Designing the Web for today's devices

7 July 2010 - 1:01pm — Bevan

Consider the devices that we use to interact with the Web. Most of the time we use a mouse, keyboard and screen. Sometimes we use small touch-sensitive screens on a phone. Our notebook computers usually have smallish screens. Sometimes we view the Web on large or very large screens. Or use completely different devices like the iPad and video game consoles.

There is an extremely wide range of devices and screen resolutions that we regularly use to interact with the Web.

Read more

NZ is Free of Software Patents!

3 June 2010 - 10:53pm — Bevan

Snoopy Cartoon: Celebrate the little thingsWe did it! NZ is (very nearly almost) free of software patents!

"We recommend amending clause 15 to include computer programs among inventions that may not be patented. We received many submissions concerning the patentability of computer programs. Under the Patents Act 1953 computer programs can be patented in New Zealand provided they produce a commercially useful effect. Open source, or free, software has grown in popularity since the 1980s. Protecting software by patenting it is inconsistent with the open source model, and its proponents oppose it. A number of submitters argued that there is no “inventive step” in software development, as “new” software invariably builds on existing software. They felt that computer software should be excluded from patent protection as software patents can stifle innovation and competition, and can be granted for trivial or existing techniques. In general we accept this position.

— Commerce Committee's recommendation on the Patents Bill, Part 2, Patentable inventions (Emphasis mine)

While I support and agree with the commerce committee's conclusion and recommendations, I do not agree that the increasing popularity of open source software has anything to do with it, and I regret their use of the term "open source" and emphasis on open source software as the reasoning. Software patents are almost as impactful on proprietary software as they are on open source software. The main difference for open source software is simply that proprietary software license sales are centralised and the central enterprise is more likely to be able to play the patent game. Playing the patent game is usually an impossibility for open source software vendors. By contrast, open source software vendors are usually distributed and each generally generates revenue for itself by selling services – not licenses on behalf of a central enterprise.

Many people worked very hard to help NZ's members of parliament understand why software should be excluded from patentability. Including; NZOSS, InternetNZ, Guy Burgess, EndSoftwarePatents.org's wiki on software patents in New Zealand (supported by the Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center), Egressive, Bevan Rudge (myself) and numerous other companies and software developers.

Others worked hard to preserve software patentability. There were two types of enterprises arguing the other side of the debate, with obvious motives that are inconsistent with the interests of New Zealanders and the people and companies NZ patent law is intended to protect;

  1. Large software vendors and producers (which are all foreign) that already have patent portfolios, or can afford to assemble them. Patent portfolios are valuable business weapons used primarily by such organisations to mitigate patent threats from other large competitors (also wielding patent portfolios), and also to maliciously bully smaller competitors who cannot afford patent portfolios. Examples include Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Novell.
  2. Patent attorneys that work for companies (like those above) who seek and can afford to fight patent battles. Examples include AJ Park and Baldwins.

As for my own efforts Dave Lane, Jonathan Hunt and I met with Lianne Dalziel, Chairperson of the Commerce Committee and Labour Party MP and had a very productive discussion about the issue. We followed up with written and oral submissions. (Though I could not make the oral submission myself).

I also did a lot of research for, and maintenance of, the EndSoftwarePatents.org wiki on New Zealand and helped co-ordinate others' efforts through the NZOSS; particularly for written and oral submissions, and also meeting with MPs, what to write, what message to send and where to. Though a lot of that work has now been deprecated and is in the history archive for that wiki article.

But wait! The game is not quite over yet. There is still a (small) chance of parliament doing a "Tizard" on us. This is when parliament overrules the committee's recommended law and makes last-minute changes to the final draft of the written law and executes it, without time being made available for public comment. This is now referred to as "Tizard" in New Zealand's technology and intellectual property circles after Judith Tizard's controversial actions in early 2009, that rendered draconian section 92a copyright laws effective after they had already been removed.

We need to keep an eye out for this to prevent it, and react quickly and loudly if it happens. Keep an eye on TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, Legislation.govt.nz and the SWPat.org wiki article on NZ for updates.

Starting at Palantir

1 June 2010 - 3:16pm — Bevan

Logo of Palantir.netToday is a new beginning. Today is my first day at Palantir.net. I am now a "Palantiri"! (That's Palantiri-speak for someone who works at Palantir.net. ;)

Palantir.net is a high-end Drupal consulting & services company based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Palantir.net has a great team of Drupal developers and contributors, including some friends and past colleagues from CivicActions and NowPublic. And I am excited to be a part of that team!

"Bevan joins our Front-end Development (FED) team as a senior front-end developer. A permanent member of the Drupal Association, Bevan is an active community member and a jack-of-all-Drupal-trades with expertise in theming, Javascript, and module development.

— Palantir.net/blog

This means that I will be traveling back to North America again in June already, for a one-week long Palantir on-site, DrupalCamp Chicago and one-week working in-house in Palantir's offices.

My title at Palantir.net is "Senior Front End Developer" (aka "themer", or "FED").

To new beginnings...

jQuery.dashboard() in CiviCRM 3.1

1 June 2010 - 3:15pm — Bevan

In January 2009 I wrote and released jQuery.dashboard() plugin, which extends jQuery to quickly and easily create dashboard UIs like iGoogle. A handful of people have using it for a while, but in December 2009, it was announced that CiviCRM 3.1 would include a dashboard feature utilising jQuery.dashboard() plugin! CiviCRM 3.1 was released late January 2010. (So this blog post is a little late!)

Screenshot of jQuery.dashboard() plugin on CiviCRM 3.1 Demo site

You can try it out yourself at CiviCRM's Drupal demo site.

It is great to see that people are finding value in code I wrote and it is encouraging that it is so widely used!

tpl.phps are not templates, Wednesday 11am, room 212, DrupalCon San Francisco

20 April 2010 - 6:01pm — Bevan

I scheduled the "tpl.phps are not real templates" session and discussion as a BoF session on Wednesday at 11am in room 212 at DrupalCon San Francisco.

From my original post;

"Drupal's template files (*.tpl.php) are not really templates. This is what my DrupalCon core developer summit submission is about. The slides briefly explain why tpl.phps are not real templates, what real templates are, why this is a problem for the Drupal project and community, and mentions some possible solutions to the problem. It also provides some basic guidelines as a starting point for tpl.php standards, should that be pursued."

Links

tpl.phps are not templates

14 April 2010 - 10:11pm — Bevan

Drupal's template files (*.tpl.php) are not really templates. This is what my DrupalCon core developer summit submission is about. The slides briefly explain why tpl.phps are not real templates, what real templates are, why this is a problem for the Drupal project and community, and mentions some possible solutions to the problem. It also provides some basic guidelines as a starting point for tpl.php standards, should that be pursued.

Download the slides here.

AttachmentSize
Drupal tpl.phps are not templates.pdf294.24 KB

New roles at NowPublic and the Drupal Association

14 April 2010 - 9:57pm — Bevan

The new year (this post is a little late!) has brought me new opportunities and some new roles;

NowPublic, Crowd Powered Media

New job at NowPublic

At NowPublic I work on front end theming and customizations for NowPublic.com and Scan — a realtime twitter and social media tracker for NowPublic.com, Examiner.com, WashingtonExaminer.com, SFexaminer.com and The Vancouver Sun.

Currently I am the skeleton dev team that maintains NowPublic.com, while the rest of the NowPublic dev team works on the Examiner.com migration to Drupal 7. Though I spend most of my dev time in the depths of the javascript and theme layer of Scan.

One of the most exciting things about this job is that I am able to work with an amazing team of developers including some other CivicActions alumni, whom I respect and seek to learn from. Such as chx, kkaefer, douggreen and Morbus Iff and many others.

Head On Vancouver

Vancouver

The new job at NowPublic saw me relocate to Vancouver for two and a half months, from just after DrupalSouth Wellington

at the end of January, until DrupalCon San Francisco, this week.

Vancouver has been astounding! Some highlights of my first trip ever to Canada and my stay in Vancouver include;

Returning to New Zealand

This Friday 16 April I depart Vancouver for San Francisco, where I will stay with the Clarity Digital Group developer team at Westin Hotel Market street for 8 days, for the Drupal core developer summit, DrupalCon SF, code sprints, meetings, social events, and a Drupal Association retreat.

Finally, on April 26 (after losing April 25 to the date line) I will arrive home to Christchurch NZ to stay indefinitely. It will be exactly 8 months since my wife and I departed Christchurch for DrupalCon Paris and a journey across 5 continents. I am looking forward to having a home (when we find and rent one!) and our bed back.

Drupal Association

Permanent Member of the Drupal Association General Assembly

Being elected onto the Drupal Association's General Assembly was largely unexpected and came as a surprise to me. I have been a core part of the DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organisers (DCAPO) group on groups.drupal.org since it started in September 2009 and collaborated a little with Cary Gordon (Drupal Association Board, Director of Events) over that time. Cary asked me to join the Drupal Association to help centralise international DrupalCon coordination efforts (as per the events plan) and provide the association with a more internationalised perspective.

It is still early days at the association, but my goal (as per my application) at the Drupal Association is to empower a team to organise and run a DrupalCon somewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, hopefully around 2011. There are some ideas and projects at the association to do with scholarships and mini-conferences — but I will save that for another time, when it is ready.

jQuery for Designers & Themers at DrupalCon San Francisco

12 April 2010 - 9:38pm — Bevan

DrupalCon San Francisco, April 19-21, 2010jQuery for Designers and Themers is a fun interactive session at DrupalCon San francisco on getting started with jQuery. It is targeted at designers and themers but is suitable for anyone with a decent understanding of HTML and CSS — no programming experience is necessary. It doesn't include any PHP, and only basic programming concepts are introduced.

The session is early on Tuesday 20 April in room 307 (Commerce guys) at DrupalCon SF at 8:30am.

The sample code is available at Drupal.org/Project/jQ4DaT and slides are available at TinyURL.com/jQuery-Designers (Google Docs).

Some other related or similar sessions include;

URGENT: Fight for your rights!

12 April 2010 - 9:16pm — Bevan

NZ government is negotiating a trade act that will impact your civil liberties. And they are doing it behind our backs — in secret!

"ACTA is a controversial international treaty that impacts digital rights and is being negotiated in secret meetings. ACTA is proposed as a plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It is being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, the negotiations have extended beyond trade and physical counterfeiting to potentially cover non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens and issues of digital rights management." — PublicACTA.org.nz

As well as the violating our democratic principles, and the deceitful name of the treaty, ACTA aims to bring back the "draconian" (to quote prime minister John Keys) S92a laws we fought hard against last year with the NZ Internet Blackout.

PublicACTA Anti-Counterfeiting Trade AgreementThe PublicACTA event last Saturday produced "The Wellington Declaration". You can and should read the declaration and sign it by Tuesday morning NZ time.

Sign the Wellington Declaration Now!

DrupalSouth Wellington A Success

12 April 2010 - 8:47pm — Bevan

DrupalSouth attendees pointing at Angela 'webchick' Byron (Drupal 7 core committer) in the center

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 was a booming success! And that would be an understatement. 100 Drupallers from NZ, Australia, North America and Europe came together for 2 Wellington-wet days in a brewery and couldn't stop talking about Drupal!

Here is DrupalSouth by the numbers;

  • 1: Code sprints
  • 2: Tracks (simultaneous sessions)
  • 2: Duration in days
  • 2: Lunches provided
  • 2: Organisers
  • 2: Attendees from parliament (Green party)
  • 3: Keynote speakers from North America (Liz Henry, Emma Jane Hogbin & Angela Byron)
  • 3: Platinum Sponsors
  • 3: DrupliBeanBags
  • 4: Attendees from the IRD
  • 5: Gold sponsors
  • 5: Percent of attendees from Hawkes bay
  • 5: Months to organise
  • 6: Companies involved in the wireless internet
  • 6: Wireless access points
  • 7: Value of each bar token in NZ dollars
  • 8: Silver Sponsors
  • 9: Varieties of beer brewed on-site
  • 10: Start time on Saturday
  • 11: Thousands of dollars turned over in event production
  • 15: Attendees from NZ government agencies (IRD, Greens, NZ Police, various ministries, etc.)
  • 16: Sponsors
  • 16: Percent of attendees from Australia
  • 16: Percent of attendees from Christchurch
  • 18: Age of youngest attendee
  • 20: MBs of synchronous bandwidth
  • 21: Percent of attendees from Auckland
  • 26: Speakers
  • 28: Attendees who also attended LCA the week before
  • 29: Sessions
  • 30: Percent of female attendees
  • 32: Percent of attendees from Wellington region
  • 36: A3 sheets of printed sponsor logos
  • 60: Registration cost
  • 64: Cost of food and snacks per attendee
  • 100: Registrations sold
  • 220: Bar tokens printed

Some of my personal highlights were;

Thank you to;

Read other's post-DrupalSouth write-ups at;

DrupalCon: jQuery for Designers & Themers

26 February 2010 - 9:06pm — Bevan

jQueryjQuery for Designers and Themers is a fun interactive session on getting started with jQuery. It is targeted at designers and themers but is suitable for anyone with a decent understanding of HTML and CSS — no programming experience is necessary. It doesn't include any PHP, and only basic programming concepts are introduced.

DrupalCon San Francisco, April 19-21, 2010If you want to see this session at DrupalCon San Francisco you'll need to vote on it here it is at 8:30am on Tuesday 20 April in room 307 (Commerce guys) at DrupalCon SF.

I've presented sessions like this one twice before. The first time at DrupalCon Paris September 2009, and the second time at DrupalSouth Wellington January 2010, where it was successful and well received and both times.

Sample code is available at Drupal.org/Project/jQ4DaT and slides are available at TinyURL.com/jQuery-Designers (Google Docs). (They will be updated.)

Some other related or similar sessions include;

How Was DrupalSouth's Internet so Awesome!?

23 February 2010 - 1:29pm — Bevan
Crude network and sponsor diagram/map of DrupalSouth's Wifi and internet connectivity, showing each step of the internet connection chain and sponsor's logos.

DrupalSouth — a 100-person technical conference — had awesome internet. This is how we did it.

DrupalSouth might well be the first Drupal conference with internet that didn't suck. For the first time, I didn't hear anyone complain about connectivity or speed. Everyone had internet access! If I didn't hear about any issues you were having, or if you had any complaints or problems, please let us know in the comments.

  1. Egressive pulled most of this together. Egressive provides both Linux and Drupal services and know a lot of people in the industry. In particular, Rob Fraser's technical networking know-how and contacts at Effusion, IOPEN, Unleash and elsewhere are what made this possible.

    Thanks Rob, and thanks Egressive!

  2. IOPEN and members of the Effusion group built a robust scalable wireless network for Kiwi PyCon 2009, just a few months earlier. DrupalSouth's wireless requirements were very similar to PyCon's. DrupalSouth was a little smaller in number of attendees. One difference was that the network data analysis and the Wireless Weather Report (see below) generating were not done on-site but 400 km away in Christchurch using a small real-time data stream from DrupalSouth. Also, Brian Chatterton of IOPEN made a few minor configuration enhancements, renamed the the networks in honour of Drupal's founder and changed the passwords.

    Brian Chatterton really understands networking. Technical conferences have such demanding wifi and networking requirements that can not be tested under load ahead of time. And usually they fail. Brian's experience and knowledge has been twice-proven by Kiwi PyCon and DrupalSouth's great wifi.

    Thanks Brian!

  3. R2 installed the purple VSDL cable and connection from the DrupalSouth network hub, out the window, up to the roof of Mac's Brewery, across the roof, up the wall of the NZ Stock Exchange building, through a window of TradeMe's offices, and into a spare wall-mounted network port nearby; which was re-patched directly into Citylink's fibre network in TradeMe's server and patch room.

    Richard Naylor of R2 is very respected and well known in Wellington when it comes to internet connectivity. As a City Council employee in the 90s he founded the project that later became Citylink. He now runs a private consultancy with his son, specializing in video streaming, and live video recording and hosting online. R2 did the video recording and streaming for Linux.conf.au Wellington.

    Richard and his network of industry and business contacts made this possible; he provided a missing link between the wifi LAN and Citylink's high-speed fibre network, temporarily extending it to the venue.

    Thanks Richard!

  4. Citylink's high speed city fibre optic network in Wellington connects hundreds of businesses, buildings and data centres city-wide with fast low-latency network speeds. Karen Lindsay-Kerr at Citylink was kind enough to arrange a sponsored VLAN from TradeMe's data centre to Unleash's point of presence across town. That's fibre all the way!

    Thanks Karen and thanks Citylink!

  5. Unleash, the last point in the hardware chain, provided a high speed connection to the Internet. They generously sponsored 100Gb of data, a 20Mb symmetrical link, and a whole block of 256 IP addresses. (Unfortunately we couldn't assign the public IP addresses to devices due to time constraints.)

    Unleash is an ISP based in Christchurch with four data centres across New Zealand, and nationwide network coverage with fibre, wireless and ADSL2+. They provide virtual and dedicated hosting, co-location and high-speed Internet services.

    Thanks Unleash!

The last component is a software layer: IOPEN created a network traffic monitoring tool that collects data about the network and monitors load and resource usage. A "wireless weather report". This is useful to fix any issues if they arise (which they didn't!) and analyse network traffic to make improvements to network configuration for next time. They also made the data from tool available to users connected to the DrupalSouth network. Here is a screenshot:

Screenshot of the network weather report tool by IOPEN

Most of the companies and individuals mentioned here donated their time and services. You can see all of DrupalSouth sponsors on the sponsor page.

Thanks everyone!

Registrations open for DrupalSouth Wellington, the NZ Drupal event

4 December 2009 - 6:32pm — Bevan

DrupalSouth registrations opened a couple of days ago and there are already almost 30 registered attendees! Capacity is limited to 100 and it is expected to sell out, so get in quick!

Registration costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. Here is the full announcement;

DrupalSouth logo: The DrupliKiwiFruitDrupalSouth Wellington 2010 is the New Zealand Drupal event. It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk. DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January — just after Linux.conf.au Wellington.

DrupalSouth features some great speakers and attendees from NZ and abroad, including

  • Angela Byron (webchick); Drupal 7 core committer, Drupal community nurturer, and co-author of Using Drupal
  • Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane); co-author of Front End Drupal, uber-documenter, Drupal evangelist/speaker and community all-rounder
  • Liz Henry (lizhenry), BlogHer.com developer — the largest community for women bloggers, built on Drupal since 2006

Registration costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. The full schedule is coming soon!

Such a great price for such a high-quality event has only been possible thanks to our generous sponsors, including;

  • Xplain Technology Hosting; Web hosting optimized for Drupal
  • Sparks Interactive; Straight talking, successful work, simple equation.
  • .nz; .nz is our home
  • Em Space; Em Space is a web agency in Melbourne, Australia. We build Drupal websites for enterprise, government and not-for-profit
  • Catalyst IT; Specialists in Open Source Technologies
  • Egressive; Building superior computing solutions powered by Linux and Drupal
  • Open Query; Exceptional Services for MySQL and MariaDB at a Fixed Budget
  • Fuzion; connect : campaign : communicate.

DrupalSouth Wellington will be at the upstairs function room at Mac's Brewery Bar & Restaurant, on Wellington City's waterfront, and just a few hundred metres from Linux.conf.au at the Wellington Convention Centre.

DrupalSouth Wellington will be the second event of it's kind. The first was DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008.

Last call for DrupalSouth sponsors

24 November 2009 - 7:55am — Bevan

It is not too late to sponsor DrupalSouth. BUT, there is room for only a few more sponsors and sponsorship closes this Friday 27 November. So if you want to sponsor contact us now!

All sponsors get

  • Logo and link to company profile on sponsors page
  • Detailed company profile on the website
  • Entire team profile on the website
  • Swag in the attendee pack
  • 1 free registration

Platinum sponsors get

  • Largest logo on every page on the website
  • Flexible advertising options on the website and at the event
  • Large and prominent printed logo at the venue and on printed materials
  • Acknowledgement in all announcements and media releases
  • Featured article on the website, distributed to all attendees

Gold sponsors get

  • Large logo on randomly alternating pages on the website
  • Printed logo at the venue and on printed materials
  • Acknowledgement in some announcements and media releases

Silver sponsors get

  • Logo on randomly alternating pages on the website
  • Logo in most printed materials

There is room for just 1 more Platinum sponsor from $1000, 2 more Gold sponsors from $500 each and several more Silver sponsors from $200 each. These last sponsorship opportunities will be given on a first-come first-serve basis and are all in New Zealand dollars (NZD). Contact us about sponsorship!

Config To Code Module Is Like Features For Drupal 5

22 November 2009 - 9:34pm — Bevan

Config to Code module for Drupal 5 makes it easy to deploy new views and panels and to version-control changes to existing ones with a source code repository like subversion. It makes it quick and easy to move configured views and panels in the database to code, then safely delete the configured views from the database and finally, expose the views and panels in code back to their respective modules. It is extensible for other types of configurations that can be stored both in database and code.

Config to Code module solves some of the deployment issues that Features module also solves. Though Features solves an awful lot more problems than Config to Code does, and is more comprehensive. Since Features is only for Drupal 6, Config to Code is still a useful tool for Drupal 5 websites.

Here is a short screencast demonstrating Config to Code module.

Interview With Bevan Rudge For Lullabot Drupal Voices

21 November 2009 - 9:02pm — Bevan
Kent Bye interviewed me (Bevan Rudge) in early September at DrupalCon Paris about Drupal in New Zealand, CivicActions and some recent projects. Yesterday Lullabot released the podcast as Lullabot Drupal Voices 75. It was recorded 2.5 months ago and a couple of things are already out of date. Most significantly;

DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organizers Invite You to Participate

9 November 2009 - 9:17pm — Bevan

We are excited to announce the DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organisers group. DCAPO intends to lay foundations that will facilitate international Drupal Conferences (DrupalCons) in the Asia-Pacific region.

DCAPO welcomes and needs input and assistance from Drupal users and communities throughout the Asia-Pacific region. DrupalCons are a lot of work, and are only possible through the community's effort. Please join the DCAPO group to share your opinions and experience, volunteer your time, or nominate yourself or others for roles on the selection team.

DCAPO will later announce a call to the community to suggest and research locations for the first Asia-Pacific DrupalCon. Note that a lot of work goes into researching locations. The DCAPO selection team will only be able to seriously consider locations with suitable venues, dates and event management companies, financial estimates, potential audience and motivated local teams.

But first, as much of the Asia-Pacific Drupal community as possible needs to get involved. You can help by translating and reposting this announcement on other websites where Asia-Pacific Drupal users and communities are likely to find it. Don't forget to note any translations and reposts in the DCAPO group so that we can track progress and share translations with each other.

DCAPO is a result of the Drupal Association's new Events Plan (announced on Drupal.org) to have an Asia-Pacific DrupalCon every two years.

Thank you!
From the DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organisers group

Conservation Strategy Fund Uses Drupal

1 November 2009 - 5:06am — Bevan

Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) recently launched their new Drupal website and the HydroCalculator Tool, both by CivicActions.  CSF's mission is to teach environmental organizations around the world to use economics and strategic analysis to conserve nature.  Their new website empowers them to do this with multi-lingual features, news streams and feeds, listings that can be filtered by continent, region, country or theme, tight integration with Salesforce.com for donations and newsletter subscribers and a range of detail about the training courses on offer, projects, and publications.

The HydroCalculator Tool was initially developed independently from the website then integrated before launch.  It empowers regular citizens, economists and environmentalists alike to analyse and compare Hydro-Electric power station projects.  It helps users of the tool to calculate the impact of the dam and reservoir on the environment (including CO₂ emissions), social impact to the people living in the region, and the financial impact (as total cost, and Net Present Value).

Conservation Strategy Fund recently announced the HydroCalculator Tool and the new website as well as several other important announcements, include the success of their work in Brazil to avoid forestation of the Amazon rain-forest, and the enourmous success and popularity of their training courses.  Find more details in the announcement.

Hook_world_alter() T-shirt Design

1 November 2009 - 4:11am — Bevan

hook_world_alter() T-shirt designThis hook_world_alter() T-shirt idea was something Trevor Twining came up with way back at DrupalCon DC.  I got a single T-shirt made for DrupalCon Paris.  A number of people said they wanted one – though since I'm not interested in the business of making T-shirts, I thought I'd make the vector file available for anyone and everyone's use.

Enjoy!

Bevan Rudge wearing the hook_world_alter() T-shirt at DrupalCon Paris

This design is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

I am seeking Drupal development contract work

21 October 2009 - 4:08am — Bevan
Photo of Bevan Rudge working at his laptop in a full pew at a code sprint
Contributing to Drupal at DrupalCon Boston March 2008. Photo by Steve Krueger.

I am currently available for Drupal development contract work.

I am interested in contracts or projects of any width, height or length. I am especially interested in projects that (roughly in order);

  • are socially conscious
  • have other talented and experienced Drupal developers to work and grow with
  • compensate at reasonable-to-good rates

I am only available to work virtually, since I am based in Thailand (UTC+7) till Christmas, then Wellington, New Zealand (UTC+13) till about late January, then probably Christchurch, NZ after that.

I'm highly experienced with Drupal and many contrib modules, contributing to and interacting with the community, Drupal module development, debugging and front end development – especially CSS, Javascript and efficient, maintainable and scalable Drupal themes. I am also very skilled and experienced at mentoring less-experienced Drupal developers, planning & architecting Drupal-based solutions from wireframes and/or specifications and putting into effect best practices for Drupal development teams.

My blog and my Drupal.org profile is my certification. My groups.drupal.org profile shows further involvement in the Drupal community, such as DrupalSouth Christchurch 2008, DrupalSouth Wellington 2010, DrupalCon Asia-Pacific, Usability group and UX team. I presented 4 sessions at 3 of the last 4 DrupalCons on Scalable/Advanced Theming, jQuery, and contributing to Drupal.

I have contributed patches that were committed to Drupal core. I have contributed a few small modules, co-maintained a few others and more extensively maintained and contributed to the Salesforce module.

Please contact me to discuss adding me to your team! :)

DrupalSouth Wellington NZ January 2010

15 September 2009 - 12:22am — Bevan
DrupalSouth logo: The DrupliKiwiFruitFollowing in the success of DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008, DrupalSouth Wellington January 2010 is in it's planning stages. It will be close to LCA Wellington 2010 both in time and location, and will feature excellent overseas and home-grown speakers & attendees, such as; Please take this one-minute survey to help us better determine suitable dates and other logistics. To get updates, subscribe to the NZ Drupal group, follow @DrupalSouth on twitter and get involved!

Sample Code For JQuery For Designers And Themers, DrupalCon Paris 2009

10 September 2009 - 9:45pm — Bevan

Drupal Conference ParisI was extremely pleased with my DrupalCon Paris session on jQuery for Designers and Themers. It was a great success – my best session yet.

You can see the slides at tinyurl.com/jQuery-Designers and download the sample theme code from drupal.org/project/jq4dat.

I made a couple of references to blog posts and work I've done with jQuery during the session:

I forgot to demonstrate jQuery UI effects. You can see demos of these on jQueryUI.com and I added an implementation of the explode and bounce effects to the sample theme when you roll over the "Hey nice username!" message and click on it.

A related topic is Drupal's javascript theme layer. I added an example of this in the sample code; Defining a theme function, overriding it, and calling it to get some content themed into HTML. The javascript theme layer is based on the same principles of overriding as Drupal's PHP theme layer, so it should be easy to understand if you've ever overridden a theme function in template.php.

I didn't have time to properly explain the subtle differences between Drupal.behaviors functions with the context parameter and simply executing anonymous javascript functions on page-ready. I included examples of both in the sample code with inline comments might help to understand the difference.

Thanks to everyone who attended for your enthusiasm and excellent questions which guided the session and made it more conversational than presentational. I look forward to another opportunity to present this session at the next Drupal event. Maybe DrupalSouth Wellington January 2010?

CivicActions In Paris!

30 August 2009 - 4:27am — Bevan

CivicActions Logo: EmpoweredCivicActions is in Paris, and we are running some great sessions at DrupalCon Paris 2009;

Photo of Gregory Heller smiling in a CivicActions Empowered T-shirt We won't be at the job fair this year, but please hunt us down at the conference (we'll be wearing CivicActions t-shirts) if you're looking for work or want to join a first-class international and virtual team of world-changing Drupal developers. You can also contact us through the website for more info or if you want to make sure you don't miss us.

Attending CivicActioners are;

  1. Doug Green
  2. Stella Power
  3. Bevan Rudge
  4. Alex Scott
  5. Jozef Toth
  6. Kevin Walsh

NZ Government Loves Drupal

4 August 2009 - 2:48pm — Bevan

Screenshots of Beehive.govt.nz, Labour.org.nz, Greens.org.nz and act.org.nz with Drupalicon omnipresently in the background

The New Zealand Government loves Drupal:

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Drupal Gotchya: Cache_get() Returns Expired Items

29 July 2009 - 6:21pm — Bevan

cache_get() returns $cache objects even if the cached item is stale (expired). The cached data will not be rebuilt every hour in the following example:

<?php
/**
* Builds complicated data for the monkey grip.
*/
function custom_monkey_grip_data() {
  // Return the cached data
  $cache = cache_get('custom:monkey_grip');
  if (!$cache) {
    // Some expensive processing to build the data.
    $data = complicated_recursion_and_loops_on_lots_of_data();
   
    // Cache the data and rebuild it every hour
    $expire = time() + (60 * 60);
    cache_set('custom:monkey_grip', $data, 'cache', $expire);
  }
  else {
    $data = $cache->data;
  }
  return $data;
}
?>

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NZ Software Patents; Meeting With Lianne Dalziel, Commerce Committee Chairperson & Labour MP

6 July 2009 - 5:21pm — Bevan

Today I had a long and very positive meeting about software patents and the NZ Patents Bill with Commerce Committee chairperson, Labour party's Lianne Dalziel, as well as Drupal-peers Dave Lane and Jonathan Hunt.  Dalziel, Christchurch East MP, was well-informed about the Patents Bill, the Ministry of Economic Development's Patent Review and the insufficient attention paid to software patents (thanks to our emails and exchange of documents beforehand).  She was not so well-informed about software patents and the harm that they cause – as would be expected given the complexity and obscurity of these issues for those who do not work in the software development.

Lianne was quick to point out an oversight in my research of the MED's review;  A section from 2004, early in stage 3 of the review, that comprehensively summarises the issues of software patents.  Nevertheless she agreed that the attention given to software patents in the review is out-dated and/or insufficient.

She listened to and understood our arguments against software patents and noted that the following are strong arguments for an oral submission to the commerce committee;

  1. Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corp (and CEO at the time), wrote against software patents, but Microsoft owns one of the largest software patent portfolios.  Microsoft (and other software corporations) do not use the patents to make innovation possible (which is the purpose of a patent), but to create fear about open source software and the GNU/Linux operating system, prohibit competitors from entering a market Microsoft monopolizes or wants to monopolize, create licensing deals with other companies, and many other "bullying" and anti-competitive tactics.
  2. Moore's law shows that the processing-power per dollar increases 4-fold every 1.5 years, and software from 20 years ago (or even 10 or 5 years ago) holds no usefulness (or even relevance in many cases) today.  Thus granting a monopoly right to a software manufacturer for 20 years is ridiculous.
  3. Given the rapid rate of change of the software industry the submissions and review work done 5 to 8 years ago is no longer very relevant or even accurate.
  4. Websites of the Beehive, Labour, Act and Green parties, and many other government agencies and other organisations are powered by Drupal, GNU/Linux and other software that almost certainly infringes multiple patents in NZ and overseas.  However it is not possible to know what patents, nor even challenge those patents if it were known, due to the overwhelming legal costs and community approach to development of free and open source software.  Further, a patent-holder could charge the users of such patent-infringing software an arbitrary licence fee for software the patent-holder has not invested effort in manufacturing, thus adding a price to software that otherwise has no licencing cost.

Dalziel strongly suggested we (and/or encourage others to) meet and discuss software patents with Simon Power (National MP, Rangitikei, Minister of Commerce) and deputy chairperson of the Commerce Committee Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga (National Party MP, Maungakiekie), who will also be similarly unaware of the harm of software patents and the neglect in the MED's Patent Review.

Our conversation also ventured into discussions of section 92a copyright amendments, the Internet Blackout, Lawrence Lessig, his TED talk and Creative Commons (a client of CivicActions), possible FTA agreement between NZ and the USA, Richard Stallman, the Free Software movement, the GNU General Public License, it's 4 freedoms, Drupal, blogging and Facebook.  She was also keen to keep in touch about technology and software issues and was very sorry to have missed Lessig's recent visit to NZ.

Drupal meetup in Auckland New Zealand this Friday

29 June 2009 - 10:15pm — Bevan

Auckland's Sky Tower and city-scape illuminated in Christmas colours during December. By Kahuroa, Courtesy of wikipedia.I'm going to be in Auckland this Friday and am meeting up with some other Drupalers to drink, dine and talk Drupal. Please see my post on groups.drupal.org for more details and to let us know if you're coming.

Drupal at Linux Conference Australasia, Wellington January 2010

29 June 2009 - 10:06pm — Bevan
Penguins Crossing; LCA Wellington 2010 logoLinux Conference Australasia (aka LCA, linux.conf.au) will be in Wellington 18-23 January 2010 – 6 and a half months from now. This presents opportunities for the NZ Drupal community to;
  1. Promote Drupal in the wider FLOSS community (which is good for business)
  2. Run a DrupalCamp/Conference; which allows attendees to combine expenses if attending LCA, and organizers to share venue, admin, financial and other resources with LCA.
  3. Just hang out and drink & talk Drupal! Or perhaps (talk) and (drink drupal)!? :)

  1. Promote Drupal

    With the government moving away from Microsoft products and towards Open Source, and (hopefully) a FLOSS-friendly Patents Act in NZ, it is a very critical time to be making folk aware of Drupal and how it can empower them and their organisation/s.

    This is good for the Drupal marketplace, and good for anyone providing Drupal services in NZ – probably you!? (Conferences like this are also great places to grow your own business network directly!)

    Saturday 23 January is Open Day at LCA and is probably a good opportunity to set up a Drupal stand or similar. We would be able to use the Drupal banner from DrupalSouth for this.

  2. Run a DrupalCamp/Conference

    LCA is taking proposals for miniconfs during, before or after LCA. Given the prominence of Drupal in both the web and FLOSS communities it's likely a well–organised and well-written proposal would be accepted.

    Alternatively, we could organize our own DrupalCamp or mini-conference outside of LCA proper. Though LCA-miniconfs make admin easier and minimize the overhead of organizing a DrupalCamp or miniconf.

    Perhaps such an event could be DrupalSouth 2?

  3. Hang out and talk Drupal!

    With or without the above (or other Drupal events), it'd be great to meetup with other Drupalers and talk Drupal in the bars. Who else is planning on or thinking about attending?

I'm very keen to be involved in any/all of the above, but won't have enough bandwidth to be a driving force behind organizing anything big while living in Thailand (from September). I'm loosely planning on being back and living in NZ (maybe Wellington) in time for LCA. This is a cross-post from groups.drupal.org/new-zealand. Please discuss it there.

Microsoft Tries To Defend NZ Government Contract Failure

27 June 2009 - 1:08pm — Bevan

Kathryn Ryan of Radio NZ interviewed Don Christie, president of the NZ Open Source Society and Kevin Ackhurst, managing director of Microsoft NZ on Microsoft's failure to renew their multi-million dollar contract with the NZ government.  The interviews and Kathryn's questions are intense and very interesting as Don Christie defends the government's choice to break out of a reliance on Microsoft's products, and Kevin Ackhurst tries to defend Microsoft's position, touting it as a success.
Highlights for me were Kevin Ackhursts rehearsed tape-recorder responses that avoid answering Kathryn's questions, and Kathryn's obvious frustration with his failure to state things as they are.  It's clear that Microsoft wants to paint this as a success story, but is failing pretty badly.
I love Don Christie's "Microsoft software is like a virus..." which reminds me of Microsoft's "linux is a cancer" statements.
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