digital masks

Posted at 22 Jan 11:21 am. 1 comment

I’m attempting to bring this blog into the 21st century by updating it with plugins, a horrible task if one is indecisive. The sheer variety available is quite astounding.

One type in particular keeps catching my eye: those extolling greater connectivity. Where else can you find me? one app asks before listing some of the most popular platforms available today: Facebook, Friendster, digg, Flickr, Orkut, etc.

I’ll not kid myself – I’m tempted to jump on the bandwagon and embrace the kind of accessibility they’re dangling in front of my nose. (Basic internet marketing: the more people know who you are and how they can reach you, the better.) But a greater part of me isn’t so happy.

I am by nature a wary sort of person. I’ve struggled with this in the eleven blogs I’ve had in the past eight years – where to draw the line between being truthful and overexposing myself? In person I’m about as likely to divulge a gruesome tidbit of my sex life just for the shock value as tell you about my day, but the difference, you see, is that I know who I’m speaking to. I simply don’t like the idea of some stranger knowing more about me than I know about them.

Once upon a time I used to track through cyberspace members of online groups I subscribed to, just for fun. I learnt their real names, siblings’ names, birthdays, personal descriptions, hopes, dreams and issues. With just a bit of determination and no complex computer skills – I was about thirteen then – all this information was available. When you think about it, that’s quite unnerving.

(While time and internet privacy campaigns appear to have wised up my generation, kids growing up with the Net seem even more blase about sharing their personal details than we were. Coupled with their tendency to camwhore incessantly and speak to/add everyone who drops by their blogs/social networking apps in order to look more popular, it’s a breeding ground for disaster.)

Made even more cautious by the results of my trawlings, I lurked for years under a whole host of personas, email addresses and websites. It took five years before I would even reveal my real hair color to online friends. I never really grew out of it.

Now, facing me: the option of providing randoms a link to my Facebook, the repository of my friends, pictures, personal references to my life.

It’s a massive step. Probably not one I’ll be taking anytime soon, either, although of course with a bit of determination it’s easy enough to find out who I am.

templater

Posted at 27 Dec 5:59 pm. 0 comments

Finding a new Wordpress template is such a pain in the arse.

Not because of lack of variety – there are thousands out there on Google.

Not because I favor only a particular look – I appreciate minimalism, adore complicated, bandwidth-intense graphics, have a soft spot for grunge.

I’m just picky. Each layout must adhere to a list of guidelines I’ve built over the years:

• Layouts should have ample space for text without the reader having to scroll down multiple times to finish a post. The two-column layout most often fits this criteria and the next, with some tweaking to expand the writable space.
• There should be space for links on the same page. Not necessarily tag clouds and calendars and the whole hoopla, but at least categories and a list of links out. The important things users might click.
• My posts contain a lot of text. Text is easier to read on a white background, even though I have a secret fetish for their black or dark counterparts. Backgrounds must therefore be white or very light.
• I have a strange dislike for Times New Roman used for headers. I think it makes things look very unprofessional, rather childish. I’m not averse to the occasional use of Arial, but strongly prefer Verdana. It’s very neat.
• I have a soft spot for user-configurable layouts. Readers can pick their preferred background image? Brilliant. Something to keep them at my page when the mundane details of my life bore them.
• I really hate it when the header graphic takes up most of my screen when I load the page. I immediately dismiss the layout from consideration. The picture is not the focus of this blog. My writing is. Attention! Attention! Attention! Me, me, me!

* warning: array_map() [function.array-map]: argument #2 should be an array in /…

Posted at 11 Aug 7:24 pm. 1 comment

You’ve decided it’s high time you upgraded your Drupal installation. That red, highlighted “FFS IF YOU DO NOT UPDATE YOUR SITE WILL IMPLODE” sign at the top of every page in your admin section is fraying your nerves. You enter your server control panel’s Fantastico screen, click the helpful “Update to Drupal 6.13?” link and hold your breath.

Green ticks appear one after another. Success!

That was easy! The world is suddenly a brighter, happier place. You go to check out your site just to make sure nothing screwed up. And lo and behold, it’s a ghastly white wasteland with a smug message something like the one below near the top of its screen:

* warning: array_map() [function.array-map]: Argument #2 should be an array in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/drupal/modules/system/system.module on line 975.
* warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/drupal/includes/theme.inc on line 1720.
* warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/drupal/includes/theme.inc on line 1720.

Onoes!

• Take a deep breath. Do not panic. Do not run screaming like a baby to your ISP support, which will tell you calmly that there are no errors in the sys log on their end and perhaps the only error to be had is in your head. I’m not saying I did, I’m just… I’m just saying.
• Find your way into your admin section, usually www.yourdomain.com/admin. Peek into your Themes administration page. You will see, very conspicuously, a lack of the theme you were using.
• Re-upload your theme. Enable it. Take your second breath as your site is restored to normalcy. But wait! Why are half your pages missing?
• That’s right; if re-installation wipes your themes, it means it’s wiped ALL YOUR DOWNLOADED MODULES as well, save the core. I hope you saved them into a directory on your PC before uploading them to your server.
• Upload all the modules you were using back where they belong, enable them in your Modules administration page, and reward yourself with some xkcd.

See? Simple. Unless you’re staring at Step 4 with a slack-jawed expression of horror. It’s okay, I won’t judge you if you cry.

tgfa and websites

Posted at 07 Aug 12:38 pm. 0 comments

Drupal installation 2, aka tgfa.minuteaffairs.com is up and running. All that’s left to be done is the filling in of some content (pictures, blog entries) and some prettifying of the layout.

The convenience of the modules, which snapped together cleanly for the most part, was impressive to behold. Most of your time goes into researching which module works best for what you need, and then of course you have to configure the thing, but after that Bob’s your uncle.

(Even if he’s not, really.)

The last four days were the stickiest. I was trying to create a YahooGroups-type mailing list and forum archive functionality, but got thwarted by my third and last mailing list service. It started sending me emails over and over again even after I dumped the database and replaced the entire directory on the server. At which point I decided to stop wasting time and went with GoogleGroups. I still don’t know where the phantom emails were coming from.

Postergeists, wooooo.

But the people who put Mailhandler and Listhandler together ought to be commended. They worked like a dream, downloading all the mails in a specified email address’s chosen folder into a perfectly styled forum; pity I couldn’t find a use for them. Next time round, maybe.

So tgfa.minuteaffairs.com now sports:
- user signup and customized profiles (I think it allows avatars – haven’t tried, whoever it is can feel free)
- a user list of all those people who signed up and customized their profiles
- a calendar of events, editable
- an event journal for brief posts on past events, also editable
- to-do lists for all the stuff we want to do, editable in the extreme
- polls
- a link to the GoogleGroups mailing list
- a great big gallery with features of its own like ratings and commentage.

It took me about two weeks, including a week wandering around Graytown and healthy helpings of www.fmylife.com, Facebook, Twitter, www.darthsanddroids.net (don’t skip the creator’s comments below each comic; he’s often just as hilarious, if not more so) and Gmail.

Not bad for a Drupal n00b, I must say.

(And if it is – don’t tell me.)

the deal with the drupal fixation

Posted at 24 Jul 4:49 pm. 0 comments

About a year ago Shazza and I were talking about sites we wanted to set up. Shazza is a good friend and a bad influence. Around her I drink beer (which I usually dislike) and smoke (which I usually don’t), and I have a ball. There’s just something about her that encourages drinking, smoking and long relaxed talks at cafes or bars – and I’m not complaining!

She was introducing me to CMSes, specifically recommending Drupal and dotNetNuke, which she works with. “CMSes?” I said in my infinite ignorance. “They help you build a whole new site with half the fuss? Hey, I’ve done those before.”

What she was really referring to, I found out after some research, were not the pithy amateurish PHP solutions I’d churned out a couple of times to assist other even less web-savvy users tack on a variety of standardized pages to their sites. A proper CMS is capable of customizing virtually all aspects of a website you can think of and then running the whole thing efficiently. It can build from its tiny, helpful component bits a well-oiled, multi-functional monster more likely to grab your browser and rape it than let itself be displayed meekly. (This is a good thing. In some circumstances. I think.) If one knows their way around code, the sky’s the limit. Even I, who navigate PHP with the equivalent of a cane, a guide dog and the kindness of many strangers, can see new horizons opening up before my dark sunglasses.

The Drupal vs Joomla! vs Mambo vs Zikula, TYPO3, etc. debate will continue as long as the Net lasts, so I’m not going to go into it but feel free to google if you want some entertainment. The main reasons I chose Drupal:

• Flexibility and customization. Drupal doesn’t have as many modules or templates as Joomla! or Mambo, but the ability to customize makes up for it and more. Nothing annoys me more than reaching a limitation I can’t get around. I start flailing about with my mouse and deleting things.
• Control. Because I’m a control freak at heart and I have plenty of love for multiple user permissions.
• Categories and taxonomy. Taxonomy is a lovely little thing I’m only just beginning to play with, but the possibilities are wonderful. Nesting, for starters.
• SEO. Can anyone say Clean URLs?

So far, absolutely no regrets. The amount of time it’s saved me is phenomenal. I can spend more of my day on Facebook now.

P.S. – The dreaded Drupal learning curve is highly overrated. Some people seem to think wrapping their heads around Drupal is akin to figuring out the Riemann hypothesis – wrong. Trial and error (programmers are more than familiar with this) will set you right eventually. Tutorials help. Or jumping in both feet first always has my vote.

solved: home error, drupal collation error

Posted at 23 Jul 11:54 pm. 0 comments

My new love affair with Drupal isn’t the reason for my exhaustion – it’s the fault of a rather leaky roof. If yesterday’s careless handyman hadn’t misplaced a roof tile I wouldn’t have been dealing with a growing puddle of rainwater on the parquet floor at 4am. Today was yet more home repair related activity, beginning with the ceiling board that collapsed in the morning. Starbucks mocha flavored kisses get full credit for reviving me.

The following is a quick solution for the common Drupal error “user warning: Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation ‘=’ query”. A lot of solutions advise you to dump your d/b and recreate it using general_ci as your collation. If this is unacceptable due to the sheer amount of hassle involved, most of the time the following should work.

1. Access phpMyAdmin.
2. Open your query window.
3. Enter the following:

ALTER DATABASE yourdbname default CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
USE yourdbname;
ALTER TABLE actions CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

4. Table actions refers to the name of the very first table of your database. You’ll need to repeat the same line for every database table, which will look something like:

ALTER TABLE actions CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
ALTER TABLE actions_aid CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
ALTER TABLE authmap CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
…etc….

Or if you’re a little more familiar with your code you can easily write a brief script to do the dirty work for you.

5. Press Go. Wait for sweet success.

What’s happened, according to the MySQL Reference Manual, is that “The MySQL 3 and 4.0 character set contains both character set and collation information in one single entity. Beginning in MySQL 4.1, character sets and collations are separate entities. Though each collation corresponds to a particular character set, the two are not bundled together. If you want to start mysqld from a 4.1 distribution with data created by MySQL 4.0, you should start the server with the same character set and collation or compile it to do this by default. In this case, you won’t need to reindex your data.”

Er, okay. So long we can fix it.

Hello world!

Posted at 22 Jul 9:03 pm. 3 comments

17:18 – Nothing like the smell of a brand new hosting account.

19:26 – Domains redirected. Good riddance to Godaddy.

19:47 – Blog one activated.

22:33 – Image modification shortcut in Photoshop. Not everything has to be done the hard way.

22:56 – CSS modification complete.

22:57 – Blog one online.

23:45 – Blog two activated.

00:07 – Drupal CMS one activated.

00:27 – Drupal CMS two activated.

02:31 – Still playing with Drupal modules. It’s going to be a long, happy night.