Drupal.geek.nz: Bevan on Drupal, Usability, Web, Open Source, Tech...

DrupalCon: jQuery for Designers & Themers

Bevan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:06:19 +0000

jQuery for Designers and Themers is a fun interactive session on getting started with jQuery. It is targeted at designers and themers but is suitable for anyone with a decent understanding of HTML and CSS — no programming experience is necessary. It doesn't include any PHP, and only basic programming concepts are introduced.

If you want to see this session at DrupalCon San Francisco you'll need to vote on it here.

How Was DrupalSouth's Internet so Awesome!?

Bevan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:29:50 +0000

DrupalSouth — a 100-person technical conference — had awesome internet. This is how we did it.

DrupalSouth might well be the first Drupal conference with internet that didn't suck. For the first time, I didn't hear anyone complain about connectivity or speed. Everyone had internet access! If I didn't hear about any issues you were having, or if you had any complaints or problems, please let us know in the comments.

Egressive pulled most of this together. Egressive provides both Linux and Drupal services and know a lot of people in the industry. In particular, Rob Fraser's technical networking know-how and contacts at Effusion, IOPEN, Unleash and elsewhere are what made this possible.

Thanks Rob, and thanks Egressive!
IOPEN and members of the Effusion group built a robust scalable wireless network for Kiwi PyCon 2009, just a few months earlier. DrupalSouth's wireless requirements were very similar to PyCon's. DrupalSouth was a little smaller in number of attendees. One difference was that the network data analysis and the Wireless Weather Report (see below) generating were not done on-site but 400 km away in Christchurch using a small real-time data stream from DrupalSouth. Also, Brian Chatterton of IOPEN made a few minor configuration enhancements, renamed the the networks in honour of Drupal's founder and changed the passwords.

Brian Chatterton really understands networking. Technical conferences have such demanding wifi and networking requirements that can not be tested under load ahead of time. And usually they fail. Brian's experience and knowledge has been twice-proven by Kiwi PyCon and DrupalSouth's great wifi.

Thanks Brian!
R2 installed the purple VSDL cable and connection from the DrupalSouth network hub, out the window, up to the roof of Mac's Brewery, across the roof, up the wall of the NZ Stock Exchange building, through a window of TradeMe's offices, and into a spare wall-mounted network port nearby; which was re-patched directly into Citylink's fibre network in TradeMe's server and patch room.

Richard Naylor of R2 is very respected and well known in Wellington when it comes to internet connectivity. As a City Council employee in the 90s he founded the project that later became Citylink. He now runs a private consultancy with his son, specializing in video streaming, and live video recording and hosting online. R2 did the video recording and streaming for Linux.conf.au Wellington.

Richard and his network of industry and business contacts made this possible; he provided a missing link between the wifi LAN and Citylink's high-speed fibre network, temporarily extending it to the venue.

Thanks Richard!
Citylink's high speed city fibre optic network in Wellington connects hundreds of businesses, buildings and data centres city-wide with fast low-latency network speeds. Karen Lindsay-Kerr at Citylink was kind enough to arrange a sponsored VLAN from TradeMe's data centre to Unleash's point of presence across town. That's fibre all the way!

Thanks Karen and thanks Citylink!
Unleash, the last point in the hardware chain, provided a high speed connection to the Internet. They generously sponsored 100Gb of data, a 20Mb symmetrical link, and a whole block of 256 IP addresses. (Unfortunately we couldn't assign the public IP addresses to devices due to time constraints.)

Unleash is an ISP based in Christchurch with four data centres across New Zealand, and nationwide network coverage with fibre, wireless and ADSL2+. They provide virtual and dedicated hosting, co-location and high-speed Internet services.

Thanks Unleash!

The last component is a software layer: IOPEN created a network traffic monitoring tool that collects data about the network and monitors load and resource usage. A "wireless weather report". This is useful to fix any issues if they arise (which they didn't!) and analyse network traffic to make improvements to network configuration for next time. They also made the data from tool available to users connected to the DrupalSouth network. Here is a screenshot:

Most of the companies and individuals mentioned here donated their time and services. You can see all of DrupalSouth sponsors on the sponsor page.

Thanks everyone!

Registrations open for DrupalSouth Wellington, the NZ Drupal event

Bevan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:32:54 +0000

DrupalSouth registrations opened a couple of days ago and there are already almost 30 registered attendees! Capacity is limited to 100 and it is expected to sell out, so get in quick!

Registration costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. Here is the full announcement;

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 is the New Zealand Drupal event. It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk. DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January — just after Linux.conf.au Wellington.

Last call for DrupalSouth sponsors

Bevan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:55:45 +0000

It is not too late to sponsor DrupalSouth. BUT, there is room for only a few more sponsors and sponsorship closes this Friday 27 November. So if you want to sponsor contact us now!

All sponsors get

Logo and link to company profile on sponsors page
Detailed company profile on the website
Entire team profile on the website
Swag in the attendee pack
1 free registration

Platinum sponsors get

Config To Code Module Is Like Features For Drupal 5

Bevan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:34:27 +0000

Config to Code module for Drupal 5 makes it easy to deploy new views and panels and to version-control changes to existing ones with a source code repository like subversion. It makes it quick and easy to move configured views and panels in the database to code, then safely delete the configured views from the database and finally, expose the views and panels in code back to their respective modules. It is extensible for other types of configurations that can be stored both in database and code.

Read on for the demo screencast.

Interview With Bevan Rudge For Lullabot Drupal Voices

Bevan — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:02:59 +0000

Kent Bye interviewed me (Bevan Rudge) in early September at DrupalCon Paris about Drupal in New Zealand, CivicActions and some recent projects. Yesterday Lullabot released the podcast as Lullabot Drupal Voices 75.

DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organizers Invite You to Participate

Bevan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:17:46 +0000

We are excited to announce the DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organisers group. DCAPO intends to lay foundations that will facilitate international Drupal Conferences (DrupalCons) in the Asia-Pacific region.

Conservation Strategy Fund Uses Drupal

Bevan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:06:39 +0000

Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) recently launched their new Drupal website and the HydroCalculator Tool, both by CivicActions. CSF's mission is to teach environmental organizations around the world to use economics and strategic analysis to conserve nature. Their new website empowers them to do this with multi-lingual features, news streams and feeds, listings that can be filtered by continent, region, country or theme, t

Hook_world_alter() T-shirt Design

Bevan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:11:17 +0000

This hook_world_alter() T-shirt idea was something Trevor Twining came up with way back at DrupalCon DC. I got a single T-shirt made for DrupalCon Paris. A number of people said they wanted one – though since I'm not interested in the business of making T-shirts, I thought I

I am seeking Drupal development contract work

Bevan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:08:23 +0000

Contributing to Drupal at DrupalCon Boston March 2008. Photo by Steve Krueger.

I am currently available for Drupal development contract work.

I am interested in contracts or projects of any width, height or length. I am especially interested in projects that (roughly in order);

are socially conscious
have other talented and experienced Drupal developers to work and grow with
compensate at reasonable-to-good rates

DrupalSouth Wellington NZ January 2010

Bevan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:22:42 +0000

Following in the success of DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008, DrupalSouth Wellington January 2010 is in it's planning stages.

Best Photos From DrupalCon Paris 2009

Bevan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:57:31 +0000

If you don't want to browse the 2500+ photos from DrupalCon Paris on Flickr, but still want to see some photos, try these sets for the highlights instead;

Sample Code For JQuery For Designers And Themers, DrupalCon Paris 2009

Bevan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:45:19 +0000

I was extremely pleased with my DrupalCon Paris session on jQuery for Designers and Themers. It was a great success – my best session yet.

You can see the slides at tinyurl.com/jQuery-Designers and download the sample theme code from drupal.org/project/jq4dat.

I made a couple of references to blog posts and work I've done with jQuery during the session:

I wrote a jQuery dashboard plugin that uses jQuery UI's Sortable library to make an iGoogle-like dashboard with an example server-side implementation.
Calling drupal_get_js() and drupal_get_css() from page preprocess functions creates an unnecessary performance hit. This blog post discusses a technique that allows javascript and CSS to be added in the page preprocess function without needing to call drupal_get_js() and drupal_get_css().

CivicActions In Paris!

Bevan — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:27:54 +0000

CivicActions is in Paris, and we are running some great sessions at DrupalCon Paris 2009;

We won't be at the job fair this year, but please hunt us down at the conference (we'll be wearing CivicActions t-shirts) if you're looking for work or want to join a first-class international and virtual team of world-changing Drupal developers. You can also contact us through the website for more info or if you want to make sure you don't miss us.

NZ Government Loves Drupal

Bevan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:48:11 +0000

The New Zealand Government loves Drupal:

Drupal Gotchya: Cache_get() Returns Expired Items

Bevan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:21:41 +0000

cache_get() returns $cache objects even if the cached item is stale (expired). The cached data will not be rebuilt every hour in the following example:

<?php
/**
 * Builds complicated data for the monkey grip.
 */
function custom_monkey_grip_data() {
  // Return the cached data
  $cache = cache_get('custom:monkey_grip');
  if (!$cache) {
    // Some expensive processing to build the data.
    $data = complicated_recursion_and_loops_on_lots_of_data();
    
    // Cache the data and rebuild it every hour
    $expire = time() + (60 * 60);
    cache_set('custom:monkey_grip', $data, 'cache', $expire);
  }
  else {
    $data = $cache->data;
  }
  return $data;
}
?>

NZ Software Patents; Meeting With Lianne Dalziel, Commerce Committee Chairperson & Labour MP

Bevan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:21:55 +0000

Today I had a long and very positive meeting about software patents and the NZ Patents Bill with Commerce Committee chairperson, Labour party's Lianne Dalziel, as well as Drupal-peers Dave Lane and Jonathan Hunt. Dalziel, Christchurch East MP, was well-informed about the Patents Bill, the Ministry of Economic Development's Patent Review and the insufficient attention paid to software patents (thanks to our emails and exchange of documents beforehand). She was not so well-informed about software patents and the harm that they cause – as would be expected given the complexity and obscurity of these issues for those who do not work in the software development.

Drupal meetup in Auckland New Zealand this Friday

Bevan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:15:21 +0000

I'm going to be in Auckland this Friday and am meeting up with some other Drupalers to drink, dine and talk Drupal. Please see my post on groups.drupal.org for more details and to let us know if you're coming.

Drupal at Linux Conference Australasia, Wellington January 2010

Bevan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:06:30 +0000

Linux Conference Australasia (aka LCA, linux.conf.au) will be in Wellington 18-23 January 2010 – 6 and a half months from now. This presents opportunities for the NZ Drupal community to;

Promote Drupal in the wider FLOSS community (which is good for business)
Run a DrupalCamp/Conference; which allows attendees to combine expenses if attending LCA, and organizers to share venue, admin, financial and other resources with LCA.
Just hang out and drink & talk Drupal! Or perhaps (talk) and (drink drupal)!? :)

Microsoft Tries To Defend NZ Government Contract Failure

Bevan — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:08:37 +0000

Kathryn Ryan of Radio NZ interviewed Don Christie, president of the NZ Open Source Society and Kevin Ackhurst, managing director of Microsoft NZ on Microsoft's failure to renew their multi-million dollar contract with the NZ government. The interviews and Kathryn's questions are intense and very interesting as Don Christie defends the government's choice to break out of a reliance on Microsoft's products, and Kevin Ackhurst tries to defend Microsoft's position, touting it as a success.

URGENT: Unlimited Software Patents In New Zealand. Act Now!

Bevan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:21:27 +0000

NZ government is about to pass a new Patents Act. In the 8-year review, they seemingly forgot to consider the impacts of patents on computer software! Submissions on the bill are being accepted till 2 July, so we need to move fast. Make a submission now!

Where will your grandkids be 60 years from now?

Bevan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:27:40 +0000

It is not often I blog off topic, so I hope that you can appreciate how important this is, and spare a few minutes to save your own future, your children's and grandchildren's futures and home planet.

Would you just stand around and watch as your home burned down with your children and pets inside? No? So please don't stand around and watch while we destroy our home planet.

This December, world leaders, including New Zealand prim minister John Key, will meet in Copenhagen to decide what the world should do about climate change. John needs our support in order to do the right thing in Copenhagen. Please Sign On today. This is a great chance to make a difference.

UPDATED: Can't Add CSS, JS, RSS Icon Or Set Title Or Messages In Preprocess Page?

Bevan — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:10:17 +0000

UPDATE: Due to recent changes to our website the code snippet (the valuable part of this blog post) got accidentally lost. If you read this already, please come back to see the sample code. Thanks!
Often you want to add CSS files, scripts, feed icons or even set Drupal's page title from the theme layer. The most obvious place to call Drupal's functions for these tasks is probably in a page preprocess function. However calling the following Drupal API functions from a theme or module's NAME_preprocess_page() function often doesn't work;

SignOn.org.nz, By Greenpeace NZ

Bevan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:48:24 +0000

Earlier this year Jenn, Owen and I worked on a proposal for Greenpeace NZ. CivicActions didn't win the contract, but the website has just launched.

Accessibility For Humans; Usability Of Websites For Screen Reader Users

Bevan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:11:28 +0000

A graph from the article showing disabilities reported:

MS would have you believe otherwise and try to paint the picture back to front) and big win for NZ Government and NZ's IT industry.

Views Filter Blocks In Drupal 6

Bevan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:09:49 +0000

Screenshot of Views 2 exposed filters in a block.

This video demonstrates how to setup Views 2 exposed filters as a block.

Vertical Tabs In Drupal 7 Core! How Open Source Does Usability – The Process

Bevan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:14:25 +0000

Vertical tabs are finally in Drupal core!

Screenshot of vertical tabs on an 'Article Edit' page in Drupal 7.

Synchronized Mail, Contacts, Calendars Across iPhone, Google, Mail.app, iCal.app

Bevan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:30:41 +0000

I have spent considerable time over the last year or so trying to get my data and systems set up to have email, contacts and calendars available both online and offline on both my main computer, my mobile device and online as a guest user on others computers. All the while keeping my inbox clean from spam and bulk mail, contacts synchronized and access my preferred user-interfaces and applications. I've recently been able to get this pretty close to perfect. In this article I will describe the technologies I use and how I've configured them to achieve this.

Young Hahn Proposes A Rule-Based Drupal Theme Layer

Bevan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:59:10 +0000

While there were many great presentations at DrupalCon DC, Young Hahn's Limitations of the Drupal Theme Layer was the only one that blew me away.