what2day

Wordpress Intermezzo - RobinRCutler.com

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:27:00 -0800

Or the answer to - So Carlyn, what happened to the Drupal Series?

It is still going, but I had an "Wordpress Emergency" to attend to. My mom has a website. She's had it for a while but it has been neglected. I built it back in 2007 in Wordpress. While Wordpress was and is the best choice for this type of site, it was a real hassle. Wordpress has made a number of changes for the better in the past four years. The custom menu feature alone saved me hours and an hours of custom php scripting ( I swear I wrote a function called know_who_the_freakin_ancestor_is_already() )

What brings the big change on now is that she has a lot of material for her new project. Also, it is going to be winter in New York - well it IS winter in New York, and what goes better with a cup of tea and snow outside than blogging? Also if I didn't do it NOW... well things fall through the cracks, and she's a good mom.

I modified the basic Twenty Eleven theme because that is really the one she liked. I was going to use Deilcate, but in the end I think she made a good call. Twenty Eleven is very well documented because it is the default. NomNom I think, might also be a good choice to make a child theme from in the future maybe, but I couldn't find it in the Wordpress.org theme repository.

I'm not going to go through the whole set up, but there are some key modifications that took me a long time to wrestle with, so hopefully this will save someone else time some day. A couple of them could be full on tutorials, but I've got to get back to Drupal!

1. Make a child theme of twenty eleven
2. Turn comments on pages off
3. Change the position of the menu bar relative to the image.
4. Make the header image auto select itself depending on the post category.
5. Change how sticky posts display on Showcase home (move them down to recent posts)
6. Auto Create More Tags for Content going on the Front page.
7. Put child pages of the Front page at the top of the showcase template

1. Make a child theme of twenty eleven

The first thing I wanted to do is screw with the colors, and I started here -

http://theme.fm/2011/07/how-to-create-a-child-theme-based-on-twenty-eleven-791/

The bad things bout this tutorial is only that the CSS it gives doesn't have the gradients like the parent theme. By searching the style.css file of of 2011 for "#access" you can copy and paste it's code into your own css file and tweak the colors there. Do that second, after you have seen that the orange example works so you know that your color scheme will in fact take.

2. Turn comments on pages off

To my mind, comments are for posts, not pages. I moved a copy of page.php to my new child-theme directory and changed

<?php comments_template( '', true ); ?>

<?php comments_template( '', false ); ?>

3. Change the position of the menu bar relative to the image.

I wanted the menu bar ABOVE the image because one of my header images is taller than the others. I think it is better when the menu stays in the same place. I did it purely in CSS. This isn't ideal because it makes the menu cover the image when the theme is scaled down, but it was taking me a long time to get it to work by changing the flow of the header.php, so I gave up and went with the CSS hack. If I need to revisit this in the future I'll take a look at how the NomNom theme puts it's second bar above the header image.

#access {
     position: absolute;
     top: 180px;
}

#branding img {
     position: relative;
     margin-top: 50px;
}

4. Make the header image auto select itself depending on the post category.

I didn't want my mom to have to think about a special image for every post, and yet, as we go I want the images for different categories to be different. I created a directory in my child theme's home directory called /images/headers and put images with names based on category slugs in there. This is not a good long term solution because it means Mom can 't change them herself. (FTP isn't her thing... yet) Some day I'll look into adding a "pick image for category header" to the dashboard, but not this week!

 <?PHP
   // Check if this is a post or page, if it has a thumbnail, and if it's a big one
    if ( is_singular() &&
            has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) &&
            ( /* $src, $width, $height */ $image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), array( HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH, HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH ) ) ) &&
            $image[1] >= HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH ) :
        // Houston, we have a new header image!
        echo get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'post-thumbnail' );
  //--- Added to have blog category page headings						
  elseif( is_category() ) : 
        $cat = get_query_var('cat');
        $yourcat = get_category ($cat);
        
        $src = get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/images/headers/'.$yourcat->slug.'_header.jpg';
        $loc = get_stylesheet_directory().'/images/headers/'.$yourcat->slug.'_header.jpg';
        $dflt = get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/images/headers/blog_header.jpg';                        

        if (file_exists($loc)) :                        
            echo '<img src="'.$src.'" width"'.HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH.'" height="'.HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT.'alt="" />'; 
        else :
            echo '<img src="'.$dflt.'" width"'.HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH.'" height="'.HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT.'alt="" />';
        endif;    
  // end of blog category page headings 
  //--- Added to have posts show their category image if none other available.	
  elseif(is_single()) :
        $category = get_the_category();
        $kat = $category[0]->category_nicename;
        
        $src = get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/images/headers/'.$kat.'_header.jpg';
        $loc = get_stylesheet_directory().'/images/headers/'.$kat.'_header.jpg';
        $dflt = get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/images/headers/blog_header.jpg';

        if (file_exists($loc)) :                        
            echo '<img src="'.$src.'" width"'.HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH.'" height="'.HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT.'alt="" />'; 
        else :
            echo '<img src="'.$dflt.'" width"'.HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH.'" height="'.HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT.'alt="" />';
        endif;    
        
  // end of post category heading
  //------ blog home page setting
  elseif(is_home()) :
        echo '<img src="'.get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/images/headers/blog_header.jpg" width"'.HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH.'" height="'.HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT.'alt="" />';
  else : ?>
        <img src="<?php header_image(); ?>" width="<?php echo HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH; ?>" height="<?php echo HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT; ?>" alt="" />
<?php endif; // end check for featured image or standard header ?>

5. Change how sticky posts display on Showcase home (move them down to recent posts area)

First there has to be a static front page and it has to have showcase.php as it's template. There is a flaw in the directions for this in the Codex, I think. They say to call your new page for the front "Home," but the is_home() function finds the blog home page and is_front() finds the real front page. Calling a page "Home" other than the one returned by the is_home() function seems like a recipie for confusion, so I called mine Front instead.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page

http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages

I moved a copy of showcase.php to my child theme, took out all the code that it used for sticky posts and changed the recent posts section to be the following.

<section class="recent-posts">
<?php
/**
 * Begin the featured posts section.
 *
 * See if we have any sticky posts and use them to create our featured posts.
 */
$sticky = get_option( 'sticky_posts' );
// Proceed only if sticky posts exist.
if ( ! empty( $sticky ) ) :
    $featured_args = array(
        'post__in' => $sticky,
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'posts_per_page' => 10,
        'no_found_rows' => true,
    );
    // The Featured Posts query.
    $featured = new WP_Query( $featured_args );
    
    // Proceed only if published posts exist
    if ( $featured->have_posts() ) :  ?>
        <h1 class="showcase-heading"><?php _e( 'Featured Post', 'twentyeleven' ); ?></h1>
        <?php while ( $featured->have_posts() ) : $featured->the_post();
            // Set $more to 0 in order to only get the first part of the post.
            global $more;
            $more = 0;
            get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() );
        endwhile;	?>
       <!-- .featured-posts -->                                           
    <?php endif; // End check for published posts. ?>   
<?php endif; // End check for sticky posts. ?>
 <?php
/**
 * Begin the recent posts section.
 *
 */
 ?>
<h1 class="showcase-heading"><?php _e( 'Recent Posts', 'twentyeleven' ); ?></h1>
<?php
// Display our recent posts, showing full content for the very latest, ignoring Aside posts.
$recent_args = array(
    'order' => 'DESC',
    'post__not_in' => get_option( 'sticky_posts' ),
    'tax_query' => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'post_format',
            'terms' => array( 'post-format-aside', 'post-format-link', 'post-format-quote', 'post-format-status' ),
            'field' => 'slug',
            'operator' => 'NOT IN',
        ),
    ),
    'no_found_rows' => true,
);
// Our new query for the Recent Posts section.
$recent = new WP_Query( $recent_args );
// The first Recent post is displayed normally
if ( $recent->have_posts() ) : $recent->the_post();
    // Set $more to 0 in order to only get the first part of the post.
    global $more;
    $more = 0;
    get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() );
    echo '<ol class="other-recent-posts">';
endif;
// For all other recent posts, just display the title and comment status.
while ( $recent->have_posts() ) : $recent->the_post(); ?>
    <li class="entry-title">
        <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php printf( esc_attr__( 'Permalink to %s', 'twentyeleven' ), the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) ); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
        <span class="comments-link">
            <?php comments_popup_link( '<span class="leave-reply">' . __( 'Leave a reply', 'twentyeleven' ) . '</span>', __( '<b>1</b> Reply', 'twentyeleven' ), __( '<b>%</b> Replies', 'twentyeleven' ) ); ?>
        </span>
    </li>
<?php
endwhile;
// If we had some posts, close the <ol>
if ( $recent->post_count > 0 )
    echo '</ol>';
?>
</section><!-- .recent-posts -->

6. Auto Create More Tags for Content going on the Front page.

The problem with the code above is that it dispalys the WHOLE post on the front page, which I don't like since my mom is writing some pretty long pieces. I was having a hard time getting the excerpt_length hook to work (resolved, ish) So I went around it and made it so if the post doesn't have a more tag, I fake it. I could have just insisted to Mom that she put More tags on all her posts, but she has enough she is trying to learn to remember to do each time to add that step too.

<?PHP
//functions that need to be in the functions.php 
//for this to work

//more tag detection

function has_more() 
{
 global $post;
 if ( empty( $post ) ) return;
 
    if ($pos=strpos($post->post_content, '')) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

function more_posistion() 
{
    if ($pos=strpos($post->post_content, '')) {
        return $pos;
    }
}

///limit content length
//http://www.fusedthought.com/archives/wordpress-custom-content-length-code-snippet
function limit_content($content_length = 150, $allowtags = true, $allowedtags = '') {
	global $post;
	$content = $post->post_content;
	$content = apply_filters('the_content', $content);
	if (!$allowtags){
		$allowedtags .= '<style>';
		$content = strip_tags($content, $allowedtags);
	}
	$content = str_replace(']]>', ']]&gt;', $content);
	$wordarray = explode(' ', $content, $content_length + 1);
	if(count($wordarray) > $content_length) :
		array_pop($wordarray);
		array_push($wordarray, '...');
		$content = implode(' ', $wordarray);
		$content .= "</p>";
		$content .= twentyeleven_continue_reading_link();
	endif;

	echo $content;
}


?>

7. Put child pages of the Front page at the top of the showcase template

Since I nuked the featured-posts section I wanted to adapt the concept of a highlighted area by using the children of the Front page as the content that shows on at the top of front page.

This is not perfected yet, but here is the code for starting off. It took me a tragically long time to trouble shoot this because as soon as I put anything that is a post related variable in my WP_Query it would return nothing. A flaw in Wordpress' behind the scenes is that the code (for good legacy reasons) some times uses the word "post" (in function/variable names, etc) to mean JUST Posts and sometimes the word "post" is inclusive to mean Posts and Pages. Everything used to be a post, so it makes sense how it ended up that way, but it screwed me up writing the query, copying from examples that were about posts.

<?php
    /**
         * Show Child Pages 
         * Works, no formating
         * Must come after <?php the_post(); ?>
    */
    $myID = $post->ID;
    
    $highlighted_args = array(
        'post_parent' => $myID,
        'post_type' => 'page',
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'posts_per_page' => 3,
        'no_found_rows' => true,
    );

    // The Featured Posts query.
    $higlighted = new WP_Query( $highlighted_args );
    if ( $higlighted->have_posts() ) :


        ?>   
   <div class="higlighted-posts"> 
   <!--<h1 class="showcase-heading"><?php _e( 'Child Pages', 'twentyeleven' ); ?></h1> -->                      
    <?php
        // Let's roll.
        while ( $higlighted->have_posts() ) : 
        $higlighted->the_post();
    ?>    
    
    <?php the_content(); ?>
    <?php endwhile; ?>                    
    
</div><!-- .highlighted-posts -->    
<?php endif; // if ( $higlighted->have_posts() ) ?>

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Drupal, Day 6 - Part 2: A bit of a punt on modules, Setting up a second test site, Features Module

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:56:00 -0800

Part 1: The Punt

So after poking around I realized that I think I want to just follow some tutorials on how to use some of the major modules rather than just install and poke around. It seems, like with drupal, the more powerful a module, the less it reveals what it can do to the casual observer. Also many of the modules are covered in later chapters of the dgd7 book.

For Example:

Pathuato (chapter 8)
Panels (chapter 5)
Entity (chapter 5)
link / media (chapter 8)
Rules (chapter 32)
Features (Appendix A)

I also want to examine the relaiotnship between Content Access, Organic Groups (chapter 5), Profile 2 (chapter 8) Workbench and having a shared database with an OpenAtrium install? - How do they work together? In what ways do they overlap? What will be best for the way CRASH Space works? It seems like going ahead and learning a bit about Panels, Organic Groups and Entity like the book does in Chapter 5 is a reasonable next step, but I want to create an additional sandbox site on which I can be even more experimental.

Part 2: Setting Up a Clean Second Sandbox

Since I am about to start installing modules willy-nilly, It will be better to do that on a fresh sandbox site that doesn't bother the GitHub repository.

I created a new repository in $HOME/Documents/GitHub/CRASHSpace/ called SandboxDrupalSite using the GitHub GUI. It gives you the option to opt-out of pushing it to GitHub, which I've done.

I then made a clean install with the following commands, It has all the modules I'm going to be using for now, I think.

#because my copy of drupal 7.9 is in the Downloads folder
cd $HOME/Downloads

#if you haven't gotten it already
#curl -O http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.9.tar.gz

#untar to the right place
tar -C $HOME/Documents/GitHub/CRASHSpace/SandboxDrupalSite/ -xjvf drupal-7.9.tar.gz

#go to that place
cd $HOME/Documents/GitHub/CRASHSpace/SandboxDrupalSite/

#change the web-home directory name
mv drupal-7.9 www

#add a resources folder
mkdir Resources

#copy the gitignore from somewhere else (most important at this point it to ignore the .DS_Store files
#or make it with vi or emacs or whatever
#a version here: https://gist.github.com/1326679 
cp $HOME/Documents/GitHub/CRASHSpace/drupal_crashspace_dev/.gitignore .gitignore

# add the files (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/572549/difference-of-git-add-a-and-git-add)
git add -A

#check work and then commit
git status
git commit -m "clean new drupal"

#get round one modules
drush dl admin
drush dl advanced_help
drush dl backup_migrate
drush dl ctools
drush dl devel
drush dl views

#track, commit
git add -A
git status
git commit -m "round one of modules"

#get round two modules
drush dl calendar
drush dl date
drush dl pathauto
drush dl token
drush dl relation
drush dl link
drush dl media
drush dl profile2
drush dl entity
drush dl panels
drush dl features
drush dl flag
drush dl rules

#track, commit
git add -A
git status
git commit -m "round two modules"


#--- create database, 
#--- run the installer
#--- load backup_migrate
#--- run a back up
#--- save it somewhere tracked
#--- commit again.

Then I set up a second database refollowing the instructions at http://drupal.org/node/66187 , except instead of making a new user I added the new database to the same user I already had.
Next I stopped the MAMP servers and changed the settings on the Apache preferences in the MAMP GUI to be the new www folder in the new repository.
Then I restarted MAMP, went to http://localhost:8888/ and set up the site.
The very next thing was to re setup the Back & Migrate module, create a destination folder that is not .gitignored and do a manual backup to it. I suppose I could just not git ignore the database backups in these sites since they don't mater, but that seems like bad set-up hygiene.
I zipped up the www folder, renamed "2011_11_09_clean_drupal_wModules" it and put a copy in the resources folder.

Part 3: The Features Module

I want to be able to move things from the Sandbox back to the test site flexibly, and I think that means learning how to use the Features Module, as this seems to be the mode of choice for making mini-models of certain types of configuration settings. The test of this is going to be moving my "Suggestions" Feature from the old site, to the new site.

Install Features on the old site by reconfiguring the MAMP to point back to the dev site
Watching these videos:
- http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast/episode43 ( 9 minutes )
- http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/managing-and-deploying-configuration-exportables-and-features-module.html ( 58 minutes, can skip to minute 11 ish, covers drush integration, it is by a Features developer, covers a lot about workflow, the demo starts at minute 48 )
  - go back and read when I'm at module development - http://civicactions.com/blog/2009/jul/24/using_chaos_tools_module_create_exportables
Read this NodeOne article on how to design your features to make them the most easily configured by others in the future
Also scanning the Features Documentation
And eyeballing the project that is the outlines for best practices for creating good Features

The result of all this is I saw the feature looking good in the old site...

But in the new site, Doh! No Taxonomy Terms! Apparently those are considered "content" and features are meant to share "configurations"...Hmmm. (More on creating Taxonomy integration with Features )

Also, the Content Type, Content Suggestion also didn't seem to take and I'm not sure why. The weird thing was, though, when i went to make again frm scratch, it seemed to already to exist somewhere in the ether because the two taxonomy fields were already associated with it. I also seemed to start having a database field caching problem as I passed the feature back and forth, so I made a new Feature, and that works just fine. If I start having the same trouble with that one, I'll look into it more.

Now I feel like I can develop in one crazy wacky install that I can wipe out without much of a care, while still being able to preserve nifty "Features" as mini modules to the degree that other modules play well with it.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Drupal - Day 6, Part 1: Big List of Modules

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:00:00 -0800

Chapter 4 in dgd7 is all about modules.

The chapter authors start with some general notes about modules

people are making "top N drupal modules" list all the time (first one is their example, 2 & 3 are mine)
modules slow the site down so be sparing
Modules have a shortname or machine name that you can use to locate them on the website or to execute a download with drush
- drupal.org / project / project_shortname
- drush dl project_shortname
put them in /sites/all/modules
- use a contrib folder for contributed modules (I'm ignoring this b/c it isn't where the installers put them)
- use a custom folder for modules you make (I will do this)
when deciding on a module pick one that is a full project, active and common for your version of Drupal
search on the internet, not just drupal.org
ask for help, i.e. http://groups.drupal.org/contributed-module-ideas
or help patch: http://drupal.org/patch

They then follow it with a mega list of modules which is why I am publishing this day in two parts. This post is just the list. I'm going to use this page of links to go exploring.

I've created a gist that has a number of the modules I'm interested in listed, ready to drush. Perhaps not the best place in the long run to keep that, but it will do for now

---- Before Chapter 4 

drush dl admin_menu
drush dl advanced_help
drush dl backup_migrate
drush dl calendar
drush dl captcha
drush dl ctools
drush dl date
drush dl devel
drush dl views

---- Chapter 4 Adds So Far
drush dl pathauto
drush dl token
drush dl relation
drush dl link
drush dl media
drush dl webform

---- To Examine Later
#decide about wysiwig
#decide about spam control
drush dl admin
drush dl content_type_overview
drush dl workbench
drush dl masquerade 
drush dl panels
drush dl codefilter 
drush dl colorbox
drush dl comment_notify
drush dl menu_block
drush dl menu_position
#decide about voting and rating
drush dl userpoints
drush dl profile2
drush dl apachesolr
drush dl search404
#decide about ubercart vs commerce
drush dl flag 
drush dl rules
drush dl scheduler
drush dl features
drush dl admin
#more and others
drush dl strongarm
#integration with openatrium?

The Whole List.

Primal

Additional Field Types

WYSIWYG

Webform Creation

http://drupal.org/project/webform

Spam

Admin Interface

http://drupal.org/project/workbench (makes content control/submission better) (content_access?)
http://drupal.org/project/environment_indicator (are you in live or dev site?)
http://drupal.org/project/smartcrop (picture editing)
http://drupal.org/project/content_type_overview (edit many content types at once)
http://drupal.org/project/masquerade (fast user switching for dev tests)

Content Display

http://drupal.org/project/panels (page layout)
http://drupal.org/project/codefilter (allows code snippits)
http://drupal.org/project/colorbox

Menus and Navigation

Community Building and Social Networking

http://drupal.org/project/comment_notify
http://drupal.org/project/og (organic groups)
http://drupal.org/project/userpoints (crash game?)
http://drupal.org/project/profile2 (advanced user profiles)
http://drupal.org/project/role_limits

Voting and Rating

Paths, Search and 404 Errors

http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr (more in chapter 31)
http://drupal.org/project/search404 (turns 404 into a search page)
http://drupal.org/project/navigation404 (if don't set a 404 page, this makes sure menus don't disappear)
http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect

Misc

http://drupal.org/project/bot (IRC bot, chapter 9)
http://drupal.org/project/openlayers (maps, see previous post for others)

NodeOne article (Not already listed above & interesting to me)

http://drupal.org/project/flag
http://drupal.org/project/rules
http://drupal.org/project/scheduler
http://drupal.org/project/auto_nodetitle (don't really understand this one yet)
http://drupal.org/project/nodequeue (this one either)
http://drupal.org/project/content_access
http://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow
http://drupal.org/project/features
http://drupal.org/project/admin

3 styles article (Not already listed above & interesting to me)

http://drupal.org/project/ubercart
http://drupal.org/project/signup (not ready for 7)
http://drupal.org/project/location (almost ready for 7)
http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides (rewrites strings - universal find and replace?)
http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics
http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap (still in beta for 7)
http://drupal.org/project/metatag (was nodewords)
http://drupal.org/project/nice_menus

6 revisions article (Not already listed above & interesting to me)

More as they Arrive

http://drupal.org/project/purl
http://drupal.org/project/context
http://drupal.org/project/strongarm
http://drupal.org/project/jqueryui
http://drupal.org/project/spaces
http://drupal.org/project/uuid (universallly unique ID for all objects)
http://drupal.org/project/uuid_features
http://drupal.org/project/diff

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Drupal - Day 5: Wrapping Up Views For Now

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:23:00 -0800

So In the end I followed along with all 23 videos from the NodeOne Series on Views. The tl:dr version of what I learned -

What is available to you in any given menu in the admin section of Drupal changes pretty dramatically depending on what other options you have already selected.
All the Drupal 7 oriented documentation is going to be a little bit behind where things really are now because it is still under such active development. If you aren't comfortable with that, wait another year.
On Video 18 at time 4:48 Johann Falk actually pronounces the fake-user's name and it sounds credible. Go Scandanavians.
Oh, and he really likes tea.

The nice thing about working with views is now I can actually share some vaguely useful files because views are exportable to code instead of just being stuck in the database like everything else.

I put rough sample views in the resources folder of the github project. I also put up the same code for turning them into a module that was at the end of chapter 3. It is untested because they were a little vague on how to use it since making modules is chapter 22. I have just been copying and pasting into the window that comes up when you select the "Import" local task on the Views main page. Works pretty well.

These are the file names for the views in Day 4 are

memberList
SuggestionsContentTypeViews
listByAuthor
articlesList

The new ones are

nodeOne_upTo17_articlesList2
nodeOne_part13_TopLevelTags
nodeOne_part18_userJumpMenu
nodeOne_part20_contextualFilters_moreArticlesStuff
nodeOne_part21_contextualFilters_createLocalTab
nodeOne_part22_contextualFilters_createLocalTabWithSubItems
nodeOne_part23_related_myVersion

They refer to the NodeOne screen cast series on Views

nodeOne_upTo17_articlesList2

This file has the following displays

In Image 1

- Page: Main Listing (Articles List Tab)
- Block: 5 at a time, paged (As seen in Sidebar 2)
- Feed: Default RSS (the rss feed attached to the Block and main listing)
- Attachment (the highlighted article at the top of the the block)

Image 2

- Page: User Sortable Main Listing
- Page: Exposed As Block

Image 3

- Page: Grouped By Author

Image 4

- Page: Grouped By Title First Letter

nodeOne_part13_TopLevelTags

makes a list of tags that have no parent.

nodeOne_part18_userJumpMenu

Make a menu that will jump to the page of the user selected from a drop down

nodeOne_part20_contextualFilters_moreArticlesStuff

Adds a contextual filter such that /articles-list-summary/username shows the articles written by that username.

/articles-list-summary returns a list of users with the numbers of articles they have written as the sort.

nodeOne_part21_contextualFilters_createLocalTab

Changes the url pattern so that /user/%/articles gives the context, based on UID rather than name.

Creates a tab on that page, since that page already exists for other purposes

nodeOne_part22_contextualFilters_createLocalTabWithSubItems

Takes it one step further and has all content types, sorted. The breadcrumb is a little wacky, though, since articles is the default page of the "content tab" you don't see it as a subitem of content. I'll have to learn a little more breadcrumb fu to make it work.

nodeOne_part23_related_myVersion

This one is quite a bit different than the one in the video. The video uses an extra module to relate nodes explicitly, but I instead went with a taxonomy based version by building on what he had covered in part 13 and the content type I created following the dgd7 example I created a tab on suggestion pages that showed other pages that also had the same Suggestion Type associated with it.

Additional Modules Recommended

So on top of Devel for making fake content and Admin Menus for delving down with ease, whihc we suggested by NodeOne, the book goes on to suggest looking at the below projects. I only got Views Bulk Operations (already have Calendar)

Admin:
- Views Bulk Operations "This module augments Views by allowing bulk operations to be executed on the displayed rows. It does so by showing a checkbox in front of each node, and adding a select box containing operations that can be applied. Drupal Core or Rules actions can be used." i.e. "Delete All"
Maps:
- Open Layers "The OpenLayers Module and its submodules bring theOpenLayers JS library into Drupal. They enable users to combine maps from different map providers with data from Views and CCK input. The OpenLayers JavaScript library is open source, making it flexible and capable across standards as well as proprietary APIs."
- Gmap "The GMap module provides an interface to the Google Maps API within Drupal. It integrates with the Location module to provide users a clickable map for entering latitude and longitude, as well as to display maps of Drupal nodes and users. GMap can be used to create interactive maps with various map markers and content in map bubbles, taking advantage of Drupal's other content management features. The module also provides a Views display plugin which allows users to display the results of a view on a Google map."
Calendars
- Calendar "This module will display any Views date field in calendar formats, including CCK date fields, node created or updated dates, etc. Switch between year, month, and day views. Back and next navigation is provided for all views."
Styles and Displays
- jCarousel "This module allows developers and themers to make use of the jCarousel jQuery plugin. It includes a developer API that other modules can use, as well as Views integration in the 2.0 version so that you can turn any list of content or images into a carousel."
- Views Accordion "Views Accordion provides a display style plugin for the Views module. It will take the results and display them as a JQuery accordion, using the first field as the header for the accordion rows."
- Views Infinite Scroll "Views Infinite Scroll provides a ? that enables views infinite scrolling ( autopaging, depaging, endless pages ...you name it) by using jquery.autopager plugin. using this module with views page display will load another page whenever the user reaches bottom of the page."

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Drupal - Day 4: Chapter 3 Error message sorted, And NodeOne screen casts

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:34:00 -0700

Part 1: Page for a given user based on form field

Perhaps it is the left over halloween candy sugar high, but I was having trouble going back and doing the first example or even really focusing on how DGD7 is explaining contexts and relationships in this chapter.

It seems like Drupal 7 changed and continues to change, but I can handle it - especially with the number of screen casts out there.

The one that started me down the most useful path was is More Relation and Views found from the homepage of the Relation project which seems to be the hot new thing that my potentially usurp the References project. But it didn't make any sense that in order to relate anything to users I'd have to install a whole module.

That screen cast led me to Taming The Beast: Learn Views with NodeOne, I skipped the 5th one, Part 5: Fliters and in the comments, finally the wording of comment made things become clear...

Adding a relationship to see user filters + more

GÄST SÖN, 2011-08-28 00:08

I had this problem to, Ive managed to find what seems to be a solution. If you add a relationship of “content author”, more user filters will become available.

In the Relations Panel of THAT view (not some uber-relationshippy place that Drupal has and I just didn't know about yet) if you add the relationship Content: Author

Then way more fliters about the User will show up...

And if you select one - say User:Name and configure it - on THAT dialog you make it clear that the user meant is not the person logged in but the author of the page.

So what I've learned is this: As you change your configurations you have to constantly go back and recheck menus to see if there are new options that magically appear. Gotcha.

I used the "expose this filter" option and got a page that displays all the content (of any kind) that any user (if you know their name) has submitted to the site.

Part 2: NodeOne Screen Casts

So now I'm ready to try to create some more with Views because I like control over data, and honestly, the chapter in dgd7 was not enough for me.

So what I'm doing, with some basic understanding under my belt, is going back and watching all 23 of the Node One: Learn Views with NodeOne screen casts. It is taking awhile, but it seems worth it.

Two Modules it introduces are the Devel module for generating fake content and the Administration menu module which provides dropdown menus for the admin section which speeds life up immensely.

I've followed along to the point where I have made a little recent articles block with a link to a RSS feed and a members list. Both are shown in the following picture. I got a sql error when trying to display what roles each one of them had (like keyholder, voting member, etc) But I'm ignoring that for now.

I'm still watching - only at 11, but I wanted an update for now.

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Drupal - Day 3: Intro to Views

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:46:00 -0700

Last night I finally got the physical copy of dgd7 as it self refers. (I had been working off an eBook) It is GIANT. Being on Chapter 3 feels way less impressive than it did. But that is a good sign - at the end of chapter 2 I felt like I had accomplished things and understood them in a way that wrestling with Drupal two times before hadn't made me feel. Perhaps it was easy b/c of the previous exposure, but at the end of Chapter 2 I've now:

Been reminded of needing to do a design process first (then given one)
Added a block to the front page
Made a content type (what it is structurally - blog post, page, movie review, whatever)
Made a taxonomy (category like stuff, but better) and applied it to the content type - actually 2 taxonomies and applied them the content type for different reasons.
Made users with varying abilities to acces the content type
installed and used drush to load in a new module / check for back ups
installed and used git to back up locally and to GitHub (using the GitHub GUI, I know, cheating)

That is pretty huge. But now for...

Chapter 3: Views

Views are crazy powerful. They are the visual nuggets that make up the site. I thought that was blocks the first couple of time I tried to figure out Drupal. "Block" like "Block of Code." Wrong. Blocks are merely a way to name different parts of the page. Views are where data gets sculpted into useable chunks of information. And you can control most anything it looks like, so the page is pretty opaque without guidance. It takes 4.5 pages just to explain what the different options are, much less how to use them. That takes another 2+ pages a pop. And this is what makes Drupal so so very powerful yet complete overkill for a blog. Use Posterous. ;-)

Views is also a module you have to get, actually. Go figure. Integral but not integrated - a little bit of noseyness lead me to the page on the Drupal site "Why isn't X in the core." Doh - Line one: "A common question, particularly by relative newcomers to the Drupal community, is "Why isn't feature X in core?"" Noob hat on.

Here is a video overview with more tutorials after it: http://drupalize.me/videos/overview-views

The problem I'm running into today is that the first example in the book seems to not work in the latest version of Views. Doh. The filters feature is very powerful and I can get them to work for things that aren't based on users, but user based filters throw an error:

I found a page on the Drupal site "Exception: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064" , that at around comment 8 seems to make sense. This seems to be something that has cropped up since the book was written. Which I still like, despite this snag. Here's more on what the internet says about it:

I think this is something I'm going to go back and trouble shoot later, since I think understanding the fix involves watching this 20 minute video Using Drupal's View's Relationships, maybe. It also looks like some answers are on Page 82-84

In the mean time, decided to learn more about Views using a filter that already does work, (i.e. by content type) instead and when I get to page 82 I'll watch the video.

I'm not really sure why they didn't use the content type they had us make in the first chapter, "Suggestions," but I guess it is better for the group authoring process to have independent chapters. And they couldn't really have known that author name would have gotten removed from filters? I don't understand why, yet.

So starting with the idea of working with the suggestions content type I've proceded to make:

a page view that is a sortable table,
a block view that only appears in the "Triptych" area of the home page,
another version of the table view that has a "highlighted" suggestion based on what suggestion has the most comments.
I also made the tabed views example. Only so helpful without content.
I also did an-exposed-filters view, which is incredibly ugly, but it can only be seen by adminstrators anyway.

And that all has gotten me to page 82, where I stop for now... just 4 pages from the end of the chapter, but I'm starving...

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Drupal - Day 2: Installing Drush and Git

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:21:00 -0700

So while I don't have time to do something as complete as 30 Drupal features in 30 days, I will try to at least mention my progress most day so there is a record of things I do that aren't in the book. It is good to be following along with a so far well written book. I don't have to think too hard about what to do next, most things work, and are what I want to know about next anyway.

Part of why I bought the Definitive Guide to Drupal is because right in front, right in chapter 2 it talks about Drush and Git. They are kind of low-level but priceless and most starter books push them to the back if they mention them at all.

Drush

Drush is a command line tool that makes a lot of the back end tasks of working with Drupal much much easier. There is a list of drush commands on the Drupal site so you can get a sense of what it can do.

I followed along in the book, did a little googling and did the following:

#go to the folder
cd /Applications/MAMP/bin
#get drush off on the internet (mac has curl not wget, make sure it is the latest drush)
curl -O http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drush-7.x-4.5.tar.gz
#decompress
tar -zxvf drush-7.x-4.5.tar.gz
#delete tar ball
rm drush-7.x-4.5.tar.gz
#user executable
chmod u+x drush/drush
#look at your path
echo $PATH
#confirm bash or zsh
echo $PATH
#if bash, look at what is in .bashrc (might be .profile, .bash_aliases, .bashrc (non interactive), .bash_profile)
cat ~/.profile
# open the file with nano
nano ~/.profile
#Add the following line to the bottom  of the file and save: (no quotes or comment hash)
#"export PATH=${PATH}:/Applications/MAMP/bin/drush"
#reload the saved file
source ~/.profile
#look at the path
echo $PATH
#check to see if it really works
which drush
#hard won knowledge below - only use if your drush install doesn't connect to the database:
#i.e. you get the error -
#Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2) [0.11 sec, 4.3 MB]
#this is a problem that happens when the mysql server and php are both on localhost
sudo mkdir /var/mysql
sudo ln -s /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Those last lines, those last lines cost me a world of pain to discover. Like finally figured out the right search terms at 3 am world of pain and then I felt like a moron.

I have already installed Drush on the crash space Dreamhost based dev server, done a couple of things with it, no problems. With my local install, if I tried to do anything that talked to the database (read: anything useful) I kept getting errors about not being able to connect to the database and I couldn't figure out how to work around it. I tried a lot of things and now my set up is totally different. I'll cover that on the git section because really those changes had no impact on this particular problem.

The deal is, when the mysql server and php are on the same machine they handle talking to each other a little differently than when there is another box that php has to connect to to make a connection. Php (and Drush is just a wrapper around php, now I know) looks where it thinks mysql is gonna put the socket and if it isn't where it is looking - you get the "Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock'" message.

Your choices are

Change where mysql puts the socket (seems dangerous)
Change where php looks for the default sock in php.ini (didn't work for me, was too tired to really explore why)
Create a sym link between where mysql want to put it and where php is gonna look. (Done!)

The negative consequence of this is now if there is more than version of mysql running they may get entangle, but I have pumpkins to carve and candy to eat today working is a good place to stop.

Git

Git is also pretty new to me, and I'm using both the command line package and the GitHub Mac OS X GUI. Yup, I said it. THe GUI. downloading and installing them both is pretty easy, lots of instructions for that on the internet.

I'm using the command line to commit changes as I go, the GitHub gui to interface with GitHub. It is still a little buggy sometimes when doing a big commit, but I'll live.

What I've done is this -

Made repository for a dev version of the CRASH Space site on GitHub
Opened GitHub GUI on my computer
Cloned it to the Mac, put it in my GitHub folder, because that is what I do
Moved all the web files into it
Uploaded them to GitHub
Totally destroyed my work space, including the sym link to MAMP/htdocs trying to fix the sql socket stuff
Deleted everything (carefully saving a copy of the settings.php)
Recloned the GitHub copy to my machine,
renamed the web files folder www & put my settings.php file back into sites/default
Changed the preferences in MAMP to look at the now-labeled www folder inside the repo as the Apache root
Started the MAMP servers
Went to http://localhost:8888/ in my browser
Done.

What this means is I did set the global git identity variables as mentioned in the book, but I didn't need to manually initialize the drupal_crashspace_dev repository because I let the GUI handle that already.

cd ~/Documents/GitHub/CRASHSpace/drupal_crashspace_dev/

git add .

git status

git commit -m "what just changed"

The above sequence can still be used by me in the terminal to commit changes from the command line. [UPDATE 11-2 ] In fact, always use those commands all the way down to the commit. If you leave it hanging out after add it seems to do weird things to the GitHub GUI. Others might be more robust, the GitHub GUI might be more robust when not making grand sweeping changes like large directory renames, too. (thanks Matt!)

In addition the the Git Book and what is in the DGtD book, I really liked

They are both mentioned from the Git Book site and they are worth a look. Steele's is more advanced - he is an experienced svn user - but it has some great graphics that helped me form a picture in my own brain as to how I might eventually use Git.

Database Back Up

Database back up is why we have Git and Drush at all. The site pretty much is the database and the database is the site. The Drupal php files are the bones, the meat and the personality all are in the database.

Apparently a lot of that is in Chapter 12, and there is a simple drush dump command you can do now, but I've opted to use for now the Backup and Migrate module.

In addition to reading that module's documentation, the page on files and media storage was useful, too. The file location I picked is already ignored by .gitignore (sites/default/files/private) and my site isn't online anywhere anyway so I'm I'm not going to sweat being too tricky about where the back up files go right now.

The thing that I really want to be able to do apparently comes in chapter 26. We will eventually need to tease the content from the structure in the database so we can have a dev version and a live version of the site that don't share content/user profiles. But it is set up, and even already has cron job integration!

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30 Days of Drupal? My local Mac OS X Drupal & Git set up for testing

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:50:00 -0700

So, I'm moving crashspace.org to Drupal. That was going to be a first quarter 2012 project, but it has been moved up a bit so we can disentangle from PayPal a bit more smoothly.

The short version for my non technical friends who are wondering what I'm talking about (Hi Mom!) : Drupal is something you can use to create a robust website. It is overkill for many things, but not for us. Using it is a bit like walking into a mechanics garage, knowing all the tools and parts are already there to build one of about 1000 different awesome cars, but with no big arrow that says "Start Here." This is why I got the book. This is why it is going to take me 30 days to get this right, at least. Git is a software that lets lots of people work on creating the same program and also saves versions as you go along in case mistakes are made.

For those of you who would like to play along I'm starting from scratch using The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 as a starting point. It looked like the book best suited to what I was trying to accomplish.

The first thing I'm having to do is rearrange my work processes & technical set up to align with a GitHub oriented work flow. CRASH Space is a group thing and when I'm ready to pass this off I want it to be in good shape to do so with out any extra work that I'll can stall on.

This isn't a tutorial for folks with no web development background - but I'll go over my steps

Step 1: My set up of Drupal on a MAMP Install - sym link required

Very helpful for getting a local production environment up on a Mac: http://drupal.org/node/66187

I have my Apache server running with php enabled, but everyone says that Drupal and the default OSX install of the technologies Drupal uses don't really play well with each other. So I followed the instructions on the Drupal site for using MAMP. Btw - read all the comments on that post.

MAMP creates a sandbox on your Mac of Apache, MySQL and php. But it does so in the Applications folder. Yuck. I'll never remember back my work up in there! So I actually put all the files for my Drupal install inside my GitHub folder that I keep in Documents.

That requires one bit of of trickery to make the files run inside the MAMP environment - creating a sym link to the files in my Documents/GitHub folder inside the htdocs (web enabled) folder in the MAMP install way over in the Applications folder.

# go to the folder where the link should be from
cd /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/
# make the link, -s means symbolic
# format is ln -s [source] [target]
# using the period mean "use the same name"
ln -s /Users/[USERNAME]/Documents/GitHub/CRASHSpace/drupal_crashspace_dev/drupal_crashspace_dev .
# then see it listed a reference
ls -l

It would have been fine to do this the other way around - let the files live in htdocs and make a sym link from my GitHub folder. What will not work is to just use the finder's Make Alias command. It isn't the same thing. It creates a special kind of file - one that is kind of neat to open in a text editor. Another thing to remember is that an alias file and what it refers to can be moved around and still work. Sym links just break.

Step 2: Update .gitignore

.gitignore is the file Git uses to keep certain files from being tracked even though they live inside the folders you have labeled as containing the repository.

My git repository directory structure looks like this

drupal_crashspace_dev/ (repository name, main folder)

- drupal_crashspace_dev/ (webfiles)

- Resources/ (folder where I'm going to put files I use in the development process)

Drupal, when you download and unpack it, has a nice .gitignore file already in there to keep you from uploading the login to the mysql server by mistake. Yay.

I added the references in that file - expanding the path - to my repository's main .gitignore as well so it looks like this:

#for crashspace drupal project. 
#drupal_crashspace_dev is the name of the directory where the web files are.

# Ignore MacOS Folder Attributes files
.DS_Store

# Ignore configuration files that may contain sensitive information.
#drupal_crashspace_dev/sites/*/settings*.php

# Ignore paths that contain user-generated content.
drupal_crashspace_dev/sites/*/files
drupal_crashspace_dev/sites/*/private

Step 3: Follow along in the book until...

So far I haven't departed much from doing pretty much exactly what he suggests we do, and I'm just about to start Users and Roles. In fact if you follow along on the free kindle chapter, you'll be pretty close to where I've gotten.

Step 4: Upload to GitHub

https://github.com/CRASHSpace/drupal_crashspace_dev

It's alive. Well it's a twinkle in my server's eye, anyway.

More soon.

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Waterfall "Printers"

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:46:06 -0700

As seen in Osaka

And a little more info from a CRASH Space member Steve Goldstein:

Stephen Pevnick is the inventor of the original water-writer system

v=Z2LUz2WVcek

It appears to be what Julius Popp used to create Bit.Fall

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From Dollar Store Crafts: Make an Alien Abduction Lamp

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:46:00 -0700

from Dollar Store Crafts

Dollar Store based Object Appropriation, Cute Aliens, Cows, Electricity all as a full tutorial. What is not to LOVE.

Oh, and also just today from my new favorite blog:

Make a LED blob with the LED tea lights and ballons. I kid you not. Beautiful.

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Finally, I'm on github (thanks new GUI! )

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:29:00 -0700

So in case you didn't notice, I've been kickin' it old school style (go, white girl) by posting shared files in a SharedFiles folder on an old domain of mine.

No more.

Introducing: https://github.com/carlynorama

It isn't all there yet, and I'l be posting more of the Eagle files, but for starters:

I can use command line. I do use command line. Occasionally command line is faster and easier and more powerful. But I'm a visual person and I like a nice GUI with drag and drop file adding. The GitHub GUI client finally sold me on moving my stuff. It is just as easy as SFTP with Fetch. Better, actually.

It also makes using a git based version control system something I don't have to research, it is something I can just start doing. I'm sure I'll learn lots of tips and tricks, in fact I've already used the command line tools (google: "ignore .ds_store git" - do this before all else, just remember where there is the word "git" in a command try "github")

I think that is part of why I use Posterous, come to think of it. I know php, perl, mysql, a smidge of python now, but why hassle when I just want information up now?

More info:

Announcement:

https://github.com/blog/878-announcing-github-for-mac

http://www.igeek.co.za/2011/06/23/github-mac-released/

http://nicholaskreidberg.com/2011/github-for-mac/

Other git GUI's:

http://shiningthrough.co.uk/Mac-OS-X-Git-Clients-Roundup

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Eagle 30/30 No. 30, Semi-Polished. - Stepper Motor Board on a Psuedo Breadboard Layout

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:49:00 -0700

See the full gallery on Posterous

I must be addicted. I just couldn't leave the last one of the 30 days so so so pathetically crappy. More summary / follow up to come... just not tonight!

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Eagle 30/30 No. 30 - Stepper Motor Driver Based on Psuedo-Breadboard

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:59:00 -0700

Made it!

So it has been a busy couple of days but I squeaked the last two in. Both with an auto-route sadly. This one if with a fake breadboard layout that I need to clean up. THe idea is to print it on a board that looks like a breadboard to it could be copied.

One day I'll find a board house that prints multiple colors...

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Eagle 30/30 No. 29 - Stepper Motor Driver Based on Breadboard Instructable

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:05:00 -0700

See the full gallery on Posterous

Doh... so close and yet so far, it just turned midnight...

Based on a very old rough draft for an instructable that got published itself when I combined two accounts:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Stepper-Motor-Module/

It needs a serious edit, I hadn't even realized it was live, I don't think.

This post will definitely need an update, too!

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Eagle 30/30 No. 28 - MOSFET control of solenoid, replacement of TIP120

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:00:00 -0700

See the full gallery on Posterous

The TIP120 got very hot and we were driving it at its comfort limit. This circuit uses a MOSFET instead. The resistor is no longer needed as a current limiter as MOSFETs are voltage sensitive and draw very little current. Instead R1 gets an ohm increase to 10K and is shifted around to be a pull down resistor to prevent the gate pin from floating. D1 I left the same, but it could be upgraded to a UF4007 or a comprable Schottkey (if you have it) since the faster reaction time is considered safer.

Heads up, MOSFETs are much much much more sensitive to static discharge than the darlington-style transistor that the TIP120 is. Do not go walking on wooly carpets before handling.

MOSFET stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor. They work by allowing more current to flow in the controlled circut the more voltage applied to the gate (gate = base in non-FET transistor types).

The part number listed for Q1 is a RFP12N10L which can pass up to 12A when the gate is a 5V. It is designed to be a "Logic Level" MOSFET, i.e. one that lets full power pass at TTL logic levels (5V). Check out figure 4 on the RFP12N10L Fairchild Semi datasheet.

In most other types of MOSFETs the amperage rating is given for when the gate lead is at 10V, this is true of the IRF640 shown in the example on arduino control of a solenoid. It's rating is 18A at 10V and 25° C. But and Arduino doesn't supply 10V on a pin, it supplies 5V. Looking at International Rectifiers datasheet for this part, Figure 3 shows that at 5 V the drain current is between 1.5A an 4A, depending on temperature. (Figure 7 in the Fairchild Semi-Conductors datasheet). This is more than enough for most applications. Another transistor or opto-isolater can be put in place to step up the voltage controlling the MOSFET to "saturation levels," but that seems like a huge hassle to me for only so much improvement in this scenario.

This was best conversation I found about the differences between logic level and regular MOSFETs. I'll update if I find a better one.

As far as Eagle goes, this was pretty much the usual. I'm happy to be able to say now. Added a ground plane since the resistor becoming a pulldown sort of got int the way. Used the parts script again since it is so much like yesterday's / day 1's board. Had to rename X1, L1 and BT1 to Arduino, Solenoid, Battery and place the stand-off holes before it worked perfectly, though. I'm also realizing the degree to which lables UNDER parts are not so helpful once the board is populated. I added a +, - and I (input) over the terminals in this one. The solenoid is upside down in the schematic because pin swaping doesn't work quite the way I think it does. I'll fix that later today. Either my thoughts or the part...

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Eagle 30/30 No. 27 - Prettier schematic for the Solenoid/TIP120 Board

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:20:00 -0700

Remember the first board, the transistor board that is already available as a PCB on batchPCB?

Well this is still that board, but I've revisited the schematic by making 3 new devices. Each one has a more electrically pertinent symbol on the schematic side, but is still attached to the WAGO 508 terminal block package as the footprint.

The solenoid has an inductor coil and a little picture of a solenoid. The arrow's direction indicates that it is a pull type and the dotted line of the arrow that it is intermittent (in our case it was a 10% duty cycle). These are personal touches. I have no idea of the official way to indicate those characteristics in a schematic. (and I did look!)
The second was to make "more on another page" flags for the I/O pin to the Arduino and it's ground. A bit of a hack to a shape that has a real purpose, but I COULD do another sheet in the schematic.
The third part is just a big battery to represent the mungo (lawnmower) battery we used.

A note on searching for parts: putting wildcards before and after the search term does wonders. So search for *cap* not just capacitor

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Eagle 30/30 No. 26 - Protected Power-only from USB

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 12:40:00 -0700

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This circuit features a part I only learned about recently: a PTC resettable fuse. The PTC standes for Positive Temperature Coefficient. In brief these parts are designed to melt and break the connection like any fuse if they are getting too much current. Once the current goes away, however, after some time they'll go back to normal. Nifty.

USB ports don't like it when asked to source more than 100 mA. The higher power ports will acquiesce up to 500 mA, though. This circuit has a 250 mA breaker on one line and then another in parallel that can be put into play via the BOOST jumper. That is, boosted the circuit will pass 500 mA. LEDs are current sucks if you are pushing the limit, so those are optional via the LEDS jumper. Adding LEDS more than doubled the part count, but they are useful for trouble shooting.

For more info:

Selecting a PTC Resettable Fuse and TVS Zener Diode: http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?p=84708

Resettable Fuse PTC: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8357

USB 3.0 Spec: http://www.eetimes.com/design/medical-design/4211533/Reliable-circuit-protection-for-USB-3-0-interfaces/

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Eagle 30/30 No. 25 - Surface mount (mostly) LED AA Battery Lighhouse

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 11:02:00 -0700

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So the majority of this circuit I copied from SparkFun's NCP1400 based DC to DC step-up breakout boards for 3.3V and 5V. I would normally have put the switch before the IC but I wanted this version to keep it clear where my parts were and their parts were.

They awesomely had their Eagle file posted on the product page for the 5V version. If the 3.3V version of the chip is used then there is no need for the resistor, maybe, depending on the LED. (R2 in this circuit)

Surface mount parts are tricky to layout because skipping over to the other side of the board requires two vias (to go and come back) and many board houses charge extra for vias. I messed around for a bit and then used my ULP from day 13 to copy the SparkFun layout. Because I'm not going straight to a jumpers but instead am squishing onto the back of a battery, I couldn't quite use their layout as-is. I did pick up some good hints, though. I also wanted a little more room around my parts than they had because I'm still not super confident with surface mounting.

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Eagle 30/30 No. 24 - Bistable Multivibrator, 0.0.1 (the beginning of memory)

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:00:00 -0700

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This board is a bistable multivibrator with two trigger pins and two output pins. It is the original flip-flop circuit. And flip-flop circuits are the basis of computer memory (PDF link).

Let me tell you, this was annoying. I had to lay down routes, rip them up, move parts, reroute, rip up one or two again to try them out on the other copper layer... move all the parts again... what made this circuit a challenge is the way all the parts are enmeshed with each other. That and I forgot to take out the capacitors at first. I now have an even better appreciation of why people just opt for an IC: 555, 74121/74123 and now 4043 or 74LS279A.

Once again, useful links:

http://www.play-hookey.com/digital/experiments/rtl_bistable.html

http://www.play-hookey.com/digital/experiments/rtl_bistable_nor.html

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-multivib-bi.html

http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/waveforms/bistable.html

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Eagle 30/30 No. 23 - Monostable Multivibrator, 0.0.1

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:10:00 -0700

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This is a monostable multivibrator circuit, or "one shot". The diference between a monostable and astable multivibrator is that the monostable vibrator has a default or preferred state from which it can be jostled for a only a set period of time. That time frame is determined by C1 & R2, see information about the RC time constant. In this circuit applying voltage to the trigger T will ground one of the leads of C1, causing it to behave like a short until it can charge again via R2. Q will read as voltage high during that period. It is normally off.

Again one of the sites from yesterday has a good write up:

http://www.play-hookey.com/digital/experiments/rtl_monostable.html

but compare it to the circuits on these two pages:

http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/waveforms/monostable.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivibrator

Niether use the extra transistor, but instead apply a switch straight to the base of Q1. The capacitor on the first links page makes it nonretriggerable, I think.

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