good sign. It was an Orthodox Celebration of the Great Day of "Baptism", a Christian rite of admission and adoption, when the similar effect was seen in Moscow and all over the news:
Definitely, it's the sign of change. Despite all difficulties we may pass through, I am always considering any change is important.
The current world's situation deserves a change. It became too difficult to swim in the same direction as it was earlier. Watching the bloody events in Ukraine, I was shocked to know by yet another "bad sign": after two Doves were
released by the Pope, as a gesture of peace for Ukraine, they were immediately attacked by the seagull and crow!
Now who will say there is no God?..
Birds always give the human kind a proper sign. Remember
Hitchcock's classics? This is what one of the photographers have caught in Ireland earlier in January. The happening is called
"murmuration" and it's as rare as halo is. Thousands of Starlings synchronously dance during their migration. Looks like I would skip any more comments for this...
This thread is going to be a "monthly blogging" of miniBB CEO and users, where I will try to describe what was happened, and what is planned to happen in the next months. A little experiment to make the official miniBB support forum more alive.
I will also use excerpts from the 2014 Calendar, which is the original work of one of miniBB fans,
Jaime. Pictures are created following his vacation times in the house of Lungau, the wonderful piece of land of Austria. Enjoy these mountain breathes of nature, and wish you all to become more "green" this year, like miniBB is going to be!
If you have fresh news, infos or signs to share, or would like to express your miniBB experience, this is the right thread, and most of you know my email address. Like always, your support is the only thing which keeps this project free and on hold.
Welcome, and have a nice February times. Long awaited Olympic times! I hope to come with my monthly report again in 28 days.
Take care.
