tasselflower

Wednesday Pop 49

Mervi — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:13:20 +0000

This is one long song.

Nothing Compares 2 U (1990) by Sinéad O'Connor

See and hear more Wednesday Pop. Wednesday Pop is also available on Spotify.

Hot Font #2: Gudea

Mervi — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:10:53 +0000

The second Hot Font is Gudea. I found it through Antti's redesigned site.

Gudea has originally been designed for maps and labels. Being very clear and versatile it suits for much more. Created by Agustina Mingote, the font is published under SIL Open Font License (OFL) and it's free.

Gudea on Font Squirrel and Google Web Fonts.

Oh no logo

Mervi — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:03:02 +0000

I needed a new bag. Something big and sturdy enough to fit my Macbook and other stuff I want to carry around. A bag which doesn't look like it was made for the granny who wants to pretend to be rich. Price around 50 euros.

To my surprise everything matching the requirements was decorated with huge logos. Sports brand logos mostly. Adidas, Puma, Nike, Björn (We Are The) Borg and so forth.

I ended up with one saying Adidas, only because it happened to fit my needs. It came with a nice color and a strap which shouldn't dig deep into my shoulder. Spacious and nifty pockets inside. And the logo.

Usually I try and avoid logos. On my clothing and accessories that is. Gadgets come with logos, I'm used to that, but wearing them isn't my thing at all.

I really don't like to pay to be a living ad space. Actually I think I should be paid if I'm willing to wear a logo of a random brand. If I'm willing to confess I did buy something this company Made In Vietnam.

Silly, I guess. Makes sense to me.

Suomeksi (In Finnish):

Tarvitsin laukun. Tarpeeksi kestävän ja sellaisen, johon Macbook mahtuisi. Ei mitään mummojen tyyliä. Hintaluokka noin 50 euroa. Kaikissa näytti olevan logoja. Päädyin valitsemaan Adidas-laukun, koska se täytti kriteerini. Se on myös ihan kivan värinen ja sen hihna ei vaikuta siltä, että se porautuisi hartiaani. Ja sitten siinä on se logo. Yleensä välttelen logoja vaatteissani ja sen sellaisissa. En haluaisi olla kävelevä mainostaulu. Oikeastaan minulle pitäisi maksaa, että suostun pukeutumaan jonkun brändin logoon. Hupsua kai se on, mutta mielestäni ihan järkeenkäypää.

Why Drupal?

Mervi — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:06:10 +0000

My choice of CMS is Drupal. It's an open source platform built for all sorts of sites from simpler personal blogs to more complexed sites. Because I know people seem to think other CMS' are better, I decided to list some reasons why I think Drupal is the best around.

A couple of years ago I tried a bunch of different platforms in order to find the best one for my needs. Before this I had mostly been building websites and some simple database or text file based content managements from scratch. Joomla seemed promising, but at the time it wasn't flexible enough and for some reason I found WordPress too difficult to implement. Drupal I got immediately. Of course since then all these platforms have changed and developed. Drupal is now way better than it was.

Drupal is flexible. It can be used for very simple sites as well as building something more sophisticated, like a full e-commerce site. There are thousands of modules available and more can be built if needed. A Drupal site is fully customizable, but you can get quite far with the basic installation as well. For a geek like myself Drupal is a great platform to tinker around as much as I can. Or as little as I want to.

Add-on modules include Views and Content Construction Kit (CCK) which can be used in imaginative ways for creating almost anything. I find new ways to utilize Views and CCK all the time.

Theming Drupal can be made difficult... Or very very easy. There are loads of contributed themes to choose from or you can build one from scratch. Starter themes, such as Zen and Fusion are there to help to get the theming on the way. Even more advanced theme frameworks are available, likes of AdaptiveTheme.

Making a Drupal site content easy to update isn't really that difficult. With different modules, including Views and CCK mentioned above, updating can be made extremely smooth for even less experienced web user. I recommend using one of the administration themes for (surprise surprise) administration and content editing. For instance RootCandy and my current favorite Seven are great admin themes.

And what does Drupal cost? Well, nothing. Drupal is a free open source content management system. The contributed themes and modules are free. Of course some third party plugins and themes may cost some, but that's the same thing with any other CMS.

If you want to see what can be done with Drupal and creativity, check out the interesting and cool examples on Drupal Museum and drupal sites network. Help with your Drupal is around the web. For those who like their instructions in video form DrupalCamp24x7 is filled with video tutorials (and is a good looking site as well).

Suomeksi (In Finnish):

Syy miksi käytän Drupalia on se, että se on helppo ja joustava sisällönhallintajärjestelmä. Drupalilla voi rakentaa monenlaisia sivustoja, simppeleistä blogeista monimutkaisempiin verkkokauppoihin. Drupalin saa myös muokattua sellaiseksi, että sen sisällön päivittäminen on yksinkertaista jopa vähemmän kokeneelle netin käyttäjälle. Ja Drupal on tietenkin ilmainen. Jos haluat nähdä mitä Drupalin ja luovuuden avulla saa aikaan, tsekkaa esimerkkejä sivustoilta Drupal Museum ja drupal sites network.

Wednesday Pop 48

Mervi — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:08:24 +0000

Whenever a famous person dies, Twitter gets filled with RIP-tweets. The tweets usually contain nothing but RIP and the person's name. Everyone wants to be part of the story, even if they couldn't care less about the person earlier. It used to be: "Where were you when you heard person A died?" Now it's more like: "How fast did you tweet about the death of person A?"

And now I'm part of it too. Maybe I should just dance with somebody.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) (1987) by Whitney Houston

See and hear more Wednesday Pop. Wednesday Pop is also available on Spotify.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mervi — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:49:16 +0000

See the card bigger here.

Suomeksi (In Finnish):

Hauskaa ystävänpäivää! Näe kortti isompana täällä.