A couple months ago (right after I made a big move) I started hearing thing about the financial crisis and banks going under. Talking with my friend who travels a lot, I came to hear that when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. Another friend of mine introduced me to a film called “Zeitgeist”. With the uncertainty of living in a new area, trying to gain respect at a new job, and making new friends, I started worrying. Actually worrying is an understatement, but I’ll not be dramatic.

However, after hearing about Lullabot’s new venture, and especially Ed Sussman’s blog post, “Why Start (Up) Now?” I gained a little hope. Then I got a twitter from Kevin Rose today where he talked about Paul Graham’s post, “Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy”. I must say that I’m feeling better. Again an understatement, but dramatics really aren’t my thing.

The thought of having a startup has always appealed to me. I even have friends who have done them. And though I’ve always played it safe by working for corporations, I’ve always wanted to have my own business, startup or consulting, to call my own. It’s looking more and more like now is the time to get my nose to the grindstone. I’m not planning on quitting my job anytime soon, but now is the time to invest.

Dave and I have been in the middle of revitalizing DrupaLMAO (here’s a quick sneak peak) to incorporate the Drupal community into our show by getting feedback from them in the form of voting upon the content on the site (via the Drupal Planet). Hopefully this will help get the community’s involvement in the show as we’ll talk about the things that the readers care about. We’re coming out with a new episode any day now, it’s taped, waiting on our editor ;) and while we wait, we’re redesigning, rethinking and migrating to Drupal 6 (WIN!). Though this may not be startup material, it is nonetheless paramount to have a presence in the community… and it’s just damn good fun!

Another project I’m soon to have underway, came about from the fact that I get contacted by recruiters on a weekly basis looking for Drupal talent. Drupal hackers are in VERY HIGH DEMAND and there are many corporations out there now who are willing to pay top dollar for some of the best Drupal talent. While I may not be up there on the “high talent scale”, I keep a good relationship with these recruiters by offering advice on where to find Drupal talent, and how to go about it. They’re quite often taken by surprise at the amount of resources that are actually out there to help them find who or what they’re looking for, and some are a little discouraged by the advice I give. Especially when I tell them that they may be better off hiring one good Drupal developer who can teach a team of PHP developers how to use Drupal. Sounds like a good consulting strategy too ;) So after talking with endless recruiters, and regurgitating the same advice time and again, I’m convinced that there is a huge need to connect employers, recruiters and Drupal talent. There are no real good solutions out there that have the community backing them so in the next few weeks I’ll be on irc looking for ways to get this going. I’ve got a good idea in the front of my mind (rather then the back) but I want to build something that is going to have the community behind it and hopefully get d.o involved, not just another lame job board.

So if you’re out there looking down, thinking the end is neigh… think again. Read the posts mentioned above, and be inspired.

Drupal, you’ve done it again… become the vector of change in my life by presenting me with opportunities that are seemingly too good to be true. Last year it was New York and Sony BMG. This year it’s San Francisco and a start-up called ParentsClick Network. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better and that maybe I’ve hit the height of reaching my dreams in life, another one comes within my grasp, and giving in to my free spirit, I jump at the chance to make a dream a reality.

Ted Serbinski is a guy whose progress I’ve followed since that first Lullabot class in Rhode island, less than two years ago (1/15/07) when the world of Drupal really opened up to me. He was a Lullabot at the time, teaching theming and some jQuery. He left Lullabot later that year to start a journey into entrepreneurship (and MothersClick) that has started to pan out nicely. I’ve great respect for his coding skills and believe in his business sense. So when he approached me about a job working with him in San Francisco, a place I’ve always wanted to live, I was very excited.

After a week of vacation, taking time to think about my priorities while spending time with family and friends in PA, and then meeting with Ted’s business partner, Dietrich von Behren who is the Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer of MothersClick, I felt confident enough to make the jump and reach for a star on the other side of the country.

My last day at Sony BMG is August 7th, 2008. I’ll be heading back to PA to spend some more time with my family and friends and then back to Jersey to take care of getting rid of as much of my worldly possessions as possible. Then the week of the 18th Dave and I will be taking a cross country trip to San Francisco along RT 80. We’re still looking for good places to stop along the way, so if you have any suggestions that would be wonderful! I’m also still looking for a temporary place to crash in San Fran while I get the lay of the land and figure out where it makes sense to park myself for a year (read: sign a lease).

All in all, I’m very optimistic and I really feel this is the right move. Not only because I can live one of my dreams, but also to learn about starting a business, and everything that entails. Not to mention becoming a better programmer under the tutelage of a master! Wish me luck!

Here’s the new one!

There’s an ideal of late that I’ve seen repeated within literature and movies that intrigues me. It is that of the men and women who have ideals. Ideals that they do whatever it takes to uphold. I find this a respectable character trait that I find myself wanting to mimic. To uphold.

When you see wrong being done what do you do?

When you see something happening that you do not agree with, what do you do?

When there are ideals being upheld by the populace that you do not agree with, not becuase you are bias or jaded or just plain sick of, but because you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are absolutely wrong, what do you do?

Some choose to do more, some choose to hide, some choose to reason that they’re not the one who can do anything about those things that hide in the dark of the mind and pervert the perception of those that would stand for what is right. But YOU know what is RIGHT. You KNOW what is WRONG. And even though you doubt yourself and how you feel about the subject of the matter, you KNOW in that inner most place that is untainted, unforgettable, unmoving… you KNOW.

So do something about it! And the world will recognize as well, because they know as well, even though they may ignore it, even though they may reason it away… they know. And will support you if you are the one who champions the cause of WHAT IS RIGHT!

This weekend I’m leaving for PA for a week long vacation of nature, family and friends. Saturday I hope to be going to the Lycoming County Fair, Sunday going to see Wall-E with a friend. I’ll also be using my spare time over the weekend to get everything ready for a three day backpacking trip through the mountains where I grew up. I’ve not been out there by myself in years and I really want to just take my time hiking through the mountains around Rose Valley Lake where I grew up.

When I return from that, I’ll be heading out to the family cabin in Belleville where a family reunion is taking place, full of family on my mother’s side. Great Aunts and Uncles and hopefully time enough to talk with them all to glean what wisdom I may from them. I’ve come to think that you have to know where you come from in order to figure out where to go next in life. And that’s the big question I ask myself every so often, so hopefully some time alone, and then with family and friends will help me figure that one out.

Next weekend I’ll be home at my mother’s then, visiting with her, my brothers and my father’s parents who will be visiting. I think we’re planning on going to Ricket’s Glen where there is some nice camping, a good place to hike some waterfalls, and a beach on the lake for swimming.

For a long time I’ve thought that a major distinction in life that people must try to make is the difference between needs and wants. I’ve told many of my friends that if they just try to make this distinction in their own life, they will live a much happier, balanced life.

I was going through an old hard drive today and found many of my old writings on lots of different topics, but this one just jumped out at me as it is probably one of the most profound truths and holds some of the most engaging questions of life. The entry is dated 1-11-07:

We’ve got to stop thinking that we are the only ones that matter. Where does one find the strength to accomplish such a feat? What is the formula for molding one’s self unto this task? We all want something greater than what we already experience in this life, but we must learn to separate that which we want, from that which is needed. Define what is needed. Can we tell by ourselves what is needed, or is it defined by those around us? Should it be defined by those around us, or by something greater? If by something greater, then what is that greater something? If by those around us, then whom?

I’ve pondered on these things most of my conscious life, and still look for the answers. I doubt I will ever stop.

Sit down with me and Dave as they kick back some Johnny Walker Green label for St. Patrick’s Day and talk about our impressions of DrupalCon Boston 2008!

The fifth release of DrupaLMAO’s coverage of DrupalCon 2008. Listen as we sit down with Earl Miles to get his reactions to DrupalCon Boston and to talk about Views 2, Views in core, and Panels 2.

So it’s really late/early and we’ve had a great time tonight with some fun girls from Philly and hanging out with Ted Serbinski… AND we’re releasing our interview with Moshe Weitzman from DrupalCon! Check out DrupaLMAO’s 4 installation of their coverage of DrupalCon Boston 2008!

The third release of DrupaLMAO’s coverage of DrupalCon Boston 2008! Listen while Robert Douglass talks about the first DrupalCon, DrupalCon Boston 2008, and what the future holds for Acquia! Oh, and the best video still of all the interviews!

The second release of DrupaLMAO’s coverage of DrupalCon Boston 2008. Roger is the maintainer of the Asset module which I blogged about over at http://sirkitree.net back in December so I was glad to get to meet him. Listen while Dave sits down to get a developer’s perspective on DrupalCon.

The first release in DrupaLMAO’s Coverage of DrupalCon Boston 2008! Sorry for the jump, we’ll get DrupaLMAO.com into the planet agg soon! Promise!

We’ve got some good interviews at the Friday’s code sprint hosted by MIT in Boston this week. We’re in the process of doing some editing but you’ll be able to see the following over at DrupaLMAO.com: an interview with Robert Douglass of Acquia, Moshe Weitzman starting Cyrve, Jacob Reading spreading the word in China, Roger Lopez developer of Asset Module, and Earl Miles author of the Views 2, Panels 2 and Nodequeque 2.

Dave and I have been planning http://DrupaLMAO.com for a while now, and the idea has finally come to fruition with Dave’s purchase of a camera.

I’ve been having quite a time lately adjusting to this new life, priorities shifting all over the place, looking for a pattern to fall into, yet trying not to fall into a pattern. Women problems, travel problems, work, politics, and visions of the future, wondering which paths to take. Morality adjustments and sometimes not enough attention to my soul and the things that REALLY matter. But that’s life in general. The changes that have started are sometimes scary and I continually re-evaluate my life and what matters to me. I’ve had periods of my life where I’ve been so secure in what I want and where to go and how to get there. But that feeling of security and steadfastness has been replaced by shifting sands underneath my feet and bright lights in every corner catching my attention, distracting me from what I really need and where I really should be. Time to start paying more attention to the things that matter most and cut out the clutter.

This site came about while listening to the latest Lullabot podcast: Episode 48, when eaton made the profound statement, “What are you, like, some kind of taxonomy nazi?”. This got me to thinking that I’d like that for a sound on my iPhone… wouldn’t it be cool to have some sound bytes from all the crazy things eaton says on those podcasts? How about eatonbytes.com? Why stop there? How about lullabytes.com? Unfortunately lullabytes.com was taken, but lullabytes.net wasn’t! ;) Check it out, upload some of your favs and share some ideas for the site here. Thanks!

A friend at work heard a story about my friend Dave and I and thought this was appropriate. LMAO.

I make cool stuff at work. I learn something every day that makes me excited and in awe that I get paid to learn, and use, while being taught by the most enigmatic geniuses that I could even call friend, after a month or so of work comradere. Darkness turns to light with the slightest of gestures from the hands of such as these, that one might stop… and wonders how they, themselves could become something of such magnitude… if only they try, learn, know and then teach.

Try, Learn, Know and then Teach.

I am a Drupal Developer, and I love my job. And though it’s good to be paid to do what I do, so that I might live in our world, and survive, it is so much more rewarding to live by a Basic Standard in a community of individuals that live by a basic oath, simple, plain, and yet oh… so full of meaning. Try, Learn, Know, and then Teach. A creed of this simplicity and magnitude has yet to be developed and aspired to, other then by so many as those that see Open Source as a way of life, a desire, and a monologue to happiness. The principles not only can be seen, and used well, within software development, but of your life in general. An that is what intrigued me the most when I found Drupal.

Come again?

I know it sounds somewhat fanatical and naive, but if you think back to your kindergarten rules, what is there NOT in Drupal’s Open Source Way of Life that could not be applied to a life and how it should be lived? Drupal’s success has been attribute to that and succinctly profound. So live on Open Source, live on… those that thought up Open Source, and please, participate and become someone you respect in a community that truly appreciates those that try, learn, know and then teach.

So it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and there has been so much going on in my life. I’ve moved to New York City to work with Sony BMG making websites for rockstars. I gotta say, it’s been a HUGE change for me. My calm, collected country life where I lived all alone in the woods with the ability to go camping in my back yard was replaced by the hustle and bustle of New York City, staying in a studio apartment next to the Empire State building.

I was working on a select all feature today and just wanted to share this with the world. (a.k.a. keep it for later)

$(document).ready( function() {
  $('a#select_all').click( function() {
    $('input:checkbox').each( function() {
      this.checked = !this.checked;
    });
    return false;
  });
});

The first item to note is that jQuery created pseudo classes for input.

$('input:checkbox');
...
$('input:textbox');
... etc.

The second item to note, which I thought was ingenious, was setting the value of the checkbox to the inverse of it’s current value.

this.checked = !this.checked;

Works great and it’s short and sweet. Who loves jQuery?

I’ve create a new background image today and think I’ll make a shirt out of it. It pretty much summarizes my day today. You can get this background image in 800x600 or 1024x768. If you want it in another size just let me know. For those of you who don’t understand it, be glad. For those of you who do, ‘nuff said.

I recently had a friend ask me how to be able to give CCK fields more user-friendly class names so that they could be styled a little easier. I actually needed to do this myself with a project at work, so I had time to really sit down and figure out a good way to do this.

CCK

The Content Creation Kit (CCK) is a great way to add different fields to any particular content type within Drupal. When you first start learning Drupal, you’ll see that it ships with two main content types: Page and Story. The fields that these two content types have by default are the Title and the Body. These are respectively a single line text field, and a multi-line text field of which you can choose an input format. This is great and very useful for basic content, but what if I would like another text field other then just Title and Body? CCK allows you to add this. But instead of trying to explain the power and awe of CCK here, please take a look at the CCK handbook where this is explained in much greater detail.

Stepping Stones

Now adding CCK fields to a content type is all fine and dandy, but what if I want to make them look better by perhaps changing around the order in which they appear when viewed, or perhaps target that specific element with my CSS in order to specify the exact look and feel of the content it holds? This is where you want to start theming. However, sometimes theming in Drupal can be a pretty complex concept to grok at first. Not because it is very hard, but because without any stepping stones to how theming actually works, you can very easily fall into a dangerous quagmire of code, arrays and objects that you have no idea are even available to you.

Contemplate this my friend

This is where Jeff Robbins of the Lullabot crew has come to our rescue with a great module called Content Templates (contemplate). I believe this module is an incredible stepping stone in learning how to bridge the gap that exists between CCK and the way CCK fields are presented (themed). Installing this module will add a new menu item under Content Mangement in your Administration panel called ‘Content templates’, and also a templates tab inside of your ‘Content types’ page of your Admin section. Once you create a template for any given content type, you can effectually customize the look and feel of not just the content type’s node view (labeled Body in contemplate), but also the Teaser and the RSS!

Commercial break

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Each fieldset (teaser, body, and rss) has not just a text field to edit the template in, but also inserts a default view of what Drupal spits out, ready to edit. And if that isn’t exciting enough for you, there is (IMHO the most useful feature of this module) a rich text-field next to that which lists every object available to you for templating! There’s even some neato javascript that allows you to click on an object and insert the php to print that object into the template field. This is just good stuff man. Fun times. Act now while supplies last. Void where prohibited.

Ok, time for a downer

Finding such a gem is really very great, but the excitement starts to wear off after about an hour of trying to template a complete content type inside of that teeny, tiny, little box. Even the javascript insertion of the box next to it begins to feel like a sticky piece of candy that’s lost it’s flavor. I’d like to take this opportunity to mention that the devel module provides you with a feature quite similar to this little javascript flavored object reference box, but unless you’re already very familiar with how to work with these field objects in PHP, the devel module is next to useless. So, again as a stepping stone, the contemplate module really comes in handy for referencing what objects are available to theme, and will give you a little insight as to how to work with them in PHP.

So what do we do about the teeny, tiny, little text box that we’re supposed to put all of our theming code into? Well, fortunately Drupal’s main theming engine, phptemplate, has already taken care of this. Listen carefully now, ‘cuz this is important and I don’t want to lose you now. We’ve already come so far. Each content type can have it’s very own template file within your theme.

Theming a content type

You can actually accomplish this very easily. The first step is to create a file within your theme directory named node-content_type.tpl.php replacing content_type with the machine readable name you’ve given your content type. So if your content type is named forum, you’ll want the file to be named node-forum.tpl.php. For almost all of my work lately I’ve been using a theme called zen. It’s written by the Lullabot crew once again, and is probably the best theme out there to teach you anything about a theme. This theme has a file that is a custom themed content type already specific to the forum module. The file is node-forum.tpl.php. I’ve used this on multiple occasions as a template on how to start a new custom theme file for a content type. If you use this file, you’ll notice that, among other things, it prints out the $content variable. All of our CCK fields can be found inside of this variable, along with the default theming of them that you find in the contemplate module’s teeny, tiny, little box for the template code. So you can take the code that is generated by default in the contemplate module, and insert all of that where you see the $content variable being printed in the tpl file. From there, you can do all of your editing in the editor of your choice without having to strain your back trying to bend closer to your monitor to see what’s inside of the teeny, tiny, little box.

Following my recent post on my rolechanger module, I started delving into how to provide functionality with the resulting dropdown box that the module provides. I wanted to provide all functionality through javascript and have included a rolechanger.js file for this purpose. However I found a few quirks while working with jQuery and the select element.

I started out with a .change() on the select element and drilled down through the .children() looking for [@selected]. However, thought this worked fine in IE, Firefox did not pick this up at all. I saw in the jQuery issues that this had been fixed, but evidently not for the release that ships with Drupal. Here’s the resulting code for the IE portion:

    // ie doesn't pick up the option.click, so we'll have to use the select.change
    $('#edit-role-changer').change(function(){

  	// get rid of select box
  	$('#edit-role-changer').hide();

        // show the chosen role as static text
       // NOTE: FF doesn't pick up [@selected]
      $('#role').html($(this).children("[@selected]").text()).show();

      // provide a change link
      $('#role-change-back').show();

    });

Firefox was actually a little easier to code for, since I found that it would pick up a .click() on the option element. So the resulting code for Firefox is this:

    // provide action for an option change
    $('#edit-role-changer option').click(function(){

  	  // get rid of select box
  	  $('#edit-role-changer').hide();

  	  // show the chosen role as static text
      $('#role').html($(this).text()).show();

      // provide a change link
      $('#role-change-back').show();

    });

Since Firefox does pick up the .change() function that is on the select element that is used for IE, I then had to do a browsers detection, which jQuery makes simple as pie with $.browser. Here is the resulting full code:

  // see which browser we're working with
  if ($.browser.msie) {

    // ie doesn't pick up the option.click, so we'll have to use the select.change
    $('#edit-role-changer').change(function(){

  	  // get rid of select box
  	  $('#edit-role-changer').hide();

  	  // show the chosen role as static text
  	  // NOTE: FF doesn't pick up [@selected]
      $('#role').html($(this).children("[@selected]").text()).show();

      // provide a change link
      $('#role-change-back').show();

    });
  }
  else {

    // provide action for an option change
    $('#edit-role-changer option').click(function(){

  	  // get rid of select box
  	  $('#edit-role-changer').hide();

  	  // show the chosen role as static text
      $('#role').html($(this).text()).show();

      // provide a change link
      $('#role-change-back').show();

    });
  }

Happy jQuerying!

So my first commit to the Drupal contributions has been made! WooHoo! I partied hard that night :) No, it’s really not that big of a deal, but I’m excited as it takes me one step further into Drupal development and being more involved in the Drupal community.