Feature Tubml. Feature Fall Down.

Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:02:55 -0400

Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it

Freakin storm troopers

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:32:49 -0400

Freakin storm troopers

Custom Drupal Homepages

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:42:36 -0400

Custom Drupal Homepages: On today’s podcast, Bob answers a viewer’s question which is also one of the big mysteries to beginning Drupal-ers: “How do I create a custom homepage other than Drupal’s default ‘river of news’…

Photoshop Reflections

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:57:41 -0400

Photoshop Reflections: On this week’s episode, Bob takes a question that’s semi related to web design and gives you a quick example of how it’s done. We’re talking about creating images (or text) with reflections in…

My speciality: ”Bug” BBQ chicken. I’m such a...

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:59:08 -0400

My speciality: ”Bug” BBQ chicken. I’m such a good chef…I just need a little quality control…like someone to check the grill for dead bugs before I throw down…

Views 2 Overview

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:28:11 -0400

Views 2 Overview: On this week’s podcast, Bob gives a general ‘lay of the land’ on the Views 2 module for Drupal. Views 1 is powerful and totally awesome, but Views 2 will rock your world (after you stare at the new…

What the heck happened to Feedburner? Some stats from...

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:48:59 -0400

What the heck happened to Feedburner? Some stats from today…

"While these are good ideas, I heartily believe they truly degrade my Drupal experience. To be a real..."

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:45:25 -0400

“While these are good ideas, I heartily believe they truly degrade my Drupal experience. To be a real day of working on Drupal, you need to encounter problems which make you punch yourself in the face over and over again while trying to figure out why this stupid (and awesome) system is not working how you expect. Maybe someday, I’ll put these into practice if I want to make Drupal “easy to use”. But until then, I’ll just keep punching myself in the face and going to the performance page to find the ‘clear cache’ button (when I remember it’s there).”

- Drupal 6 Development Can Be A Caching Pain | Innovating Tomorrow

"Instead of using drupal_get_path_alias() to get the alias of the current page, you can use..."

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:31:59 -0400

“Instead of using drupal_get_path_alias() to get the alias of the current page, you can use $_REQUEST[‘q’] If you want the real path of the current page then you can use $_GET[‘q’].”

- Drupal Podcast No. 50: 50 Drupal Tips and Tricks | Lullabot - Comments

Drupal and Usability

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:12:59 -0400

I’m starting to think that the developers who determine the direction of the Drupal CMS don’t WANT it to be user friendly. I’ve always been convinced that it’s just because they don’t know any better (ie. they’re in their ‘developer’ mindset and forget that real users are using the software).

Recently, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. I’m wondering if maybe they see it as a developer tool that shouldn’t be improved so that more people can use it easier. Just because it’s a web development tool doesn’t mean it should only be accessable to hard core developers. Hmm…something to chew on.

Geeks and God Conference

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:16:52 -0400

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqR1qcU_3Y

where the wild things are

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:55:57 -0400

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWIdkYk9fQM

Why?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:20:00 -0400

Why would I buy a low rez digital copy here when I can buy the DVD set in high rez here for less money???

Hierarchy of Consistent Leadership

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:18:03 -0400

My wife just said something really wise (she does that once in a while). She just made a statement regarding the impact that people above us in the spiritual hierarchy have on our faith lives.

There is a clear hierarchy of spiritual leadership in the bible. It goes something like this: The Father->Jesus->Church Leadership->Men (as head of household)->Wives->Children.

So, what does it say if those above us in this hierarchy appear unstable in their spiritual direction? It wreaks serious concequences on our faith and those below us in this hierarchy. Of course, God’s role is never unstable…but as a man, I sometimes find the church leaders above me unstable, which in turn makes me unstable, which in turn makes my wife and child unstable. I’m not blaming this on my church leaders, I’m blaming this on myself. My spiritual state affects my wife and child, and I’ve never really considered that.

Who’s above and below you in this hierarchy? Are you being responsible to those below you? I’m not..and I need to start.

Or you could just buy a Mac.

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:58:56 -0400

Or you could just buy a Mac.

Twitter = Transient

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:52:35 -0400

This post from Micah really solidified it in my mind. Twitter is a transient medium, and actually that’s what makes it so great. It means tweets don’t have to be well thought out or even half baked…they can be spur of the moment and stream of consciousness.

So, why archive them in any way? He points out that Friendfeed is treating these as something other than transient and I was doing that on bobchristenson.com as well. I agreed with him so throughly that I’ve removed my tweets from both of these locations. Thanks for the good kick in the pants, @tgbdad (i mean Micah) :)

A nice little mistake A double exposure here from the Holga...

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:46:39 -0400

A nice little mistake

A double exposure here from the Holga taken in Northville. Notice the numbers on the bottom? Product of the only way to get a decent size image from Shutterfly…slideshow it full screen then take a screencap. Hello Walmart for all my future developing!

Mobile Me Free 30 Day Extention

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:09:14 -0400

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped. Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.

Grrrrr…..

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:17:36 -0400

Grrrrr…..

Absolutely Astounding

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:15:17 -0400

I just watched the first episode of The Lone Gunman TV series on DVD. This pilot episode aired in the spring of 2001. What’ so astounding? The plot of the episode mirrored the details of the September 11 attacks so perfectly, I thought it must have been done after 9/11. He’s some plot devices for this show shot 9 months before the 9/11 attacks:

A government conspiracy exists to hijack a civilian airliner to start a new war, because the cold war was over. The government needed a new war to fight which would “spawn dozens of targets for our military actions”.
The characters find out about it and board the plane to be hijacked looking for a bomb…they are suprised to find out that there is no bomb, instead the plane will simply be crashed into an urban area.
The flight was an airliner heading out of boston…the target for the terrorist hijack/crash plan? New York city.
Oh, and did I mention not just New York City…the plan was to crash the airliner into the world trade center.

I can’t believe this amazingly accurate plot line was never mentioned in the media following the attacks. Watch this episode and get freaked out at how chilling it predicts exactly what would happen later that fall.