NZ Government Loves Drupal

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:

Drupal Gotchya: Cache_get() Returns Expired Items

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

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.

Drupal meetup in Auckland New Zealand this Friday

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

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)!? :)

Microsoft Tries To Defend NZ Government Contract Failure

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.

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