Building out a Drupal 6 site

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A few tips for those starting out... there's a lot to do when building a new Drupal site! Here are some techniques I use, so I end up doing things in a consistent way.

Sorry if a lot of this is going to sound like mumbo-jumbo; I'm assuming you're familiar with some simple Unix commands, general development tools, and a bit about Drupal. If you see something you don't understand, a quick look on Drupal will probably clear it up for you. These are techniques I've found useful, but may not match your preferences, so feel free to adapt them to your likings. If you're new to Drupal, much of what I'm outlining is considered to be best practices (or at least pretty good ones), and I hope they will help you figure out some good deployment tools. Read more »

Clogging up the Works

We'd been having toilet troubles for a few months, one just didn't flush with enough vigor.  I tried snakes, a toilet auger, fancy plungers, all to no avail.  None of the other drains or the other toilet had any problems, so it probably wasn't the sewer system.  So I finally called the pros out, a plumber from Roto Rooter. He tried everything, and felt it was probably one of the "ports" that push water towards the drain wasn't developing enough pressure, probably due to calcium deposits. We worked on for a while with some wire, but couldn't get it working any better.  We discussed replacement toilets, and I was about to go out and get a replacement Kohler. Remembering how difficult it can be getting the rusty mounting bolts off, I asked him to pull the toilet, since I hadn't used up my hour minimum.

A few minutes later, I heard him say, "holy cow! There's nothing wrong with your toilet." Read more »

The Florence Henderson Fallacy

Talk about somethin' for nothin' - imagine cooking a notoriously greasy comfort food favorite, and have it practically make fat work in reverse.  Using some twisted logic, Wesson oil sonds too good to be true.

I got to thinking of those old Wesson Oil commercials from my youth, the ones with Florence Henderson doing her Bradyesque kitchen magic.  She'd start off with a cup of oil, fry some chicken, and then measure the oil that was left in the pan.  Seems she'd be just two tablespoons short of her original cup.  Goodness, that chicken must be virtually fat free! Read more »

The Farmer and the Mule

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Kenny wanted to by a mule from a farmer, and paid him in advance.

The farmer came back to him a week later and said, "The mule died."

Kenny replied, "Well then, just give me my money back."
Read more »

The Pope and the Rabbi

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Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to convert or leave Italy. There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal.

He would have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy. If the Pope won, they would have to leave or convert.

The Jewish people met and picked an aged, but wise, Rabbi Moishe to represent them in the debate. However, as Moishe spoke no Italian and the Pope spoke no Hebrew, they all agreed that it would be a "silent" debate. Read more »

Mario in Mushroomland

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See what happens when Mario leaves the Mushroom kingdom and returns to Brooklyn as a mushroom addict deadbeat plumber. Life is tough. Film by POYPAC

"It's Mario's world; we just live in it."
-Luigi

Whiffs of cinerama

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I had a pretty amazing experience the other night; got to see some virtual Cinerama in my living room. We recently got a Blu Ray player, and while researching which titles would be a good way to test things out, I saw that the 1962 film How the West Was Won had been released. I saw it in Cinerama during its first run, at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. It was a huge deal at the time; a three hour epic western, starring everybody from John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, down to Walter Brennan. It took three directors to pull it off.

But that's not the most impressive part: it was a Cinerama production! If you're not familiar with this remarkable process... Read more »

chicken wire and duct tape

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More from the groaning joke department...

An old man was sitting on his front porch down in Louisiana watching the
sunrise. He sees the neighbor's kid walk by carrying something big under his
arm. He yells out, "Hey boy, whatcha got there?"

Boy yells back, "Roll of chicken wire."

Old man says, "What you gonna do with that?"

Boy says, "Gonna catch some chickens."

Old man yells, "You damn fool, you can't catch chickens with chicken wire!"

Boy just laughs and keeps walking.  That evening at sunset, the boy comes
walking by and to the old man's surprise he is dragging behind him the chicken
wire with about 30 chickens caught in it.

Same time next morning the old man is out watching the sunrise and he sees the
boy walk by carrying something kind of round roll in his hand. Old man yells
out "Hey boy, whatcha got there?" Read more »

Building a local drupal development environment with multihosting

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Ever wish you could work on coding a Drupal site without the hassle of the constant edit/ftp/test cycles? Or how about making changes when you have no Internet access available. Here are a few tricks many professional developers I know use; if you aren't aware of them yet, they could end up saving you a great deal of time and frustration. And it's always nice to be able to make some changes when inspiration strikes you, even when you're offline. Here's an approach I use with Drupal 6 sites.

The key is that Drupal is pretty much location agnostic; it is extremely easy to move a site from one hosting environment to another with just a few lines of code. Once you have a new environment configured, it will automatically use the correct configuration based on the URL. Read more »

yikes, more goats!

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the new arrivalsI looked out by the goat house yesterday, wondering how they could stand the 100 degree heat, and did a double take; I thought I saw two small black dogs out there. Nope; it Angel and two brand new kids that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. And on such a hot day!

She had a little boy and a little girl; healthy and cute as only a newborn can be. I gave her a big bowl of cold water with molasses in it, to help replenish her. All are doing just fine! Read more »

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