Hofmockel.org

I don't know how I survived long-distance travel before mp3s. You can only carry around so many cassettes or CDs. When I leave the house for a trip my earbuds are pretty much a permanent fixture until I am home again. At home, if I'm at my computer, I'm probably listening to something all the time. I listen to lots of different genres of music, but overall my standard, fall back is something within the electronic realm. Don't get me wrong, I can also listen to Bettie Serveert anytime of the day or night, but by and large electronica is my default if I'm just not sure what I want to listen to. I love listening but I'm not so good with the ten million terms used to slice and dice the music into the most subtle categories, nor do I really care that much. I'm not even going to bet that everything I lump in "electronica" would technically fall there for others. I have my own little system for identifying my mood/music match and the other day I was thinking of it in more concrete terms. So, here is how I tend to think of the electronic music in my collection with some tracks that I could find out on the internets. Lots of stuff falls all over the place and in between, but these tend to be my "moods:"

Comatose: This is the stuff that makes me drool from inactivity. I typically don't listen to this except when trying to sleep (great for red-eye flights) or making myself take a serious energy timeout.
Some examples: Isan - Cinnabar, Dave and Ardai - Recovery Room EP

Groovin: I spend a lot of time in this mix. A lot of stuff I lump here tends to be called downtempo, ambient, blah, blah, blah, by the cool kids. It has more going on than Comatose but isn't frenetic and can keep me moving along for hours at a time. Lots of stuff I love, love, love here.
Some examples: Cassettes Won't Listen - MPC, Sternklang - The Herb

Dance: Yeah, OK, this is a range of music that just makes me wanna shake my booty or jump around. If I could stay up past 11 pm anymore, I'd love to still go out dancing, but since I'm old and lame I often only dance in my office or hotel room.
Some examples: Le Tompé - Tell Me, Tiësto - Traffic, Astral Projection - Kabalah

Soundtrack: For the badass mofo hero(ine) in all of us. Lots of flying fighter jets in space, blowing up 10-story robots, running through jungles, and all the ladies want to get with me. If you don't have a world like this, I am sorry for you, though you may still like the music.
Some examples: Ugress - Zombie Eagles, Fluke - Another Kind of Blues, Astrix - Techno Widows

I've also got my standard stable of music resources. I tend to only have a handful of resources because my head would explode otherwise, so I'm sure there are a ton of awesome things out there. If there is something more awesome that what I'm using, I'm more likely to drop one and move to the other than try to keep track of more and more awesomeness. (I can only handle so much awesomeness in one lifetime, ya know?)

Yeah, I actually buy music. I used to mess with all the peer stuff and grabbed a ton of stuff for free back in the day but I'm not as into that anymore. Lots of the music I listen to is from smaller artists and labels and I'd like to support them.

My main service is eMusic. They have great stuff and reasonably priced subscription set up. They were doing DRM-free mp3s since the start so I've always loved supporting them. If I can't find what I want there, my next stop is Amazon, which again, is DRM-free mp3s. iTunes store is my last stop. Both eMusic and Amazon downloaders will automatically add my new music to my iTunes library so there is no extra hassle involved with regards to that. Lots of the remix, dance stuff I want isn't in the main stores so I also use Traxsource to get DJ cuts.

Now here's the free stuff. I don't subscribe to satellite radio, like Sirius. I'm a net radio kind of gal. While free, I do financially support free radio that I love. I donate to Soma.fm and am a subscriber at Last.fm. Soma has a bunch of stations, though I only regularly tune in to about three of them (Secret Agent, Beat Blender and Groove Salad). Great selection of tunes and no commercials. They rock. That is all.

Last.fm lets the social, friend thing get to work in addition to having stations based on an artist (similar to Pandora) or playing my favorites. One of my favorite things to do is listen to a high match friend's station in explore mode. That will only play songs that I don't have in my collection, so I get only new stuff. They also sometimes have good free tracks for download, like a bunch from the excellent Ugress. You'll notice that a lot of my links up above to artists or tracks use Last.fm because it is a great, centralized place for me to keep track of and share the stuff I like.

The only other net radio that I tune into regularly is Radio Frequence Metz Woippy Clubbing and Dance. This is my typical dance-club-in-a-hotel-room mix.

I should also mention briefly that I will often grab my radio using Audio Hijack Pro so I can have a good mix while offline without having to work hard at making one up myself. It is for the Mac, I love it and it is cheaper than some other options out there. Take that for whatever you want.

I am not big into my RSS feeds or wandering the internets these days for info and honestly my radio sources turn me on to more music than I can keep up with already. I do follow one music blog though that often points to very small netlabel stuff, often free tracks, that I'd otherwise never see. I've found some really nice stuff through Disquiet, like Rich Vom Dorf. If you have any other killer blogs that track the cool, little stuff, let me know in the comments.

I've been on the go so much that I haven't had the mental space to sit down and articulate a lot of the cool stuff that is going on. A few weeks ago I took part in a new open source conference, Writing Open Source (WOScon). The conference was born from conversations Emma Jane Hogbin and I had last fall, and she took the ideas and made it a reality in Owen Sound, Ontario. It was very small but packed with awesomeness, from people to ideas to food. There were quite a few exciting ideas for the Drupal community which will get written up and worked on down the road a bit. Lots of folks have written up summaries* of the event itself, but that single event has started something quite a bit bigger. The last day of the conference we transformed the conference website into a new community site and started a new Twitter/identi.ca hashtag for #wosdocs. We've started a new open source community to focus on documentation. That may not sound exciting to lots of people, but it is, even if you aren't a "writer" and here's why.

As a whole, open source has been gaining tremendous ground over the years. It is becoming more mainstream every month. Open source software is respected as a viable tool in today's world, but for most every project, the documentation lags behind the quality of the code. As people explore this "new" software, they need to feel like they can let go of the side of the pool and there will be a life raft in the middle if they need it. This generally takes two forms: paid support or community documentation. Open source is growing rapidly, but we are still a very small part of the bigger pie. To accelerate open source growth we need the coders to keep cranking with their bad selves, and we need to provide guidance and support for new users. Open source is an amazing model for making awesome software, there is no reason that we can't produce best of breed documentation with the same community passion.

One of the big take-home points for me at the conference (amongst so many) was that we generally have a very high standard for the quality of our code, but we do not apply those same standards to our documentation. This is a disservice to both the docs and the code it supports. There are a lot of people out there who are documentation professionals; technical writers, editors, information architects, etc. and believe or not, a lot of them are using open source. We need to listen and learn from the pros, just like we do with code. One of the great things about documentation best practices and standards is that there is a whole industry that already looks at these things. We can learn from what is there, apply open source magic and share. The beauty of docs is that the same basic principles are going to apply to all projects, regardless of language (code or culture), structure, or size. Of course, each project will have its own resources and emphasis, but so much base ground can be laid down that is useful to everyone. We have started exploring this on the WOSdocs site by creating outlines for a sample open source style guide, documentation best practices guide and starting a persona library. This is just fricking awesome for everyone from single developer trying to write docs on their own to large teams wrangling complex projects.

So basically this is good news for everyone and I truly believe that this new movement to make kick ass docs for all of open source is going to move us up to the next level in adoption around the world. As Paul said in one of his blog posts about the conference, I'm excited to know that I will be able to look back and say that I was "there when this began." If you want to be part of ass-kicking history, we are an open community, so head on over to WOSdocs, sign up and dig in. I also plan to be at WOScon next year and it'll be fun to see how much we've grown by then. Maybe we'll even share some of our insider jokes too. Where did that mammoth come from?

* Some posts about WOScon
http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Community/Woscon2009
http://emmajane.net/node/928
http://emmajane.net/node/929

A few weeks ago I posted a draft Drupal documentation roadmap on Drupal.org. In that post I attached the full roadmap of goals, but focused on the first two we are tackling: a new information architecture (IA) and recognition/reward for documentation contributors. We had a meeting in IRC shortly after and we discussed a number of questions and ideas. I've been on the road a lot since then, but things are still moving along and this post is to give a little nudge about what folks can do to get involved. We need folks to help with our survey, start up an interview process and give some advice on recording conversations. We are also in the process of scheduling our next meeting to talk about Drupal 7 documentation, so if you want to hop in on that, please fill out the Doodle to set a time.

When we posted the roadmap we also opened up a survey to gather feedback on recognizing contributors. The survey is about saying "thank you" to contributors. I'm going to close the survey this Thursday, July 2, so if you haven't filled it out yet, take a few minutes to do that this week. Once we close the survey, we'll need to analyze the results, start to sketch out things we might implement and look at what other surveys may be useful. If you are interested in helping with the analysis, please let me know.

The next big item that we need help with is to begin the IA stakeholder interviews. This is one of several ways that Becca is gathering data to construct a new architecture for our documentation. We need folks that are willing to interview, as well as be interviewed. We have a script that you can follow and Becca will provide instructions. The interviews can be done in person, on the phone or using Skype. If you would like to take part or learn more about the interview process, please sign up!

One related issue we have is that we would love to have the Skype interviews recorded but we don't have good instructions for how to record both sides of a Skype conversation on multiple platforms, using free tools if possible. If you are familiar with recording Skype and have any tips or time to write up instructions for the tools you use, it would be a huge help to the docs team. Feel free to drop me a note, or just add your instructions directly to the handbook in the Content architecture section (click the Add child page link at the bottom and go nuts).

Too many times I have written a post, got it ready to go, set up my Twitter module to tell the world, and then right after I hit submit, I realize that I forgot to add the Twitter hashtags that will carry my tweet to glory. It occurred to me that maybe I should give myself a reminder by adding some hashtags to my Tweet by default, and the taxonomy terms I am using for the post are a pretty good bet for general usefulness. I whipped up a site-specific hack to do just that and thought others might be interested. It could probably be generalized so that it could be made a patch to Twitter module, but I'm not sure that is a great idea anyway and I don't have the time to even think it through, so have at.

To do fun little hacks for a Drupal site, I always have a site-specific tweak module. The Twitter module hack I wanted was just adding some default text to the Twitter module's form field (the one that appears when you check the "Announce this post on Twitter" checkbox), so I added another case to my existing hook_form_alter (everyone's got at least one, right?). All I'm doing is checking to see if my node has some terms, in a particular vocabulary even, and if so, put a little pound sign in front, string 'em together and add it to the Twitter default form field. Then I can remove or edit as I please before I actually submit it. Even if I remove every single one of them, at least it will remind me to think about it, which has been my biggest frustration.

Big caveat: I never publish when I initially create my posts. This code hack assumes you are working on an edit form, and not a creation (node/add) form. My typical routine is to use Ecto to write my drafts and then push to the site in the "unpublished" state. I then review, tweak and publish. Doing this on node creation is understandably whack, since you don't have a term associated with the node until you've saved it, yah?

So here is the code I'm running on my site, in my rts_custom module:

<?php
//$Id:

/**
* @file
*   Custom tweaks for the rocktreesky.com site.
*/

/**
* Implementation of hook_form_alter().
*/
function rts_custom_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
  switch ($form_id) {
    // Snipped other form fun case....
    case 'story_node_form':
      // Only on node edit, not node add, since there are no terms yet on add.
      if (arg(0) == 'node' && is_numeric(arg(1))) {
        $node = node_load(arg(1));
        // Get terms to turn into hash tags.
        $terms = taxonomy_node_get_terms($node);
        if ($terms) {
          $hashtags = '';
          foreach ($terms as $term) {
            // Only hash the terms from the freetagging vocab (7).
            $hashtags .= ($term->vid == 7) ? ' #' . $term->name : '';
          }
          // Add to it, don't replace it.
          $form['twitter']['status']['#default_value'] .= $hashtags;
        }
      }
      break;
  }
}
// Remove this closing PHP tag if you copy/paste this.
?>

One really important thing to remember is that the Twitter module fires fairly late in the process. By default, modules go in alphabetical order, so "T" is one of the last to go typically. My custom tweak module is named "rts_custom," so anything I do in my hook_form_alter is clobbered by twitter module, which fires after it (T coming after R). To fix that situation, I just needed to set my module's weight to be "heavier." Since this is just my quick and dirty tweaks module, I went into the database, found the rts_custom entry in the system table, and manually set the weight field to 1. If this was a module I wanted to deploy on a number of sites, I'd do that programmatically in a module .install file instead.

For those that are really new to this module thing, here is a rundown on how to make yer own:

• Create a folder in yer sites/all/modules directory and call it whatever you want (site_tweaks is fine).
• Create two files in the folder, a .module and a .info, using that same name (e.g. site_tweaks.module and site_tweaks.info).
• Copy that code up above into yer .module file and rename the function with yer special name (e.g. site_tweaks_form_alter). Also, remove that closing ?>. It is there just to make it pretty in the blog post.
• Copy this into the .info file:
  ; $Id$
  name = Site tweaks
  description = Does tweaky stuff to my site.
  core = 6.x
• Enable the module and do that funky module weight thing I mentioned.
• Bob's yer uncle.

Just one month from today I'm going to get three days of hanging out with brilliant folks from a number of open source projects to talk shop, brainstorm and generally have a great time. I'm heading to the Writing Open Source conference up in Canada from June 12-14. In the true spirit of open source, we're coming together to help each other out. The conference is about collaboration, learning, and getting stuff done. We all have a lot to gain and I hope that anyone who can get there, makes the effort. There will be expert talks, unconference learning, a whole day of sprinting, and a lot of fun.

Sometimes in open source, of all places, there is a strong reluctance to share. I think the open source writing world is less like this generally than, say, code, but there are definitely lines to cross in writing as well. There are "published authors" who don't want to "just give it away for free," as well as the regular, tired line of not wanting to "help the competition." It's open source, people. I'm not going to go into the reasons I think that argument is silly, because it should be fairly obvious. I can understand "I have limited time and prioritize my efforts." I totally get that one. That's why it is cool to make time, like you get at a conference, where you can help both yours and other projects at the same time.

Coming back to the authors/professional writers, there is so much to be written, in so many formats, that unless you truly want to limit yourself, there are lots of opportunities to publish even if you write tons and tons of stuff to give away. As a matter of fact, putting part of your work out there and working with open source doc teams can put you in an even better position as a published author. There is much to learn as well getting your name out there. You also gain valuable skills outside of writing. Open source, being the herd of cats that it is, has its own challenges that are different from many work-a-day jobs. The big issues that open source teams encounter and have to work with on a daily basis are places to push up against boundaries you may not otherwise encounter. They let you add more tools to your arsenal for that day you hit a big, dream project, or you decide you want to move into other careers. I'm also not speaking from some outside idealism here. Both myself and Emma are successful published authors. We are also crazy involved in open source documentation efforts.

So, anyway, come expand your world, learn something new that your little corner of the web might not give you, and help make all of open source better. This conference is probably the one I am personally most excited about this year and I look forward to shaking things up and forging relationships with some very cool people.

[As a note for anyone going from the U.S., I am most likely going to drive up from Buffalo rather than flying in to Toronto. If you are thinking to save a little moolah by flying to Buffalo (Canadian airfare is notoriously taxed to hell), let me know and I might be able to give you a ride.]

At the beginning of the year I decided to join a "picture a day" group on Flickr, Project 366-1. I'm not a "photographer," nor do I aspire to be. I joined the group because it seemed like a fun way to get myself documenting the things around me. I view it as a visual diary, which should be quite fascinating to look back on. I'm now just over a third of the way in to the year, 126 days, and it is interesting to look back so far. In January I was pretty fired up so I kept on track. Keeping up with a picture every day has been hard at times. For February and March, I didn't manage to do it and there are some gaps in the calendar. I redoubled my efforts in April though and managed a complete month again. The calendar archive view on Flickr pulls from all of my photos, so I set up a collection of monthly sets so that I can see what I thought was the most important or "best" picture each day. As you can see, some days were just a mark of desperation as I took any old picture, just to meet my deadline.

Through this process of playing with my camera, and the limitations it has, I am definitely learning more about capturing things visually. I still don't take great pictures, but I am appreciating the art and I have been making incremental improvements. Often I learn after I've taken the shot, once I get back to the computer and load it up to take a look. Many a day I see how I could have made it a better picture and I long to go back to make the adjustments. Sometimes I remember these lessons the next time I go out, oftentimes I don't, but I do feel that the experimentation and review is giving me a better eye, even if that doesn't seem to show up in my pictures. :-) For some of my pictures, I do actually just like the shot, like Home, Inside the cloud, and yesterday's Crosswalk, but for many of them I just enjoy being more aware and capturing the day, even, or maybe especially, the mundane. The lessons I am learning about my life, the people in it, the things that catch my eye or attention, are more valuable than getting a pretty picture.

I know that we have done the issue queue work as a challenge already, the very first one in January as a matter of fact. We got a lot accomplished in January, so let's do a spring cleanup. The reason I want to come back to the issue queue is two-fold. First, it still needs lots of love, as always, and second, I plan to finally post a beginning docs roadmap, and get some working groups kick-started around some of our big issues this month. We will be creating a lot of new issues in the docs issue queue, so I'd love for us to tidy up our work area before heading in to some ambitious new projects.

I know that working in the issue queue can seem a little intimidating so I really do want to have times when folks will be in IRC to help answer questions while working through the queue. Keep in mind that you don't necessarily need to get "higher approval" for making decisions on issues. This is the everyone's queue, but it is nice to have one or two other people around to bounce ideas off of and ask questions as you work through things. I'll try to be available in IRC on #drupal-docs as much as I can, but I'd also like to have some preset times. So, let's say meet up in IRC every Sunday and Thursday at 5 p.m. GMT (see when that is in your timezone). My schedule will be all over the place this month since half of it I will be traveling around Europe to various Drupalcamps, so I may not be online at these times, but please do come together anyway and help each other out.

I know that we have done the issue queue work as a challenge already, the very first one in January as a matter of fact. We got a lot accomplished in January, so let's do a spring cleanup. The reason I want to come back to the issue queue is two-fold. First, it still needs lots of love, as always, and second, I plan to finally post a beginning docs roadmap, and get some working groups kick-started around some of our big issues this month. We will be creating a lot of new issues in the docs issue queue, so I'd love for us to tidy up our work area before heading in to some ambitious new projects.

I know that working in the issue queue can seem a little intimidating so I really do want to have times when folks will be in IRC to help answer questions while working through the queue. Keep in mind that you don't necessarily need to get "higher approval" for making decisions on issues. This is the everyone's queue, but it is nice to have one or two other people around to bounce ideas off of and ask questions as you work through things. I'll try to be available in IRC on #drupal-docs as much as I can, but I'd also like to have some preset times. So, let's say meet up in IRC every Sunday and Thursday at 5 p.m. GMT (see when that is in your timezone). My schedule will be all over the place this month since half of it I will be traveling around Europe to various Drupalcamps, so I may not be online at these times, but please do come together anyway and help each other out.

In the last month or so I had a period where I felt things going into a bit of a tailspin. It is a cyclical thing where life just feels overwhelming, out of control, meaningless even. I spent almost a week feeling down in the dumps and like I was letting everyone around me down. I didn't know what to do "about it" so I just sat with it, really poking at it for a few days. By the end of the week I had come to accept some things about myself and life. I'll forget them and eventually, around some other corner, I'll meet the dip in the road again. That's how it goes, but every time I ride the roller coaster I learn more about myself and navigating through life. The main thing that occurred to me that week was that I can not be what everyone thinks I am, including myself. I ended up letting go of a lot of notions I have about who I "am" and where my priorities really lie. I'm petty and giving, angry and joyful, ignorant and smart. And I suddenly felt OK with all of it. My life, and life in general, is much bigger than all of these things. I felt like I have been pushing to be a wave on the ocean; the biggest, fastest one I can be, and then I realized that even if I break the surface and become a stunning wave for a few minutes, I'm still going back into the ocean. The drive to punch through the surface and create that illusory feeling of "being different" than all the rest, seemed to recede once I really looked at it.

The continuation of that week of hard introspection and letting go, has brought me back to meditating. Now, I have meditated on and off for over half of my life, but I've never done it regularly. I'll normally sit for a few days, or maybe two weeks, and then I get bored or frustrated and I stop. This time though, things seem to have shifted. I've been sitting every day for a month now and the big difference is that I want to, rather than feeling like I should. I used to try to make myself sit for a minimum period of time, 5, 10, 30 minutes. Now I sit for however long I happen to. I don't even have a clock in the room so that I won't be tempted to keep peeking to see if I'm doing it "long enough." Some days it is five minutes, others, maybe half an hour. Not every day is some blissful nirvana either, far from it. Many a day I am agitated or excited and my monkey-mind is all over the place, but even taking the time to sit and recognize where I am at the moment is immensely helpful. Saying "I'm afraid today" at least lets me acknowledge what's up. I stop and listen to myself. It's amazing what you can find out when you do that. I've also managed to really take to heart Pema Chödrön's words of wisdom in "When Things Fall Apart" (amazing book btw) about caring for your self, so that most days I can smile at my crazy monkey-mind and not get angry or dismissive. Until I read that book years ago, and really let it sink in, I tended to scold myself during meditation, rather than paying attention.

Currently I am re-reading Thich Nhat Hanh's "The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings," which is a great review of the fundamentals of Buddhist thought. Each day, after I sit, I pick it up and read a chapter or a section of chapter to contemplate for the day. I don't always keep it in mind but getting some perspective from my paper "sangha" helps me set off on a more even keel. The sitting, stopping and listening make a horrible day not feel quite so oppressive, and sometimes it even lets me realign my thinking enough that I can actually help make the day better for myself and others. So, anyway, this is a reminder that sometimes moving into the chaos and sitting with it, when you feel like things are exploding or slipping away, can be a grounding and freeing experience. I leave this note to my future self. :-)

In the last month or so I had a period where I felt things going into a bit of a tailspin. It is a cyclical thing where life just feels overwhelming, out of control, meaningless even. I spent almost a week feeling down in the dumps and like I was letting everyone around me down. I didn't know what to do "about it" so I just sat with it, really poking at it for a few days. By the end of the week I had come to accept some things about myself and life. I'll forget them and eventually, around some other corner, I'll meet the dip in the road again. That's how it goes, but every time I ride the roller coaster I learn more about myself and navigating through life. The main thing that occurred to me that week was that I can not be what everyone thinks I am, including myself. I ended up letting go of a lot of notions I have about who I "am" and where my priorities really lie. I'm petty and giving, angry and joyful, ignorant and smart. And I suddenly felt OK with all of it. My life, and life in general, is much bigger than all of these things. I felt like I have been pushing to be a wave on the ocean; the biggest, fastest one I can be, and then I realized that even if I break the surface and become a stunning wave for a few minutes, I'm still going back into the ocean. The drive to punch through the surface and create that illusory feeling of "being different" than all the rest, seemed to recede once I really looked at it.

The continuation of that week of hard introspection and letting go, has brought me back to meditating. Now, I have meditated on and off for over half of my life, but I've never done it regularly. I'll normally sit for a few days, or maybe two weeks, and then I get bored or frustrated and I stop. This time though, things seem to have shifted. I've been sitting every day for a month now and the big difference is that I want to, rather than feeling like I should. I used to try to make myself sit for a minimum period of time, 5, 10, 30 minutes. Now I sit for however long I happen to. I don't even have a clock in the room so that I won't be tempted to keep peeking to see if I'm doing it "long enough." Some days it is five minutes, others, maybe half an hour. Not every day is some blissful nirvana either, far from it. Many a day I am agitated or excited and my monkey-mind is all over the place, but even taking the time to sit and recognize where I am at the moment is immensely helpful. Saying "I'm afraid today" at least lets me acknowledge what's up. I stop and listen to myself. It's amazing what you can find out when you do that. I've also managed to really take to heart Pema Chödrön's words of wisdom in "When Things Fall Apart" (amazing book btw) about caring for your self, so that most days I can smile at my crazy monkey-mind and not get angry or dismissive. Until I read that book years ago, and really let it sink in, I tended to scold myself during meditation, rather than paying attention.

Currently I am re-reading Thich Nhat Hanh's "The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings," which is a great review of the fundamentals of Buddhist thought. Each day, after I sit, I pick it up and read a chapter or a section of chapter to contemplate for the day. I don't always keep it in mind but getting some perspective from my paper "sangha" helps me set off on a more even keel. The sitting, stopping and listening make a horrible day not feel quite so oppressive, and sometimes it even lets me realign my thinking enough that I can actually help make the day better for myself and others. So, anyway, this is a reminder that sometimes moving into the chaos and sitting with it, when you feel like things are exploding or slipping away, can be a grounding and freeing experience. I leave this note to my future self. :-)

While I was at Drupalcamp Galway, Stéphane (scor) recorded an interview with me about not just the Galway doc sprint, but also about future doc sprints around the world. He's got the interview up on his blog and it's only 6 minutes long. Give it a listen and let me know about your Drupal event and how I can help you out.

While I was at Drupalcamp Galway, Stéphane (scor) recorded an interview with me about not just the Galway doc sprint, but also about future doc sprints around the world. He's got the interview up on his blog and it's only 6 minutes long. Give it a listen and let me know about your Drupal event and how I can help you out.

I managed to get my hands on a pre-release version of a new Drupal book that just came out this week. The book is Front End Drupal and it is written by Emma Jane Hogbin and Konstantin Kaefer. The book says on the cover, Designing, Theming, Scripting, and I'm excited to see another book that really gets into Drupal 6 theming. When we, at Lullabot, wrote Using Drupal and we had to draw the line at a basic intro to theming, I was looking for a book to carry that forward. Since I am lucky enough to have myself a copy and found some time to sit down and read it, I thought I'd share my thoughts for those that may be trying to decide whether to order it (short answer is "yes").

To properly orient this review, I should start off by saying that I know Drupal theming pretty well, so my take on things may be a bit different from someone who is totally new to theming. I've also taught a lot of folks though, on every part of the learning curve, so I can appreciate what it means to get some of this stuff to click for people. The book tells you at the start that you shouldn't be a total Drupal newbie. This book is about getting Drupal to look the way you want, but it expects you to bring some basic skills to the table. Now, that said, the first few chapters do take the time to get you oriented with Drupal; so if you are rusty, you get a refresher, and if you are cheeky and like to scoff at "prerequisites," you at least get a toe-hold of the basics before being whisked into the heart of it all. So, off we go.

As I started into it, the first thing that I noticed was that this really is not about "just" code. I was expecting to get dumped right into some hacking and instead, you are given some good groundwork first. While the first two chapters would be the stuff I'd normally skip, I'd advise reading them, especially if you are new to Drupal or dynamic web sites in general. If you are a know-it-all, then I suggest you at least skim the headings and make sure you actually know what you think you know. The first chapter covers a lot of the basics of WTH are you even doing when making a website. These are generally good things to think about and go through even if you aren't theming. Stuff like, what kind of content are you really going to need, how do things need to be listed, who will be using it and how? The chapter walks you through the questions and talks about them from a Drupal perspective. You really should think about your site before you dive in willy-nilly. After you get your head into the proper space about what you are building, chapter 2 covers tools. This covers the gamut from a CCK and Views refresher, to cron and using version control. Basically, it is packed with a really complete checklist and you'll save yourself time and frustration if you take some time to go through this chapter and get yourself comfy.

Chapter 3 is where you start to learn about Drupal themes themselves. After a bit about how to install and configure existing themes, you get to make your first theme. It walks you through multiple ways to get started; using a contributed theme, making a theme from scratch, upgrading a theme from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, or even how to convert a theme from Wordpress or Joomla!. I was surprised to find some of this more "advanced" stuff like upgrading or converting so early in the book. I would have expected it to be in the appendix instead, especially since some of the things it refers to haven't really been covered yet, or are really not likely. Not many people start with theming by upgrading a theme from 5 to 6, but they definitely would want a handy reference for it later if they need it. On the other hand, I can see that covering how to move from another system would be a more comfortable way for some people to start off. One thing that would be nice for those sections is to provide more detailed references right there (e.g. a link to the Drupal.org theme upgrade or variables docs). That way folks can come back to that chapter later and use it as a more one-stop shop for that kind of work later.

Once you have the basics down, the next few chapters take you into the major building blocks of themes by looking at the overall page (and things like blocks, taxonomy, search, etc.), as well as getting into content (nodes, CCK and Views). This is the nitty-gritty of what all these template files are for and how to crack them open and get them doing what you want. Sprinkled in here is a section on getting images into your content. It doesn't really do the full pointy-clicky work, but it does point you off to the various techniques to look at, like Image vs Imagefield.

Related to content, but in a whole chapter of its own (rightly so), is a really nice guide to working with Drupal forms. Output is great, but what about those pesky input forms that are the workhorse of administering your site? Again, this chapter has solid code examples and explanations, along with more module discussion about things like WYSIWYG editors. From there the book goes on to cover other important things like users and profiles, with a bit about controlling various things in this realm with regards to things like permissions and spam. The admin interface chapter is very module heavy and looks largely to modules that can make your admin's life a little easier, with some theme tweaking thrown in for good measure. Definitely a very pointy-clicky chapter more than codey.

With all of the aspects of your site humming along nicely, the rest of book takes you into the wonderful world of JavaScript and the Drupal flavor, jQuery. These chapters leave the pointy-clicky behind entirely. Here you will plunge into an overview of JavaScript and then on into fun things you can do with jQuery, from hiding and showing elements on a page to playing with AJAX. It is an intense few chapters packed with lots of info. You can also grab sample code from the book website, http://frontenddrupal.com, to play around with to help get a feel for it.

Ok, so long review already, but there is definitely a lot of stuff in here. I expected a "theming" book and got more than I bargained for. At times some of the things that had more to do with modules and configuration would surprise me, but then again, the front end of a website is more than just the theme, it is all of the pieces that play a part in both look and feel. So, while I found it surprising, I don't think it is off-base and honestly for people who are new to Drupal this is a freaking gem. Don't think that this is only for newbs though, not at all. This is a serious book, made for grownups, and it expects you to be able to extrapolate from examples and make use of the references you've been given. To my mind that is the only way to really learn this stuff. The chapters give context, some conceptual framework, and points to the standard references, but then it dives straight in to real examples, and they aren't namby-pamby. Some examples are definitely doing some interesting stuff, but the great thing is that each part is explained step-by-step. This gives newbies some hand-holding while allowing more advanced folks to just get down to it and see what they can really do beyond the basics. Overall, a great book, jam-packed with lots of learning. Congrats to Emma and Konstantin for producing another great book in the Drupal library.

I managed to get my hands on a pre-release version of a new Drupal book that just came out this week. The book is Front End Drupal and it is written by Emma Jane Hogbin and Konstantin Kaefer. The book says on the cover, Designing, Theming, Scripting, and I'm excited to see another book that really gets into Drupal 6 theming. When we, at Lullabot, wrote Using Drupal and we had to draw the line at a basic intro to theming, I was looking for a book to carry that forward. Since I am lucky enough to have myself a copy and found some time to sit down and read it, I thought I'd share my thoughts for those that may be trying to decide whether to order it (short answer is "yes").

To properly orient this review, I should start off by saying that I know Drupal theming pretty well, so my take on things may be a bit different from someone who is totally new to theming. I've also taught a lot of folks though, on every part of the learning curve, so I can appreciate what it means to get some of this stuff to click for people. The book tells you at the start that you shouldn't be a total Drupal newbie. This book is about getting Drupal to look the way you want, but it expects you to bring some basic skills to the table. Now, that said, the first few chapters do take the time to get you oriented with Drupal; so if you are rusty, you get a refresher, and if you are cheeky and like to scoff at "prerequisites," you at least get a toe-hold of the basics before being whisked into the heart of it all. So, off we go.

As I started into it, the first thing that I noticed was that this really is not about "just" code. I was expecting to get dumped right into some hacking and instead, you are given some good groundwork first. While the first two chapters would be the stuff I'd normally skip, I'd advise reading them, especially if you are new to Drupal or dynamic web sites in general. If you are a know-it-all, then I suggest you at least skim the headings and make sure you actually know what you think you know. The first chapter covers a lot of the basics of WTH are you even doing when making a website. These are generally good things to think about and go through even if you aren't theming. Stuff like, what kind of content are you really going to need, how do things need to be listed, who will be using it and how? The chapter walks you through the questions and talks about them from a Drupal perspective. You really should think about your site before you dive in willy-nilly. After you get your head into the proper space about what you are building, chapter 2 covers tools. This covers the gamut from a CCK and Views refresher, to cron and using version control. Basically, it is packed with a really complete checklist and you'll save yourself time and frustration if you take some time to go through this chapter and get yourself comfy.

Chapter 3 is where you start to learn about Drupal themes themselves. After a bit about how to install and configure existing themes, you get to make your first theme. It walks you through multiple ways to get started; using a contributed theme, making a theme from scratch, upgrading a theme from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, or even how to convert a theme from Wordpress or Joomla!. I was surprised to find some of this more "advanced" stuff like upgrading or converting so early in the book. I would have expected it to be in the appendix instead, especially since some of the things it refers to haven't really been covered yet, or are really not likely. Not many people start with theming by upgrading a theme from 5 to 6, but they definitely would want a handy reference for it later if they need it. On the other hand, I can see that covering how to move from another system would be a more comfortable way for some people to start off. One thing that would be nice for those sections is to provide more detailed references right there (e.g. a link to the Drupal.org theme upgrade or variables docs). That way folks can come back to that chapter later and use it as a more one-stop shop for that kind of work later.

Once you have the basics down, the next few chapters take you into the major building blocks of themes by looking at the overall page (and things like blocks, taxonomy, search, etc.), as well as getting into content (nodes, CCK and Views). This is the nitty-gritty of what all these template files are for and how to crack them open and get them doing what you want. Sprinkled in here is a section on getting images into your content. It doesn't really do the full pointy-clicky work, but it does point you off to the various techniques to look at, like Image vs Imagefield.

Related to content, but in a whole chapter of its own (rightly so), is a really nice guide to working with Drupal forms. Output is great, but what about those pesky input forms that are the workhorse of administering your site? Again, this chapter has solid code examples and explanations, along with more module discussion about things like WYSIWYG editors. From there the book goes on to cover other important things like users and profiles, with a bit about controlling various things in this realm with regards to things like permissions and spam. The admin interface chapter is very module heavy and looks largely to modules that can make your admin's life a little easier, with some theme tweaking thrown in for good measure. Definitely a very pointy-clicky chapter more than codey.

With all of the aspects of your site humming along nicely, the rest of book takes you into the wonderful world of JavaScript and the Drupal flavor, jQuery. These chapters leave the pointy-clicky behind entirely. Here you will plunge into an overview of JavaScript and then on into fun things you can do with jQuery, from hiding and showing elements on a page to playing with AJAX. It is an intense few chapters packed with lots of info. You can also grab sample code from the book website, http://frontenddrupal.com, to play around with to help get a feel for it.

Ok, so long review already, but there is definitely a lot of stuff in here. I expected a "theming" book and got more than I bargained for. At times some of the things that had more to do with modules and configuration would surprise me, but then again, the front end of a website is more than just the theme, it is all of the pieces that play a part in both look and feel. So, while I found it surprising, I don't think it is off-base and honestly for people who are new to Drupal this is a freaking gem. Don't think that this is only for newbs though, not at all. This is a serious book, made for grownups, and it expects you to be able to extrapolate from examples and make use of the references you've been given. To my mind that is the only way to really learn this stuff. The chapters give context, some conceptual framework, and points to the standard references, but then it dives straight in to real examples, and they aren't namby-pamby. Some examples are definitely doing some interesting stuff, but the great thing is that each part is explained step-by-step. This gives newbies some hand-holding while allowing more advanced folks to just get down to it and see what they can really do beyond the basics. Overall, a great book, jam-packed with lots of learning. Congrats to Emma and Konstantin for producing another great book in the Drupal library.