Konstantin Tovstiadi

In 2000, I wanted my own web page. Getting one felt like magic. Then I wanted my own site. Another magical experience. Then my own virtual server. More magic. Then a chunk of a real server that somebody else managed. Kind of magical. Finally, a server all to myself to administer. Today is finally up and running, in all its 16-virtual-cores, 2-terabytes-of-online-storage, 90-gigaflops-of-computing-power glory.

So I am looking for an open-source CMS to run on it; and given Drupal's recent runaway success with kings and presidents alike, Drupal is my top choice. So I am reading e-books about Drupal; and I come across a description of Drupal's architecture and its place in the "software stack".

The Drupal code is written in PHP, a programming language designed to deliver dynamic content (rather than static HTML). The application relies on the data in the stack layer below it - the database layer, in Drupal's case MySQL. Deeper still below that is the web server layer, enabling both PHP and MySQL function over the Internet (in our case, the web server is running on Apache). At the very bottom, the web server is embedded in the operating system (we use Mac OS X Server, but it could be Windows, UNIX, or Linux). So all in all, four layers:

PHP > MySQL > Apache > Mac OS X

You could extend the stack both up and down. The content management administrator doesn't interact directly with the PHP code; he or she normally uses a graphic user interface (GUI) to access the application. The administrator sets up the experience for the end users, who interact with the system through their own GUI. On the other end, for the operating system to run, the server hardware must have some basic software (=firmware) that allows to install the operating system, and check the integrity of the hardware. So the extended stack is more like this:

End user GUI > Administrator GUI > Application > Database > Operating System > Firmware

The IT staff's goal is to make as much of the stack invisible to the end user. The goal of the advanced user is to understand how the stack functions as far down as possible. The deeper you can reach, the more power you have.

But the beauty of today's situation is that one can have power even with just top-of-the-stack access. Modern servers come ready with the whole stack set up and ready to go. There is open source software for all the layers of the stack. Besides the depth, there is breadth - there are open source applications for almost everything under the sun. Which means the end user no longer needs to dive into the stack and get lost in heady geeky things. They can stay on top of the stack and focus on the task no one else can do: creating and organizing content.

Thirteen years ago I made my first trip abroad - three weeks at a language school in Brighton, UK. I had to obtain a British visa. It took two interviews and two visa officers to grant a visa. The second officer started the interview with a let's-get-to-the-heart-of-the-matter question: "Why did you give our visa officer a cookery book?"

It wasn't a cookery book. It was the project that I was working on - relating culinary traditions and culture, showing food as an integral part of history, culture, and ultimately language use. What better way to savor them than through food?

I was happy to find out that my two favorite things from Portugal - fado music and port wine - are related, too. Let me tell you how.

Fado is at least a couple of centuries old. It has its roots in Afro-Brazilian music (Brazil being a Portuguese colony at the time). It means fate or destiny in Portuguese. Fado develops in Lisbon and Coimbra in bars, taverns, and brothels - a folk tradition yet a distinctly urban one. Almost always performed in a minor key, it is a melancholic song with profound lyrics about life, love, and death.

Fado singers can be accompanied by various instruments, but almost always by two types of guitar - the familiar Spanish six string version (against the common wisdom of Northern Portugal that only bad wind and bad marriages come from Spain*) and then a more exotic twelve string Portuguese guitar. This instrument is a variation on the English lute - it comes to portugal via Porto, the port city at the mouth of river Douro, a trade center. Porto the city is known best for its eponymous staple - the port wine. The port wine growing region (a time-honored tradition, demarcated a century before Bordeaux) is the upper basin of Douro, in the mountains near the Spanish border. For centuries, Britain was the chief consumer of port wine; British merchants took great care to control not only wine trade, but wine production as well. The names of the major port houses bear witness to it to this day - Graham, Warre, Dow, Taylor Fladgate, Churchill, Sandeman, Smith Woodhouse.

Port deserves its own story - at least one, possibly many - best told by the port makers, such as the Symington family. Let's get back fado. There are many phenomenal fado singers, past and current; my favorite is Mariza. Her 2008 concert in Lisbon is superb. You can find it on iTunes, and have instant gratification; but it is best to have patience and get the CD version because it comes with a second disc - a DVD with a documentary called "Mariza and the story of fado".

The second visa officer understood the fun of relating food and culture. Before long, I had her laughing and smiling. When the ice was broken, I knew for sure my visa application would not be rejected.

*De Espanha, nem bom vento, nem bom casamento