The Graceful Exits blog
Categories
- advertising (17)
- business (21)
- community (2)
- conferences (89)
- configuration (11)
- content (18)
- culture (81)
- design (9)
- diagnostics (20)
- discussion (13)
- efficiency (13)
- enterprise (11)
- formats (18)
- framework (33)
- futurology (10)
- hacking (58)
- hardware (14)
- import/export (12)
- information (9)
- intent (5)
- law (8)
- layers (26)
- media (10)
- meta (11)
- network (7)
- news (25)
- non-programming (33)
- paradigms (15)
- projects (52)
- quickies (63)
- reporting (1)
- rights (3)
- security (5)
- software (52)
- standards (26)
- subtleties (19)
- tutorials (6)
- useability (17)
-
Liveblogging DrupalCon
jp.stacey 22 August 2010That was a test of our emergency broadcast equipment.
The previous post demonstrated that, ultimately, this blog provides the best platform for liveblogging DrupalCon Copenhagen.
So, in the tradition established at last year's DrupalCon, I hope to be blogging about the DrupalCon sessions roughly as they happen. If there are network problems again then there'll probably be a delay as the talk finishes and I find a safe spot to upload the content.
-
Copenhagen aced after two days
jp.stacey 22 August 2010We pretty fly.
We arrived in Copenhagen yesterday morning and have packed a lot in. We've seen Cro-Magnons in the National museum, Rodins in the Glyptotek museum, and a lot of interesting businesses on the Istergade between our hotel and the Friedriksberghave, especially late at night. We've also found a brilliant veggie-friendly restaurant - det Indiske Spisehus on Vesterfælledvej - and a slightly madly friendly pub opposite: Onkel Bobs Hytte.
-
Going to DrupalCon Copenhagen
jp.stacey 17 August 2010In three days' time, no less.
Over on the Torchbox blog I've written about the fact that I'm going to DrupalCon Copenhagen, which is happening all next week. There's not much to add here except that if you're in Copenhagen, and you see someone who looks like me, then do say hello.
-
Vimeo and Oxford Geek Nights
jp.stacey 9 August 2010Hosting your own mp4 files might get you geek cred, but it's not exactly great UX.
Since the dawn of time, Oxford Geek Nights have used Amazon S3 for delivering its video files. Videos were tidied and encoded into MP4 files, then uploaded to AWS and made available to everyone. On one level this has worked just fine: the cost of S3 per gigabytes of storage and monthly bandwidth is pretty low, and using Amazon's resource delivery framework makes a lot of sense.
-
What you need to know about Drupal views
jp.stacey 8 July 2010Between Views and custom code is a no-man's land. Here's how to pick your way through it.
Every content management system needs its query builder—an application which creates customizable lists of content elements and present them in a similarly customisable way. Customization will be typically through an admin interface on the website, and the query builder can be as basic as a text box for SQL or as complex as a many-layered GUI across multiple webpages. Drupal, for its part, has Views. D5 has Views 1, D6 has Views 2, and it looks like the forthcoming Drupal 7 will have Views 3.
-
OGN18 in under two weeks' time
jp.stacey 8 July 2010Summer OGN a week on Wednesday, and it looks like it's going to be fantastic.
The next Oxford Geek Night is on Wednesday 21 July, in less than two weeks' time. I for one am really looking forward to it.
-
Feeds objects within feeds objects
jp.stacey 9 June 2010The Drupal Feeds module consists of layers of objects, tunnelling between each other, like a pearl onion on a cocktail stick
We've been doing a lot of work with the Drupal Feeds module recently. The frontend is nice enough, although the sub-navigation was rendered almost illegible by our theme's CSS. The online tutorials need work, and the admin navigation needs to be made a bit more robust to layout changes; but then it will be the de facto way for people to consume feeds on their Drupal sites.
-
A Drupal view serving multiple tabs
jp.stacey 17 May 2010Views, tabs and menus generally shouldn't be this hard, but here's how to get a multi-tabbed view working.
Drupal's menu hierarchy is a big and complex beast. It acts as both the repository for registered menu callback handlers (and their associated permissions handlers) and as a way of building more mundane frontend menus for people to click round. It serves both static hierarchical side menus and also dynamic tabbed contextual menus: if you're on a user's profile page, there are "View" and "Edit" tabs, with "Account" and maybe "Profile" sub-tabs under "Edit"; yet this menu hierarchy doesn't exist in any real sense.
-
OGN 17 on Wednesday
jp.stacey 18 April 2010It's about this point that I always start panicking.
Oxford Geek Night 17 is happening, and it's happening on Wednesday. That's this Wednesday. So this week I've been running round the office like a headless chicken, and Lawrence has been helping to pick up the pieces. We've got posters printed off, and a Pitch sheet drawn up as well. That's what we record the entries for The Pitch, our sixty-second open mic slots.
-
Greenpeace UK supporter website is a Webby honoree
jp.stacey 13 April 2010Wow. All this and it's on a Drupal 5 installation. Imagine what we could do on D6 or D7!
Torchbox's Team Drupal has been working on Greenpeace UK's website for a couple of years now. One of the major single pieces of work we've done is to redevelop what was originally a separate PHP application for their network of local active supporters.
