Hofmockel.org

A short, quick and easy tip for views theming and customization.

To customize the text or the destination path/url of a 'view more' link in Views. Add this to template.php in your phptemplate theme and add cases.

<?php
/**
* Override theme_views_more() to set custom link texts and destinations.
* @param $path String
*   The destination of the more link.
*/
function _phptemplate_views_more($path) {
  $text = 'more';
  switch ($path) {
    case 'foo/bar':
      $text = 'doh';
      break;
  }
  return "<div class='more-link'>" . l(t($text), $path) . "</div>";
}
?>

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Rolling along with the SXSW Get the Vote Out campaign, today's potential presenter is me, Dave Olson.

A wee rookie at last years' SXSW, I fell into a groove and rocked it hard, producing an epic barrage of social media extravaganza.

As for presentations, i'm a guy who obsesses about doing something innovative in form and message - i avoid hackneyed acronyms and run o' mill tech babble to create sessions with a positive vibe and useful edu-tainment which you ain't heard before. Here's what I offer for SXSWi 2009:

1) F@ck Stats, Make Art - Dave Olson - solo

2) Social Media for Social Change - Dave Olson + panelists

To convince you of my qualifications, here's a video - DaveO and Band of Social Media Renegades at SXSW - featuring Roland Tanglao, Jordan Behan and Nick Cook at Studio SX.

Audio of F@ck Stats, Make Art spiel from Northern Voice 2008 - Sweet Nectar of Validation - NV08 wrap up, reviews and podcast + photos, reviews, feedback (thanks Cosmo for audio)

Ditto with 3 P's of Podcasting presentation from Northern Voice 2007 - Belated, but Joyful, Northern Voice Podcast Mop-up - yup, photos & feedback here too

Most recently, Podcasting for Social Change - Net Tuesday4 with DaveO and All-Star Panel (with preview video) and a Miss 604 NetSquared Liveblog re-cap

And, here's a regular sorta bio:

A compulsive art and crafter from his earliest days, world-rambling Dave spends time writing (essays, freeverse poetry, epistletory literature), making static montage art and listening to old vinyl albums on the back porch whilst gazing at North Van's mountains and trees.

At Raincity, Dave brews up blogs, podcasts and white papers laden with anecdotes and derivatives on topics around community building, paradigm shifts in the media industry, and tips for producing quality content.

• Uncleweed.net
• Ephemeral Feasthouse
  
• Out n' About video blog
• Choogle on podcast
• Gravelly Beach podcast
• uncleweed Flickr photostream
• "uncleweed" tag on Flickr
• uncleweed Twitter

As such, I heartily encourage you to pitch in a vote for my two pitches for SXSW Interactive 2009. In return attendees will receive a guaranteed hour or two of edu-tainment and experiential learning. For non-attendees, i'll be there rocking out the podcasts coverage at my chooglin' speed.

By day, tech industry inspired interviews from the SXSWi trade show floor for Raincity Radio (feed), and by night ... after-hours hi-jinks while attending the music "conference" - {methinks what happens in Austin should be podcast, not stay in Austin!}

From an article in the New York Times, it appears that the Princeton Review "published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students on its Web site, where they were available for seven weeks."

According to the article, the breach -- likely caused by human error -- exposed some very sensitive data:

"One file on the site contained information on about 34,000 students in the public schools in Sarasota, Fla., where the Princeton Review was hired to build an online tool to help the county measure students’ academic progress. The file included the students’ birthdays and ethnicities, whether they had learning disabilities, whether English was their second language, and their level of performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is given to students in grades 3 to 11."

In another folder on the same server, several files containing the names and birthdays of 74,000 students from Fairfax County, VA, were exposed.

On a related note, a prominent test preparation company will soon be looking for an experienced web security expert. The qualified applicant should be able to meet or exceed the skillset laid out in this document.

Summer's winding down which means less camping camping, and more indoor camping, on the agenda.

Next up to add to your geek fest calendar are two free-form, inter-disciplinary meetups in Vancouver:

MobileCampVancouver2 at WorkSpace on Saturday, Sept.6th.

BarCampVancouver2008 at locations Granville Island on Saturday/Sunday, Sept. 27th-28th.

Both are participatory events with presentations selected by vox populi at the beginning of the session. Check out the the Rules of Bar Camp to learn what to expect.

Alas, MCV2 runs concurrently with Drupal Camp Victoria but there are enough enthusiasts around to make both events a success. MCV2 is sponsored by Mobile Muse - an applied research and developmet project funded by the Canadian government to conduct projects in the emerging mobile space.

MobileCampVancouver is bringing together iPhone junkies, Crackberry addicts, couch surfers, coffee shop hackers, vagabonds and mobile nomads to share the current state and their visions for the future direction of mobility.

May include - but are not limited to - mobile gaming, entrepreneurship, social mobility and presence, near field communication, physical hyperlinking, mobile storytelling, the importance of open standards, protocols, and platforms, linux based devices, and mobility on other continents. 

Organizer's hub Google group

• Igor Faletski
• John Boxall
• Jean Hébert

MobileCampVancouver at WorkSpace on Saturday, September 6th 2008.

MobileCampVancouver wiki (the password is c4mp):

via Google Spreadsheet

In its third interation, BarCampVancouver2008 is camp-over-able shindig and a Vancouver juggernaut with multi-parts like PhotoCamp, WordCamp along with myriad spontaneous sessions. You are likely too late as the event is sold out ;-( but sign on to the extended wait list via EventBrite.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

BarCampVancouver2008 at locations on Granville Island, on Saturday/Sunday, September 27-28, 2008.

BarCamp Vancouver wiki (the password is c4mp)

• Miss 604: BarCamp Vancouver 2008 Save The Date
• Boot up blog: BarCamp Vancouver 2008 set for September 27th
• Fade to Play: Barcamp Vancouver 2008 (upcoming)
• JenTekk: BarCamp Vancouver 2008
• add your BarCamp Vancouver 2008 preview post in the comments

Sold out but get on the waitlist at EventBrite

To rebuild the menu in Drupal 6 you have to go to admin/build/modules.

In drupal 5 the menu is cached in the cache_menu table, so it is easy to invoke a menu-rebuild by emptying the table with a simple mysql command like TRUNCATE cache_menu;. (I have a handy script that empties all tables starting with cache_).

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I've written about using drush to evaluate PHP statements in the Drupal context using the command line before, and it turns out that Drush is also quite useful for running Simpletest scripts. Drush comes with a module that allows you to display all the available tests with "drush test list", run all the tests with "drush test run", or run specified tests with "drush test run test1,test2".

'Course, I wanted to run groups of tests and tests matching regular expressions, so I defined two new commands:

drush test run re regular-expression

Run all tests matching a regular expression that uses ereg(..) to match.

Ex: drush test run re Example.*

drush test run group group1,group2…

Run all tests matching the given groups

Ex: drush test run group Example

Here's the patch to make it happen:

That makes running tests so much easier and more fun!

Technorati Tags: drupal, drush, patch, simpletest, testing

This post is adapted from my post over at Sylvia Martinez's Generation YES blog. Her post is titled Why open curriculum wikis won’t work. As my title suggests, I have a different viewpoint.

From my comment:

There is an enormous gap that is not addressed between wiki curriculum and delivery in the classroom — you allude to it in your closing when you say: “But hoping random lesson plans can knit themselves into a coherent curriculum is just magical thinking. At best, teachers may find a few nuggets they can adapt for their own classrooms.”

So, the problem here isn’t in wiki-style curriculum repositories. The problem is twofold: first, most existing repositories are content silos; second, the workflow of teachers isn’t considered in how open content is published. Neither of these issues are inherent in open content or wiki-style curriculum tools.

I’m the first of the Development Seed crew to head out for Hungary, and I have to say I’m excited. I left Washington, DC on Friday for Vienna to have a week of vacation and visiting with friends and family. Then it’s time to hit the DrupalCon circuit again.

There are many sessions I’m looking forward to. Rasmus, the creator of php, shocked us al in Sunnyvale and I’m sure he has some new surprises for us in Szeged. Robert Douglas is leading a talk I’m particularly interested in on the future of search. We’ve been looking into alternatives to Drupal’s search, and it would be great to have a better solution in Drupal itself. Other session’s that I’m excited for are:

• Field API and Fields in Core
• Drupal Databases: The Next Generation
• Performance Tuning Expert Panel
• Panels – Today, and the Future
• Drupal Development Workflow and Deployment Best Practices
  

Several of my colleagues here at Development Seed are participating in some interesting sessions. Jeff will present recent developments on the Context and Spaces modules, Jose will talk about improvements to the Messaging and Notifications frameworks, and Eric will disclose how he attracts and retains Drupal talent on a panel with Robert Scales from Raincity and Tiffany Farriss from Palantir. Also, Aron and I will explain what’s cool about the new core aggregator patch.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in Szeged. If you haven’t gotten tickets yet, there’s still time to register and there are some affordable travel options out there. Hope to see you in Szeged!

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The author's copies of Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition arrived today. At 667 pages, the book is significantly thicker than the first edition!

I worked on this edition from November of 2007 to July 2008 pretty much without stopping. One morning my daughter found me in the living room writing a chapter at 3 am. It is difficult to express how much work this book has been, and how happy I am to hold the printed copy in my hands. Those who have written books will understand. :) I am glad to finally have it get into the hands of Drupal developers everywhere, and I hope that this contribution helps to complete the transition from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. Thanks so much to all who have helped with this project!

Profits from the book go to this little guy's college fund. (And if you buy it through drupalbook.com, the Drupal Association gets a percentage of each sale.)

The mild summer weather continues as we move into the third week in August, and no matter how worrisome strange weather trends are these days, we must admit the last few weeks have been pretty nice. Local tech events also continue to buck the August trends in DC, with many scheduled and past ones still getting great turnouts. Here are some of the events we’re looking forward to this week.

Tuesday, August 19
7:00 pm

NetSquared’s Pimp My Nonprofit: Like giving advice you don’t have to implement yourself? Workplace Fairness is redesigning its website and their team is looking for strategic help with design, usability, and finding a way to display a lot of content in a non-threatening way. Come out to give your two cents.

6:00 – 9:00 pm

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DrupalCon Szeged is fast approaching and though we are a sponsor, I'm sorry I won't be able to attend. A number of my colleagues from CivicActions will be there though including Doug, Robin, Kevin, Jozef, look for them in sessions and at the Day 1 Exhibition.

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A list of new modules that is worth keeping an eye on.

Saved By: Drupal | View Details | Give Thanks

Tags: drupal

Once of the biggest advances “under the hood” in Drupal 6 is the addition of the preprocess architecture to the theme layer. This is part and parcel with the deeper embedding of template files, and together they render Drupal 6 the most flexible and powerful release yet in terms of theme and design.

For those of us who still do a fair amount of work with the 5.x branch, it’s easy to be envious of those lucky enough to have these new tools at their disposal. But resist that cardinal sin! This quick HOWTO explains how to quickly turn your theme into a node-preprocessing machine, which has great benefits in terms of elegant architecture, and also future-proofing your work for the eventual Drupal 6.0 migration.

Bulding off _phptemplate_vars()

Possibly the most powerful programmatic tool in the Drupal themer’s toolkit in 5.0 is the _phptemplate_vars() function. We’ve talked before about to use this to use different template files under different circumstances. Overall, this function is a great way to make all those minor changes that are needed so that a site can have truly top-notch appearance and user-interface.

However, once your theme gets to be very complex, this function can easily become an overloaded beast of logical branches. Each new node type or special case creating new complexity, and maintaining that as your site grows can quickly become untenable.

Fear not, though. You can also use this function to implement a simple preprocessing architecture that will help you customize the data in all your node types without creating a mass of template files, and set the table for 6.0. Here’s how:

<?php
function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars = array()) {
  switch ($hook) {
    case 'node':
      $node = $vars['node']; // handy shorthand
      $preprocess = 'phptemplate_'. $node->type .'_node_vars';
      if (function_exists($preprocess)) {
        call_user_func($preprocess, $vars);
      }
      break;
    case 'page':
     …
  }
}

function phptemplate_blog_node_vars(&$vars) {
  // your custom preprocessing here
  $node = $vars['node']; // handy shorthand
  drupal_add_css($vars['directory']. '/custom_blog_style.css'); 
  $vars['submitted'] = t('Blogged by !name on !date', array('!name' => l($node->name, 'user/'. $node->uid), '!date' => format_date($node->created, 'custom', 'm-d-Y')));
}
?>

Note that you don’t need to use phptemplate_ as the prefix here; indeed it may be advisable to use your theme_name.

What this function does is quickly check for the existence of a node-specific preprocessing function, and if it exists passes through the $vars array by reference.

In this case we detect that a blog node is being rendered, and take the opportunity to include a final custom stylesheet form our theme, as well as altering the standard $submitted var.

The possibilities here are endless, and in “enterprise theming” situations where you may be dealing with upwards of 25 (or even 100!) node types, having this kind of programatic structure in your theme is invaluable for keeping things clean, elegant and extensible.

Good luck, and happy drupal theming!

It was great to sit down with DaveO on the podcast and talk over a wide arc of experiences I've had in the past 4+ years. In case it wasn't clear from the audio (I do have some extended liner notes on my personal site), I'm finishing up my time at Raincity Studios.

After the sale of Bryght back in November / December and 6 months of transition work, I've moved on to work on my new startup, Bootup Labs, full time.

That's not to say that I'm leaving Raincity Studios behind completely. I'm still an advisor to the company, focusing especially on products and services related to hosting and the Bryght Light service. We've got some new services that I'm really excited about seeing launch, from server hosting in Canada to Aegir mass hosting for all VPS customers to some interesting computing integration.

I'm also finishing up the Mobile Muse funded SMS / mobile project. More info at SIFTtool.com, in large part ably put together by Tylor. Who knows, I might even get involved in future Olympic plans for 2010...

I'm still a permanent member of the Drupal Association and a member of the Drupal community in general. You'll find me mucking about with install profiles, getting more news on the front page, and various other Drupal fun times (there's this Beerfest ... I mean Drupalcamp in Victoria that sounds interesting ...).

Some people have speculated that all the Bootup Labs startups will be coerced into using Drupal. Well, we are using it for the main website, and Strutta uses it, and AdHack is built around it ... but I swear that's coincidence :P

It has been an absolute joy to get to know and work with the extended team at Raincity Studios, both in Vancouver and in Shanghai. Good luck!

More coverage about Boot-up's boot-up:

• Lloyd Budd in A Fool's Wisdom - Bootup Labs - Vancouver Tech Startup Incubator
• Tris Hussey in MapleLeaf 2.0 - Bootup Labs Starts up to help Start-ups in VancouverMoving on, booting up | Raincity Studios
• Rob Lewis in Techvibes - Booting up Start-ups in Vancouver

Boris in repose by KK on Flickr

Rolling along with the SXSW Get the Vote Out campaign, today's possible panelist is Kris Krug.

Krug is fresh off presenting at a social media Symposium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Social Tech Training, nextMedia, Bridging Media, Telefilm Content Creators workshop, Federation of Post-Secondary educators ... and more - See "Catching up with Krug Tour in Banff" for info.

Another multi-year veteran of SXSW, Kris puts forth two panels for Interactive 2009 covering topics he's well known for discussing: doing business in China and photography - check the blurbs:

1) International Business in China for Fun and Profit - Kris Krug + panelists

2) Become a Semi-Pro Photographer in 10 Easy Steps - Kris Krug + panelists

To convince you of Krug's skills (and fashion sensibilities), here's a video - Techn9ne writing his life at SXSW - featuring KK interviewing hip-hop artist Techn9ne at Studio SX in 2008.

Listen to audio of KK's panel from SXSWi 2008, "Blame Canada: 7 Ways We're Ahead in New Media"

And, here's a KK bio:

Kris Krug is part photographer and part open source web entrepreneur. After publishing an online arts magazine, Kris joined Bryght - a community web hosting service which helped create an eco-system of related companies in Vancouver, BC. In 2007, Bryght was acquired by web agency Raincity Studios and Krug now serves as President and Ambassador of the international enterprise. Kris regularly speaks at conferences and to media about technology and community building in the Internet age. He's an organizer of Northern Voice blogging conference as well as BarCamps in Beijing and Shanghai, China.

Kris moonlights as a fashion and editorial photographer, shooting subjects from dot-com executives to fashion models to rock bands, as well as producing grassroots coverage of events like SXSW and Olympic Games in Turin and Beijing. Find his work online on Flickr and StaticPhotography.com and in numerous online and print media outlets.

He's also on-board with two more pitches by Jolene Parker from New Zealand - (Topics: Fashion and Creativity) stay tuned for more details.

• KrisKrug.com
• Static Photography
• kk's Youtube channel
• kk's Flickr photostream
• "kriskrug" tag on Flickr
• kk Twitter

Into the thick of the Olympic sporting competition, Canada is rolling in a litany of 5th, 6th, 7th places ... but with track and field, rowing finals and trampolining yet to come, the Canucks still have a chance to visit the podium.

As Tod Maffin twitter'ed: "Maybe Beijing will at least give us a courtesy Participaction pin?(Dont understand this? Ask a Canadian over 30.)" (ed note: or view this Participaction toque).

In the social media production department, Scales continues to create video at an epic pace despite losing his co-hort Kris who was repatriated to Vancouver in time for a glorious summer weekend. Scales is staying busy by picking up more tickets for varied events at the incredible new venues including the whitewater kayak run (plus visits to the Danish hospitality house).

I'm heading to the hills with tent and beverages so here's a few highlights to enjoy with your weekend viewing:

Buzz Bishop, an on-air personality at 95Crave, also writes a tech column for daily paper 24 Hours. In an Aug. 13 dispatch, he addressed the fine line between professional accredited media and "grassroots" coverage created and disseminated by non-paid enthusiasts in an article he titled: Olympic Coverage From the Streets of Beijing. Here's a nugget about this tension between MSM and the rest of us (joined in progress):

But Robert and Kris didn’t pay anything to have official broadcast rights for these games. Is what they’re doing by posting blogs, tweets, photos and streaming videos a violation?

“It’s a really complicated issue,” admits Krug.

“They’ll end up realizing that they can’t control all of it, and they’ll spend less effort trying to block people like us, and more effort monetizing the content they do control.”

The IOC has taken steps to rein in the content online as rights holders’ geoblock their websites to be only accessible within the rights holder’s borders. YouTube has also been approached to make sure highlights from the Games do not appear on the site, until after the rights window has expired.

Reminiscent of the Judo competition, Youtube issued a swift takedown to Krug regarding his fan-made clips of a women's basketball game.

As a registered USA Library of Congress DMCA agent, I know how the procedure works and have received many of these boiler-plate take down notices spewed out by the leery hosting companies with their phalanx of laywers, lackeys and salivating rights-holders. Methinks besides a nicer bedside manner, they could use a better copywriter.

Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by NBC Universal claiming that this material is infringing: Team USA Women's Basketball - Beijing 2008: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fyPrwBVG9zY Please Note: Repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. 

No doubt the IOC need to listen in to social media makers at least a little. With 2010 happening in our open-everything-friendly backyard, perhaps they'll listen to our message of: We are here and plan to document our experiences.We don't seek to supplant the rights holder, rather we aim to enrich the experience for worldwide fans, athletes' families and ourselves for personal expression. Call us, we'll have coffee and talk - no big whoop.

Scales often casually mentions jobs/careers/experiences/adventures/skills which we, his colleagues, have little/no idea about. E.g. he's a reiki practitioner, dive master, served in Canadian Forces, worked for Greenpeace etc. He's also a fencer - not someone who sells stolen goods but a real sword-wielding fencer.

At my request, he prepared a video to explain this simultaneously classic and futuristic looking sport.

He also delves into the ticket buying scenarios in a video: Buying tickets and Empty seats in Beijing. Empty seats along with a few minor quibbles about the opening ceremonies have become touchstones for the mainstream broadcasters who seem to seek any topic which diminishes the Chinese efforts (or is it just me?)

Scales is exploring more sports, armed with a new Canon D9, a Nokia cameraphone and uploading movie with Qik. Check his Flickr photostream for more photos as per his latest tweet which says (sic):

I am beat and amazed at the amount of pictures i took today: 1500+ of fencing and archery.. I need to do some downloand but 1st sleep..

PS I'm Tivo'ing the end of the rain-delayed Canada vs. Cuba Baseball game so don't tell me who wins.

I'm certainly not the first to post about this, but it looks like Drupal will have a strong showing at SXSW Interactive 2009. There's even a front page post on drupal.org to bring awareness. A group of us from Lullabot went last year and we had an absolute blast. If you haven't been, sign up now!

The panel picker is live and I suggest you *all* vote for Drupal with Its Pants Off (you know you wanna). What's really exciting, though, is the long list of other Drupal panels on the list.

Looks like there'll be lots of Drupal in Austin next March... even http://sxsw.com/ is Drupal powered!

My hotel is booked. See you there!

The Dash Media Player is a revolutionary, first of its kind, media player built specifically for Drupal CMS but also works as a direct replacement for other popular media players used today! Just imagine… a media player whose content is driven by the power and flexibility of a content management system. With this player, you can truly take advantage of the best of two worlds... the incredible user interface of Flash, and the unparalleled content management of Drupal. Using these two systems together, you can quite literally have your very own Media Content Management System! As you will soon see, the Dash Media Player is a truly remarkable player geared up for the rise of Web 3.0.

Here is a list of killer features for the initial launch of the Dash Media Player... Make sure you go to the Dash Player Showcase to see some live demos of these features in action!

• Compatible with ALL Drupal Media modules!
• Completely Skinable (using external SWF files) and Themeable!
• Create and Manage your Media Playlists using the Views module!
• RSS, XML Playlist, and Single File compatible
• High Definition Video Support ( H-264 )
• Complete Audio Support including MP3's
• Works great as just an Image Viewer.
• Written using latest Object Oriented Techniques in Actionscript 3
• Lightweight: All these features packed into only 75kB!
• 100% Resizable
• Secure: Using Drupal's Services Module
• Built in 5 star voting mechanism.
• Full Screen Support

So now you are probably asking, WHERE CAN I FIND THIS PLAYER!? Well, you can simply go to www.tmtdigital.com/project/dash_player, where you can download your free version! Please let me know what you think!

credit: Monster Much

Rolling along with the SXSW Get the Vote Out campaign, heeerrrre's Robert Scales.

Robert Scales is the CEO and Founder of Raincity Studios, a consummate biz-ness-man and an international man of "open everything" evangelism.

A multi-year veteran of SXSW, he is pitching two panels for Interactive 2009 covering some of his dearest subjects: Drupal, Social Media, China and the Olympics.

1) Using Drupal to Manage, Publish, and Promote Your Content - Robert Scales + a collection of Drupalista panelists

2) Social Media and the Olympics - Robert Scales + panelists

To convince you of Scales' skills (and colourful arms), here's a video - Open Source Conversations - featuring Scales interviewing Matt Mullenweg, founder developer of Wordpress, and Kris Krug, Raincity Studios' colleague and ace photographer, at Studio SX in 2008.

Robert's RCS bio also points out:

Robert teaches eBusiness and Web Technologies at Vancouver Film School, he speaks and co-organized events such as Barcamps: Beijing, Vancouver, Shanghai, Drupalcamps, and other open source conferences such as the China Blogger Conference and Open Source Camp Beijing.

Scales lives in Shanghai currently, where he is learning Mandarin, and continuing to work with his Vancouver and regional teams. He can occasionally be found hanging out at his restaurant.

Robert holds a diploma in Business Management and a Senior Management Certificate in New Media and Web Development from BCIT.

• Robert Scales.org
• Scales on You Tube
• Scales' Flickr photostream
• "robertscales" tag on Flickr
• Scales' Twitter
• Scales' Olympic coverage via Beijing 2008 Social Media Backpack