Contentment.org

I use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) quite a bit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or just barely or don’t much know how to use it, that’s why I’m writing this. IRC is similar to instant messaging, except that it’s been around longer and it is primarily oriented around group conversation rather than individual-to-individual. For example, I hang out on #k-slug, which is a channel for the local Linux User Group. I also am on #jifty for Jifty developers and users to get help, #drupal-churches for people who use Drupal for church and other religious web sites, and a few other miscellaneous channels. So, I want to explain how to best use IRC if you’re interested and tell you some things not to do.

While working at my current job, we’ve used three different systems to manage our projects. First, we used [http://trac.edgewall.org/|Trac], which I liked very much. As we transitioned from project management into user support after the first launch of the new web site and related products we tried to use [http://bestpractical.com/rt|RT] for project management, which I like very much as well, but turned out to be a poor choice for what we were doing. Finally, over the past few months we’ve implemented a new system during [http://drupal.org/|Drupal], which has been moderately successful for us. I wanted to discuss the progression briefly and explain how to use Drupal for the task of software project management.

I’m a big fan of Open Source software. I began to be a fan of Open Source (or Free Software as it was more generally known back in those days) because I feel that it is not right to “steal” software. When I started towards Free Software, I did so because I was a rather poor college student and I couldn’t afford much of the commercial software available for various tasks I wanted to do. When I found out that much of that software was available for free as long as I learned to use Linux (and I really enjoy trying new things) I wouldn’t have to worry about “stealing” anything to do what I wanted to do.

I switched to Linux, started using free tools for almost everything, and now have come to love Free Software for many of it’s benefits. In my own software development, I often release my work under a Free Software license not because I necessarily think anyone else might find it useful but because the quality of my work increases when I do it. Open Source provides accountability.

Okay, so we’ve all heard of and mocked the BSOD (Blue/Black Screen of Death) on our computers. Today, I’m going to deride the Blue Screen of Dumb on my Apple. I just forceably shutdown my laptop by holding down the power button for 10 seconds. Was it hung? No. My mouse was still moving, it was still taking keyboard input, and Expose (Apple’s window switching effect) appeared to be working. What was the problem? My screen was blue.

When you plug an additional monitor into an Apple computer, it turns the screen a pleasant shade of soothing blue while it figures out how to add the second screen. Apple tries to protect the user from ugly screen change side-effects by covering them over with a uniform color. This way, even if your screen flickers and blinks, you won’t notice it so much. It’s one of the ways Apple politely pats the users on the head so they don’t have to be so worried about they’re computer.

There’s a pretty decent [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hatheadsvsbedheads|article over] at A List Apart on relationship management by Keith LaFerriere from a couple weeks ago (catching up on some of my reading). I enjoyed the “Hat Head” versus “Bed Head” comparison, particularly since I’d definitely qualify myself as a “Bed Head” in my attempt to live a creative lifestyle. Though, as a developer, my idea of a creative lifestyle is probably a little different from the conception of a typical designer (less coffee and black turtlenecks and more Dr. Pepper and not-shaving).

Anyway, he makes several very important points that I think everyone in development and design need to adhere to more.

I’m currently in hurry-up-and-wait phase and rather than go back and edit yet-another-script I’m working on, I thought I’d make a short post about the projects I’m hoping to work on, but I haven’t got time for just now.

Blog Reload

The first major project I’m working on is my blog reload. I’ve posted an early version of that [http://contentment.org/2007/08/28/contentmentprojectssite|here] previously. The development version is quite a bit further than the published version is, but I’ve reached that point where I can’t really release anything until I tie up some loose ends (e.g., I have a blog component on it, but no comment component).

This past weekend I decided to dink around with Jifty to create an app for listing my current and older development projects. In the process, I’m starting to build what I think will become my new blogs. We’ll see, but so far things are looking good. Anyway, if you’re interested in some of the projects I’m currently working on and what I’ve got so far in the development for my future web site, see:

[http://projects.contentment.org/]

I’ve heard this mistake before, but the local talk radio station has at least one current offending commercial running that I heard the other day right after hearing a local leader talk to a reporter and make the same mistake. Both state something to the effect of, “Come visit our web site at Blah-Dot-Com-BACKSLASH-Yadda.” For those of you that are non-techy, there is a significant difference between a forward slash (generally just called the “slash”) and a backslash. Here’s the difference:

The slash is used in web site addresses, typed fractions (like 3/4), in abbreviations (such as “w/” and “w/o”), and indicating that two ideas stand side by side (such as “and/or” or “meet me tomorrow/Sunday”). The other is generally not used for anything unless you run CMD.EXE on Windows or are a programmer needing to write out escape codes or break up lines.

The slash is commonly enough used that it is beneath your right pinky on a standard QWERTY keyboard. The backslash, on the other hand, has no standard placement on a QWERTY keyboard. It usually appears above the ENTER key with another rarely needed character, the vertical pipe (“|”), but it also appears next to the space bar and near the escape key among other places depending on your keyboard.

So, when you give out your web address, don’t be tempted to sound fancy or use an extra syllable. Rather, just keep it simple and say “slash.” In fact, most folks can erase the term “backslash” from their mind and just ban it from their vocabulary altogether.

Cheers.

One of my coworkers, [http://www.boomer.com/about/team/doug-donald.html|Doug], passed me a link to an article by Jakob Nielsen titled “[http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html|Write Article’s, Not Blogs].” The basic suggestion of the article is summarized as “To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.” On the face of it, this does seem like good advice, but it makes a basic assumption that is false: blogs and articles fill the same role in business.

Now, to be fair, Nielsen does point out that blogs have value in business and we may not be that far apart in our opinions. However, I still must disagree on his statement that a serious business person should “not [spend] the effort to post numerous short comments on ongoing blogosphere discussions.” He suggests that such time would be better spent writing serious and well-researched articles rather than short blog-style posts on topics. He suggests that this will result in more revenue for the serious business person because it avoids “commodity status.”

Okay, here’s my take on OSCON 2007. I had a great time. It was good to be surrounded by professionals who do and care about many of the same things I do. Most notably: software development and Open Source. I met several folks and, being my first real Open Source event, I saw quite a few famous people whom I’d only seen in pictures or Revolution OS.

I’ve been going through the list of tables on my Drupal site in prep to convert an existing single-site to a multi-site with a shared database. However, I haven’t found any reference that illuminates the general purpose of the tables. I’ve tried to put together at least a preliminary list here. I share it in hopes that someone else might find it useful, but it is not normative or complete.

[http://drupal.org|Drupal] is by far my favorite CMS, despite the PHP (or poohp as I tend to pronounce it). One of the places Drupal is strong is organization, as long as you want to organize everything in a web. It does provide hierarchies and has breadcrumbs, but these are where Drupal begins to show weakness. In this articles, I’m going to explore how Drupal organizes itself and how you can take advantage of that organization out of the box, or with some module help, or by custom hacking. It’s a summary of the research I’ve been doing on the topic.

I was scrolling through my morning feeds and came across this gem on Slashdot, “[http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/13/2018210|Should Schools Block Sites Like Wikipedia?]” The story goes on to describe someone’s question regarding the fact that the local school board decided to block access to Wikipedia “because students may be exposed to misinformation”. This simply describes an opportunity lost and a new form of book banning.

I grew up learning about how books like the Wizard of Oz were banned from schools because some people didn’t like the fact that it had a witch. Other books were banned because they praised opposing political ideals. Now, apparently, it’s vogue to ban something because it might not be accurate. However, this is still just as bad an idea as all the original book bans.

We made a major decision this week that I’m, personally, very happy about. The [http://www.boomer.com/|Boomer] web site is moving completely to [http://drupal.org/|Drupal]. Currently, our site uses a CMS called [http://magnolia.info/|Magnolia], which is an excellent product, but the needs of our web site are drifting out of sync with the features provided. Magnolia provides good content management, workflow, and document management, but our site is growing in the direction of community building rather than publications. We’re already using parts of Drupal for part of the Boomer Extranet service for our [http://www.boomer.com/services/technology-circles.html|top-tier clients]. We’ve got another offering coming soon that will make Drupal an excellent fit for us and it just doesn’t make sense to maintain two platforms anymore.

There’s an old saying that goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Scott Adams once made the comment regarding how engineers think, “If it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features.” I think the latter thinking must have applied when Google released their latest [http://www.google.com/notebook/|Google Notebook] improvements this week.

I’ve become a major fan of this tool over time, but the new look is clunky and cluttered. I liked how sleek the interface was before, but now there’s a bunch of extra shadows and rounded corners and borders that really serve no purpose but to distract me from my note taking. The notes also don’t collapse very well anymore. I’ve also found some bugs in the search.

Bah. I hope they fix this soon.