Drupalcamp Atlanta 2009

September 20, 2009

Sitting at O'Hare on the way home from the inaugural Drupal Camp Atlanta. It was a great camp on the whole. The waining days of summer brought plenty of rain to Atlanta. Rain in Atlanta is a rather different experience for a life-long westerner. I hold fast to an instinctive reaction to seeing rain outside. When exiting the building the rain means it will be somewhere between chili and downright cold outside. It doesn't rain that way in Atlanta. Rather the opposite every building we exited the outdoors, rain included, was warmer. Never before have I had my glasses fog up so much in September.

While at the camp I did a presentation showing many of the new things in Drupal 7 and demonstrating the Drupal Gardens themebuilder. The presentation is attached below. There are other presentations that are more complete as well as lists of changes on drupal.org.

How many cliches can you fit in 140 characters?

September 16, 2009

National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation revisited civil discourse today. Of course front and center in that discussion is Representative Joe Wilson. This isn't about him, however.

A caller spoke for what seemed an eternity and managed to string together an impressive collection of cliches. So loosely connected were the ideas that it seemed (and maybe it was) an advertisement for Bing. Thoughts mingled as they do and I came to ponder two things. One is the challenge of how many cliches can one fit into 140 characters?

Incorrect time on iPhone

August 10, 2009

There's an epidemic of incorrect time on the iPhone. Well maybe not quite epidemic but it seems I'm not the only one who has seen it. What is particularly odd is that the time, when incorrect is off by two hours. The report on the other site was around Mammoth Lakes on US 395.

On this trip I've noticed it in a couple of spots. First off in the border regions of Nevada and Oregon while southbound on US 95. In this region there is a time difference between the Mountain and Pacific time zones. The same, however, cannot be said for Mammoth Lakes.

Then it happened in Wells, Nevada. The signal here, too, is flighty. A certain testament to regions of the country where iPhone sales will skyrocket when Verizon gets their hands on it. While it was happening today I found that if I turned on Data Roaming the time would be correct. Turn it off and it was back to being the current time plus 2 hours. Even with data roaming enabled when we walked across the street for dinner we were once again two hours in the future.

Follow the money

August 5, 2009

AT&T LogoThe FCC's call for information on why the Google Voice iPhone app was withdrawn is going to uncover some interesting details. First up AT&T responded with a carefully crafted statement that amounts to "we don't do that". What wasn't said, however, is what control AT&T contractually holds over Apple's process.

Let's back up a minute and look at who stands to gain from this. If the iPhone supports a VoIP application who stands to lose? AT&T. Apple will still sell iPhones and iPods to these customers with their VoIP apps. In fact in many cases Apple may well sell Apps to them as well. Even if the particular app is free trends show iPhone users will buy plenty of other applications to make up for it. So Apple gains nothing and in fact loses quite a bit by having these apps rejected. AT&T on the other hand doesn't get the same black-eye and gets to think it's protecting it's dwindling cellular voice market.

Popups API for Gigya Socialize module

August 2, 2009

Generally I'm not a fan of putting out distributions of modules outside of the regular release system at Drupal. In this case, however, the Gigya Socialize module depends on several small patches to the Popups API. All of the issues are in the queue and hopefully with some review will be worked on and ultimately accepted. However to stem the tide of email requests on how to patch a module I'm going to provide a patched version here. This uses today's Popups API 6.x-2.x branch from CVS with the four patches listed on the Gigya Socialize module page included.

Note I do not plan to update package. The package is only an interim stopgap until some action is taken on the issues in the queue.

Hello World???

July 8, 2009

Seems like I need a Hello World post... OK so it's not really a new site or blog it is, however, that I've been up to my alligators in travel and projects for the last many weeks and haven't been posting much. Finally things are returning to a more sane state and I'll get a chance to spend a little more time in these parts. First up I have a few presentations to post and then to get caught up. For a quick look at some of what June included check out this video.

Homebuyers should be wary of Energy Star claims

May 23, 2009

Anyone believing the real-estate hype these days is hearing that the market is turning around. Never mind the real indicators we'll skip that discussion for the moment.

Energy Star homes are built to have a more efficient "envelope" to help keep the house comfortable while using less energy. It is a part of the same program that rates appliances, computers etc. The process of getting a home qualified is pretty straight forward. Build to a standard, use the right materials and get the house inspected. The EPA has a nice description of the process and differences.

The problem is that just because a builder has a design that meets the specs doesn't mean it will really be very efficient. Sure if the standards are followed the envelope will be good. However, it doesn't mean the design is good. Take for example the house we're in now. To be clear it doesn't seem that this house actually was qualified with an inspection rather it's a design built to the standard.

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