[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

Version 6.3 now, and I like it.

If you haven't noticed the new look, please get something checked. I put a new theme on because the old one wasn't ready for v6. I'm actually working on a new one, and it's coming along quite nicely. For some reason, it's easier when you RTFM. Odd.

In other news, I'm going on vacation as of the end of work today (less than an hour). Definitely necessary, and it'll be nice to be able to sleep past 5:30 again.

Wow, I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted... anything.

I've been around though, don't worry. Of course, I only have a half-dozen readers, so I'm not too worried - I talk to most of them on a regular basis. Here's what I've been working on lately:

Ubuntu
I have a desktop and laptop running Xubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04), and another desktop running Ubuntu Hardy Heron Server. The more I use Ubuntu, the more I like it. It just seems like there's a lot more that I can do with less work... compared to Windows. This isn't going to turn into a review, but check it out - you can run it as a Live CD (no install needed), or even install it like a program in Windows.

del.icio.us
If you check out my del.icio.us page, you can see what I've been bookmarking. I've added something at the end of this post to show the last fivepages I've bookmarked.

dropcase.com
It's time for another upgrade, and I'm making the move into version 6.2 of Drupal. I'm a little lacking in the updates category, but nothing serious... it's more a matter of getting more functionality and usability in place. I also want to do a total redesign, but I'm not sure where to start.

aStore
So I decided to play around with Amazon's aStore, just to see how it works. Don't worry, I'm not trying to push anything (although I won't stop anyone from getting something either), I just want to know what people think of it in general. Does anyone else use affiliate links for Amazon? I'm still not sure how I feel about them.

Knitting
Yes, knitting. There are two projects to start on: first, I'm getting ready to embark on the road to socks. I've been reading up on them and trying to find a pattern, and I think I'm going to go toe-up this time, so I can get a feel for how much yarn I need. Project #2 is a muffler for my wife. She got me some really nice yarn for it, and I want to make sure to do it justice...

Everything Else
Yes, very vague, but true... and if you'd like to know, feel free to ask. Between work and home with two kids and three cats (and my wonderful wife, of course), I wonder how I have time to get anything started, much less completed...

The ideas that I write about seem to come in waves. It's not like I have something to post every day, but sometimes there will be several things I want to write about in a whosrt period of time, then nothing for a while - just look at my posting dates to get an idea of this.

While writing last week, I thought it would be good if Drupal had the ability to write something up and save it as a draft (saved, but not published). It was brought to my attention again while writing my this post when Firefox (3b3) crashed and I lost what I had written. Blech. There have been discussions on the Drupal site for a while, but nothing that was "in place" for it. Then I found this site, which suggested I use the Views module (which I have and am still learning about). Why didn't I think of that earlier?

The Views module allows you to create different content pages (among other options) with a defined set of nodes on it. In the case of creating Drafts, I set it up to show any nodes (postings) that aren't marked as Published. Now, instead of worrying that I'm not going to be able to recover in case of a Firefox crash (or anything else), I can save an unpublished version of what I'm working on and finish it later. It also works as a kind of "Save as..." in the meantime.

Sure, other CMSs out there already do that, but we'll get there.

I definitely can't say it better than they did, so from drupal.org:

Downloaded and updated on my localhost. It's nice, although I haven't had a chance to play with it much so far. The update process was really smooth, with no errors throughout. We'll see what happens when I try it on this site. Time for the checklist, starting with a full backup (just in case).

How long to wait though... that's my next decision. I think I just need to have a chance to make sure I have modules and themes ready to go when I make the jump. 

Whether you're starting fresh or upgrading, start here for information and download links.

It is done.

I did the upgrade from Drupal 4.7 to v5.3 yesterday, and finished up some of it this morning. It went smoother than I thought it would, and I have to say it a definite improvement. On the administration side, the admin pages seem to be cleaner and easier to navigate, as well as being more helpful. Cheers to Drupal for making the process as easy as it is.

To be sure it went well, I actually remembered to RTFM on upgrading. All of the old files were removed, and the new ones put in their place. This was especially important for the modules, most of which would've been broken. If anything, the site seems to be working better.

Next step: re-doing the look of the site. I'm using a theme called NewsFlash from RoopleTheme (in green, of course). Once I get PHPTemplate down a bit more I should be able to put something decent together.

This could be attributed to being a Drupal site or not, but I've had a lot of issues with Spam, through comments and trackbacks and user registrations. Since a lot of the user registrations seem to be completely bunk (and since I have about 5 "real" readers), I've turned off registrations.

If you'd like an account, you can contact me through my user page.

...for a little while, anyway.

The move to 4.7 went on with no problem, especially since there weren't a lot of changes between that and 4.6 (which is what I started with). The change to 5.x scares me a little. It's not that I think it will be bad by any means, I'm just not sure where to start in making sure that all of my themes and modules are ready.

I've already started looking at my theme (which is more or less the least of the problems I might run into). I just hope all my modules work when all is said and done. This is going to be a big change, and it might as well be done now.

Yes, the one bonus of almost no readers...

i seem to be a little behind.

Since I set up Drupal on this site, I've been running 4.6.x - which is now more than a little out of date. Hmm... maybe I should do this post after, in case there's some crazy exploit that I have wide open.

The plan:

• Upgrade to 4.7.7 [done, and went well], then
• Upgrade to 5.2, then
• Hope that everything is working correctly.

Has anyone else done a Drupal upgrade, especially recently?

If you see (or saw) the maintenance page for a little while, that would be the reason... One of the minor benefits of having a low-traffic site is that I don't have to worry about too much of an interruption if I upgrade during "normal" hours.

...there were others I would use to describe spam as well.

Yes, we get it. You can shotgun your garbage all over the place for almost free, so when that one person who doesn't get it falls for the trick and buys something, it's all worth it. There are plenty of places to get that done, but please don't do that here.

For anyone who's using Drupal, there's a great module to add called Spam module v2. Check it out and add it, even if you're not planning on allowing trackbacks...

I've been playing with Drupal for a couple of months (read my first couple of posts for more info), and ran into a problem with spam trackbacks. There are patches to fix the issue I was having (I couldn't select all, then delete all), but I wanted to try and prevent the issue as well. This did it all, and then some.

I now have the ability to filter the spam out, clean out my trackbacks and comments in one fell swoop, and make sure that I actually see the postings that I want to see. I'll probably post more in a few weeks once I've used it more and see how it's holding up. This will definitely be added to the other sites that I'm using Drupal on.

Now that it's been almost a week, I'm starting to understand that I don't know what to write. One of the biggest parts of having a site is that there needs to be some form of content. Like Sean asked in the comments to the last entry:

That's a really good question. Some of the things I write about include meatspace, bitspace, and grayspace. Yes, that's vague, and covers just about everything, but it's a start. Maybe I just need to start writing, then you'll all see what's happening.