Category: Technology

Drupal Poised to Move into the Enterprise

23 Aug 2011 · Technical Communication, Technology No comments

Last night I was about to go to sleep when I saw a tweet from Dries Buytaert, creator and benevolent dictator of Drupal, saying that he was about five minutes from delivering his State of Drupal Keynote. I really wanted to see it, so I stayed up for another hour to participate with the Londoners.

Most of the keynote revolved around the results of a survey of Drupal users and developers. Drupal’s core developers tend to follow the priorities of the community. Listed among the top opportunities for the future of Drupal was replacing legacy applications in the Enterprise. According to Dries, many large organizations grew their intranet and web presence organically and they now find themselves with multiple incompatible and expensive systems that support the main website, the CFO blog, the internal wiki, maybe a few microsites for special events, and let’s not forget SharePoint. I agree with Dries that this situation presents an excellent opportunity for companies to standardize on a single platform—Drupal—that can replace all of them. Standardizing on a single platform would make it easier and cheaper to maintain these sites.

I have been a Drupal user since 2003. I am really impressed with Drupal 7 and have been able to use it for many projects. Drupal is well-documented and extremely flexible. It is an excellent platform for small to medium-sized websites. It’s flexibility means it can do almost anything. It is extensible through plugins and the thriving developer community means that there is a plugin already available that allows Drupal to be used for almost anything.

I am looking forward to seeing where Drupal 8 takes us, but Drupal 7 is an amazing thing already. The user-centric development model Dries has embraced will continue to propel Drupal to ever-higher levels of notoriety and adoption in the Enterprise.

Using Social Media Boosts Productivity

24 Mar 2010 · Culture, Links, Technical Communication, Technology One comment

When I’ve got a particularly difficult problem and I’m trying to figure out my options or puzzling over which option is the best, the answer rarely comes while I’m straining to get it right. The answers come through diversions or performing menial tasks. Sometimes the best way to figure things out is by communicating with someone else about it; that’s where using social media comes in.

My job is inherently creative. While most of the people in my department have prescribed tasks that they do over and over again using the same prescribed tools, I am often asked to do things that no one has ever done at our company before. This kind of work requires access to as many research tools as possible. In the February 2002 issue of Wired, Brendan I. Koerner wrote an article called How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive. While I agree that Facebook is probably not very productive, I argue that Twitter is one of the best resources I have for innovative ideas. I have a network of creative contacts who will respond within minutes to requests for ideas. Some workers might waste time, but creative, passionate workers will use these tools to get their job done.

Twitter is also an outlet. Sometimes I just want to let someone know what I’m thinking, feeling, or doing. Instead of bothering my coworkers while they are working away, Twitter is an easy way to take a quick step back and summarize what I’m currently doing. If I’m not getting much done, I don’t have much to say. One reward for hard work is being able to post something meaningful to Twitter. It might seem silly, but it is true for me.

Knowledge workers should be trusted to get the job done. Don’t worry if they seem like they’re spending a lot of time away from what is strictly called work. Typing faster doesn’t make me more productive. Having more ideas makes me more productive, and using social media helps spark my creativity.

Accessing Mac OS X Leopard Grayed-out Preference Panes

25 Feb 2010 · Annoyances, Apple, Howto, Mac, Technology, Work 3 comments

UPDATE: This also works on Snow Leopard if you are having the same problem accsessing any preference panes.

I have a work-issued MacBook Pro with Leopard, specifically Mac OS X 10.5.8, installed. It is a test image that was installed to test ideas about ways to administer systems for users without Administrative rights. At the end of the test, my access was changed to grant my user administrative rights on the laptop, but it still has many problems. I am waiting for the new Snow Leopard image to be completed to have my laptop reimaged. In the mean time, I have been struggling with a few issues.

The system blocks access to certain preference panes in System Preferences. This was probably an oversight or the leftovers of some experiment, because it does not block access to some of the more sensitive preferences. I can add new users to the laptop and do all sorts of things that I should probably not do on the network. The preferences I could not access were not too important for me to change, like Growl, for instance. Then I tried to use Apple’s Magic Mouse. When I installed the system update that enables its advanced features, I could not access the new Mouse preference pane. When I hover over it, the tooltip says “Your access to this preference has been restricted.” If you try to open the pane directly the error says “You cannot open “[name of preference pane]” preferences pane because it is not available to you at this time. You might need to connect a device to your computer to see this preferences pane.” It looks like this:

Here’s how you do it:

  1. Open the Applications folder and find the System Preferences.app file.
  2. Right click or Command-click System Preferences.app and choose Create Duplicate.
  3. Right click or Command-click the new System Preferences copy.app and choose Show Package Contents.

  4. Navigate to Contents > Resources and find the NSPrefPaneGroups.xml file.

  5. Move NSPrefPaneGroups.xml to the Trash.
  6. Make sure System Preferences is not running and double click System Preferences copy.app to run it. All the preference panes appear to be gone!

  7. In the System Preferences application click the View menu at the top of the screen. All the preference panes are now accessible from the View menu.

  8. When you have changed the preferences you need to change, close System Preferences.

Any time you need to access the disabled system preferences, just use System Preferences copy.app, otherwise you can still use the original System Preferences.app for changing system preferences normally.

EtherPad is Dead: Long Live EtherPad!

8 Dec 2009 · Technology No comments

I announced that EtherPad was dead, but it looks like the public outcry was heard loud and clear and now a new transition plan has been announced in which EtherPad will be released as Open Source software! New free public pads can be created again effective immediately, which was the biggest short-term complaint many people had with the move to close EtherPad. Now that the project will be released to the public, this is even better than if EtherPad had remained an independent entity.

Thanks Google for killing EtherPad

4 Dec 2009 · Annoyances, Technology No comments

UPDATE: EtherPad will be released as open source software!

I love EtherPad. It’s a collaborative text pad that lets you see what others write in realtime, character by character, and automatically highlights text in a different color based on who typed it. One of the best things about EtherPad was that a free public pad could be created instantly without logging in. Other users could be invited to collaborate with only a link to the pad. Now that has all gone away. When I tried to create a new pad today I got the following message:

Creation of new free pads is permanently disabled as part of EtherPad’s acquisition by Google.

Google Wave is an interesting experiment, but it’s nowhere even close to being a replacement for EtherPad. It doesn’t even highlight text automatically! My hope is that these guys will get put on the Google Docs team to add realtime collaboration there. Having to wait 15-30 seconds for page updates makes the tool practically useless for simultaneous editing.

Read about the EtherPad acquisition by Google and see how many people are disappointed.

100% Free Digital Converter Boxes at Amazon

5 Jun 2009 · Technology One comment

I just bought two Zinwell ZAT-970A Digital to Analog TV Converter Boxes at Amazon.com and I didn’t have to pay shipping or tax! They didn’t even ask for a credit card. I used my two TV Converter Box coupons for $40 each off the purchase of qualifying boxes. Since the price of the box on Amazon is exactly $40 and it qualifies for free shipping and no tax for Arizona residents the grand total was $0.00.

Now all I have to do is wait, and when they finally get here that old TV I’ve had since I was a kid will work like a charm! These are great to have on hand in case of an emergency if all you can find is an analog TV and you need to get TV reception.

Consumer Reports has excellent Digital to Analog TV Converter Box ratings.

LinkedIn Updates

22 Feb 2009 · Goals, Technology, Work No comments

I have been working on getting my LinkedIn profile up to date so I can feel comfortable inviting more people to link to me. I have included new functionality to have relevant blog posts included on my LinkedIn profile. I was struggling with how to enter my freelance web design and Linux consulting while I was a student, but I think I came up with a solution, so the gaps in my employment history are gone. Excellent!

Backporting D2K Driver from Misfit MAME to AdvanceMAME

19 Feb 2009 · Technology No comments

I have an arcade cabinet that runs AdvanceMAME 0.106. My arcade cabinet has an arcade monitor in it and AdvanceMAME is the only software I have found that can recreate the arcade games with pixel-perfect accuracy on my monitor. Unfortunately, AdvanceMAME is no longer in active development, although there was a recent bugfix release.

I am trying to use the source from Misfit MAME 0.127e which supports Donkey Kong II: Jumpan Returns (or d2k for short) but the changes in MAME are somewhat drastic and I’m having trouble coming up with the appropriate code to make the new dkong.c work in the old MAME environment. I will keep trying, though, because it would be amazing to get it running on my arcade cab until I can afford a real Donkey Kong machine to run D2K on.

Who knows, maybe once I understand the code a little bit better, I might be able to make some real contributions to MAME or possibly fix some buggy drivers in AdvanceMAME 0.106.

New Site Migration Successful

17 Jan 2009 · Technology No comments

As Godaddy economy hosting was rather slow, albeit inexpensive at only $3.95/month, I was eager to find a faster service, if it were economical. Alex called me up near the beginning of the year with news that DreamHost was doing a major deal on 2 years of hosting. For about $20 I got two years unlimited everything! One of the biggest advantages other than speed on DreamHost is that I have SSH access to my site. Another great addition is that I can now use scripting languages other than PHP.

There may still be some rough edges on the blog now that I’ve got it moved. Please let me know if you find any broken links or other problems.

Searching a Freecycle Mailing List with Gmail

18 Oct 2007 · Howto, Technology No comments

I subscribe to the local freecycle mailing list and have filters set up in Gmail to label all freecycle mail and have it get archived automatically so it doesn’t clutter up my inbox. I don’t check it every day, so I just want to see what’s available right now. Sometimes I also have a specific thing I’m looking for. To help look for these things, I use the following search string in Gmail.

label:freecycle subject:offer subject:-wanted subject:-want subject:-needed subject:-need subject:-taken

You can also add subject:bike and it will only return results that have the word bike in the subject line. This assumes that the label you are using for all of the freecycle messages is freecycle.