Drupal 5 released

January 15, 2007

[DRUPAL]In the wee hours, after I packed it in last night, the final Drupal 5 release was unveiled. Congratulations on a great release. Now it is time for the themers to go to work and come up with some additional themes. It is more daunting this time because of the absolutely beautiful theme Garland, which ships with Drupal and is customizable to an extent never before possible with a default Drupal install.

Drupal Scheduler Module

January 15, 2007

Blogs that are consistently updated get more readers than those that go in the fits and starts that so many do. Recently a couple of suggestions have been posted around to do two things. One suggestion, the good one, is to use a feature of your blogging software to schedule posts in advance. This is just the purpose of the Drupal Scheduler module. By enabling the module and then going to Administer >> Content Types you can choose which types of content can be scheduled.

When I was installing it did not go well because of an older (much older) version of the module still hanging around. Actually the module was gone but the tables were still in the database. Deleting the tables and then re-activating the module solved the problem quickly.

As for the bad idea it involved a WordPress plug in to automatically run old posts on the front of your site. There are many reasons this isn't a good idea. Having even time insensitive posts reappear on your site is worse than reruns on TV. At least the TV guide tells you they are re-runs and the TIVO knows not to bother. Running old content as new is one sure-fire way to cut down on the number of readers to any blog. 

Chancellor's resignation leaves gaps in Nevada higher education

January 14, 2007

James Rogers, Chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, resigned on Sunday. The resignation leaves the system of higher education looking for leadership at a time when leadership is critical for the system. The system's institutions and the system itself are in need of strong leadership. Rogers, never one to shy from controversy, has a reputation of saying what he believes needs to be said. The owner of several television stations was known to send firey memos to the media at the same time he sent them to the regents. One such memo recently asked why we continue to have college football at schools when nobody shows up.

Rogers memo says 'i quit'

Long story short it is a bad day for education in Nevada. Now we're left with quarreling regents and a Governor looking for water under the road.

Upgrade to Drupal 5.0

January 14, 2007

This afternoon brought with it the opportunity to run the upgrade on this site to the latest version of Drupal. Along with the latest version comes a new theme and some new modules. For example it will take a while for me to get used to the WYSIWYG editor that I now have. Old habits die hard. Something with the upgrade caused the Color Picker in the Garland theme to refuse to work for a while. Finally I disabled all the modules and then brought them back one by one. That seems to have made things happier.

Unfortunately it is too late to stop by the bread store on the way home. I may have to settle for Frys. The problem with Frys is that I'll go and look for the sixth time for a keyboard. I won't find a good one there and will resolve to order one from Amazon, or maybe order two and test them out. Either way I'll go home later and not any happier. 

iPhone Sillyness

January 12, 2007

iPhone applications would be dangerous. At least that it the position of Apple's CEO Steve Jobs when he told Newsweek:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

This could easily have been in competition for silliest statement of the year had Jim Gibbons not already won the award.

On the other hand, maybe it is a sign that everybody should drop Cingular. Their network is already in use by Treo Smart phones, Windows Mobile phones, and PC cards plugged directly into laptops. All of these devices run applications written by third party developers not by Cingular or Apple, yet the network survives. Come on Steve end the Apple Developer Lockout.

iPhone Abstinence

January 12, 2007

Merlin Mann: "Let OS X developers at the iPhone.

I could not agree more. I'm of a mind that somebody with some time should setup iPhoneAbstinence.com or iPhoneDeveloperLockout.com and publish a list of would-be customers for Apple to see just how many of us who are excited and ready to buy an iPhone are waiting until it can do the one thing our smart phones can do that it can't - work with third party applications.

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