chacadwa

Lessons Learned on My First Podcast

micah — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:58:11 +0000

Last Monday, we released the first episode of the Geeks and God Podcast since I became one of the hosts. There were a lot of lessons to be learned in the process. Here are a few of the things I discovered.

Creating a new VM with VMware Server 1.0.x

micah — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:26:19 +0000

I created this six minute video for work to demonstrate how to create a new virtual machine using VMware Server 1.0.x. It demonstrates how simple the process can be, although I also take a minute to show how I remedy a certain pet peeve that I have with the process.

Marantz PMD660 Internal Mic Test Recording

micah — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:21:08 +0000

marantzpmd660.jpg

We were discussing the PMD660 on Twitter the other day, and I also reviewed this unit on the Geeks and God website. I've decided to post the test recording I made using the internal mics.

The attached file contains totally pointless content. Its only value is to hear how the recorder changed as I walked around different parts of our church building with it. I had headphones plugged in, and had various people listen to what was being recorded, hence their comments.

A Night of Different Perspectives

micah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:17:55 +0000

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Tonight's rehearsal of our annual musical drama, A Christmas Tale, was a night of different perspectives. I wasn't really thinking when I snapped this photo with my cell phone, but it fits.

When we started out tonight, neither of my lighting guys were there, so I stuck my teenage daughter on the light board, where she did a great job of being mature and attentive, following cues without error. She worked backstage last year, so she saw a new perspective on how lighting tied in to the portions of the show where she'd had to move props on- and off-stage in the dark last year.

Clickin' It Old School

micah — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:25:43 +0000

telegraph-key.jpg

It's sometimes hard to remember that "instant" text messaging has been around for a long time, and that text messaging is far older than voice technology for long distance communication. The difference today is that text messaging devices are wireless, and don't require intensive training and study to be used.

My great-grandfather, Rush Webner, was a telegrapher for various railroads, including a 36 year stint as agent-operator for the Wheeling and Lake Erie station in Smithville, Ohio.

Creating a Simple Link List with CCK and Views

micah — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:15:09 +0000

Old school web design meant including a page full of links to other websites. As older sites are transitioned into current practice, many site owners expect this trend to continue. And in some ways it has, most commonly as a block containing a blogroll of other sites. This method can provide both solutions by creating a custom content type that will turn links into nodes, and can then display them as a page or block using Views. This tutorial assumes that you have a running Drupal site and understand the basics of downloading and installing contributed modules.

Simple hook_form_alter Module for Drupal 5

micah — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:02:58 +0000

Note: I've updated this tutorial for Drupal 6 in this post on the Geeks and God website.

This example "mysite" module demonstrates hook_form_alter. There is a lot of good info out there about hook_form_alter, but I found very few examples that put all of the pieces of custom module creation together in such a simple way as this.

The also function adds an example "form_array" element that displays everything in a form using print_r. Installing the Devel Module is probably a better way to get this same information. You wouldn't want to leave this hunk of code on a production site, but it is pretty nice for seeing what form elements are available to manipulate.

Uncomment print $form_id; to show the name of every form on your site as you navigate.

Drupal rsync backup scripts

micah — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:33:49 +0000

There are a lot of other backup scripts for Drupal on the web, but I promised somebody I'd post mine in response to this week's episode of the Geeks and God podcast. There are variations based on how the different servers are set up, but here's a basic summary of how I do it.

Welcome to Twitter

micah — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:31:29 +0000

I wrote this email today intending to resend it again and again as new friends started joining Twitter, primarily from Facebook, but have quickly realized how cumbersome that might become, so instead I'm adding it here as a blog post for all to enjoy.

I've noticed a couple of my friends have signed up for Twitter but are not using it. Most of you have added the Twitter Facebook app, and are wondering "ok, so now what?" As a diligent and responsible Twitter addict, I've decided to sit down and write you a nice email to help you get started.

Drupal Adoption Issues for Churches

micah — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:51:08 +0000

Matt Farina recently posted a question on FriendFeed about increasing adoption of Drupal among churches.

I'm wondering how we can make Drupal easier for churches to adopt. Drupal for Churches distribution? Documentation targeted at churches? Thoughts?

I think four factors are that churches are asking the wrong questions, we're providing wrong answers, the Drupal web site probably doesn't target non-geeks, and the word about Drupal isn't getting to the right places.