More To Remember with PHP

I’ve been spending a lot of time with PHP lately thru my Drupal module work. Durpal modules are really an interesting way to learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly of PHP since there are a ton of techniques and varying qualities of code in the modules on drupal.org. I’ve updated my article on key things to remember about PHP based on some of these.

beren

CMS At It’s Best

I’ve seen two sites lately that really speak to the power of open-source CMS frameworks. One is based on Drupal and the other on Plone. Both are very nice and really show that these tools are serious power-houses for building sophisticated, modern, and very sexy websites. Enough drool, here they are:

• http://www.myplay.com
• http://nasascience.nasa.gov/

Lots of people don’t like these frameworks citing memory issues, scalability, etc., but I think these sites prove this isn’t the case.

Building Modules with Drupal 6

I’ve learned quite a bit about how Drupal works with styles and how pages are rendered. Now I’m looking at how to build modules. What I would like to do is create a few custom modules that can “suck in” and combine information from other sources into a master feed - a feed aggregator on steroids. Similar to a “mashup” server of some kind. This is still a little fuzzy in my mind, but my intent is to look at ways to process and combine data streams from various sources into a “master view”.

Troopers Get Bacta - A Drupal 6 Theme Update

I guess it wasn’t too long before I needed to fix up a few things with my Trooper theme. This will be a short post, but for any of you that tried it there are a few things to note about the theme. What prompted all this was the death of my hard drive in my laptop. I got a new one, but of course I had to completely re-build everything. I did the “freezer trick” with my drive and I was able to pull off most of my data - many thanks to the almighty for that

Here’s a screen capture of the current theme:

When you install this theme there are a few things you need to do:

1. After installing it the layout will be a little funky until you add the custom logo from the config screen. The logo is in the images folder and is called troopers_logo.jpg. Once that is added the layout should be correct. I found another glitch with IE 7. The fix is to make a change to a tag in the troopers.css file to the main-inner tag adding some padding:

#main-inner
{
padding: 0px 1px 0px 0px;
}

Then you can take a bit out of the contentBreak tag:

#contentBreak{
background-color: #9199A4;
width: 0px;
}

The style will now display properly in IE7 and FF2

I’ve made a number of other tweaks to various minor settings and I’ve uncovered a few other bugs in my skin:

1. If you enable Login with OpenId you will see a funky icon in the nav area. I notice this in many Drupal 6 themes. I edited the tags for this so that it now displays as a regular list-item.
2. With zen there are some funky extra features in the config screen. Well my skin either has a bug or I screwed up something. You need to turn off the “show block editing on hover” crap or you will get weird hover crap showing up. I guess I ‘ll look into that at some point .
3. If you look at the source for an aggregator feed then the HTMl page will get very very wide - some kind of wrapping issue.
4. My skin assumes you will always want a left and right sidebar so if you do not configure this then it gets funky. The left sidebar looks funny when your site is new because it is too short. Well yeah - I guess I could “do something” like always make it some height, but I always put more content/modules on there anyway.
5. I tweaked the footer a bit to make it smaller and re-align the text.

Below is the complete theme. I think I have all the bugs out of it. Enjoy. You need to right-click this file and do a “Save As…” Once the download is complete change the extension to “.zip” and then you can unpack it. Sorry about this…wordpress does not allow me to post a zip file.

Troopers Theme Zip Archive

At some point I’ll make this a “page” that you can review rather than a blog.

I’m also looking into a couple of other starting themes that might be easier to deal with than Zen. Zen has a lot of extras stuff that you really don’t need. Perhaps a different theme would make for a better starting point for making a pure CSS/XHTML theme.

Beren’s Top 10 Beers

Most of my friends know I enjoy two things at home:

1. A nice juicy piece of red meat grilled to perfection
2. A cold beer to go with it
3. Ok I guess I also code quite a bit too…so that’s three.

So after many promises and much delay here’s my top-10 favorite beers:

1. Long Trail Ale (served on draft at the Ye Olde Tavern, Manchester, VT USA): in my hunble opinion the best beer in America, but only here. In a bottle it wouldn’t make the list. At the brewery maybe, but at this specific place it is a magical experience.
2. Riverhorse Special Ale (served on draft at the Lambertville Station, Lambertville, NJ USA: nearly the same as above, but a couple of steps down.
3. Hacker-Pschorr (well conditioned and settled out): a fantastic beer when server correctly. Clean and crisp - it is everything Budweiser was meant to be and is not.
4. Guinness Extra Stout (only on draft): well what can I say? Its a great beer - try to get it in Europe.
5. Bass Ale (on draft at the Pig n’ Whistle, Manhattan NYC): The Bass at the PnW is fantastic - the hops are magnificent. I have no explanation for why the Bass is better here than anywhere else, but it is.
6. Kaizer Karel (preferably in Antwerp at De Pelgrom or De Grootte Ganz): a mid-alcohol Belgian classic. There are few better things than a few of these on the Groen Platz in Antwerp on a summer evening. If you’re in De Grootte Ganz make sure you say “arrrggghhh” a few times:-)
7. Samuel Adams Boston Lager (on draft in my house!): Ok - so I have a home kegging system. A cold Sam in the afternoon with a keg fresh from Boston. Mmmmm…
8. Anchor Steam (San Francisco - draft only): Another specialty beer best consumed on its native turf. Dark and malty, but also not too filling. Anchor is an American original for beer so get it and enjoy.
9. Fullers’ ESB (draft only, Inn of the Hawke, Lambertville NJ): A great deep and hoppy ale with a ton of character.
10. Pabst Blue Ribbon (in a can!): I can’t help it. On a hot summer day after mowing the lawn, the only thing to grab is a 32 degree PBR. As far as American lagers go - PBR is the true king these days.

This list is based on my own personal consumption. If you look at the lists of all the “experts” you’ll notice that I probably don’t have any of their top beers on my list. That’s because they are out of touch with reality. Samuel Smith? Come on - please…anyway this is my list. There are a few near misses like Newcastle Brown, Boddington’s, Sierra Nevada, and I guess I could go on and on.

I suppose the next question is: where’s the meat list? Well here it is - there’s only one: If you want meat it is Wegman’s and a Weber.

You’ll never do better than a nice rib eye steak from Wegman’s grilled to perfection on your own grill. No restaurant can do better. Combined with any of the beers above and certainly you will be in Elysium.

Tangled in Melian’s Web

To all my friends out there wondering where “Beren” has been journeying and why the waters of Tarn Aeluin have been so still, many apologies. I was stuck in a parallel to Melian’s girdle that ensnared Beren Erchamion and ultimately led him to Luthien and locked him into his future fate. But hey I still have two hands and can type!

Drupal 6 Troopers Theme Complete

I’ve completed my Drupal 6 conversion of my Troopers theme. I had a couple of goals when I started this port from the 5.x platform:

1. Get it working on Drupal 6 - duh…
2. Move to a pure CSS layout keeping the existing layout.

I was pretty confident the first goal could be reached, however the second I knew would be difficult. Ultimately I succeeded in porting over my skin, but did not achieve a pure CSS layout. In this post I’ll show you a bit about what I did and provide a download link for my theme.

InfoQ Interviews WS02 CEO

I don’t normally regurgitate other sites, but I found this interview with WS02 CEO Sanjiva Weerawarana very interesting. I read InfoQ quite a bit - if you are into the latest and greatest stuff on software architectures on .NET, Java, and “web services”, then you should check out InfoQ.

WS02 is a very interesting open-source startup. A friend put me onto them about a year ago. I’ve been experimenting with several of their tools, including the mashup server. The mashup server just got released at the 1.0 level so I’ll be refreshing my mashed potatoes jokes soon.

Check out the interview - I found it very interesting…and I don’t normally go for this kind of stuff.

Drupal 6 Theme Positioning

Drupal 6 is pretty close to release. One of the areas of change is with themes, how to create new ones, and how the tagging and styling works. I’ve done quite a bit of work in the past with themes so I was interested quite a bit in taking a look at what is new and improved. I’m going to take my Troopers theme and port it over to Drupal 6 and while I’m doing that I will move from a table based layout to a pure CSS based layout.

No Better Front-wheel Car on the Planet

Motorweek is a staple of the car world and generally is known as a solid and impartial source of reviews. Here’s a quote on the new Saab 9-3 series cars for 2008:

 ”there is no better handling front-wheel drive car on the planet than a Saab 9-3.”

Well that’s super cool - and quite an astute and intelligent comment

Get the full story here:

http://www.trollhattansaab.net/archives/2008/02/mpt-9-3-sportcombi-test-now-on-video.html

beren

of course - yes I’m a Saab fanatic…