Up, Up, and Aloft

Jessie Steele

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:29:29 +0000

Portfolio: This is a Magento e-commerce site in development. I did it by heavily adapting a pre-existing theme in Magento, and adding several jQuery and YUI modules. The site is not public yet but hopefully early 2010…

Marlin Developer Community

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:01:25 +0000

The Marlin Developer Community. (www.marlin-community.com)

I was responsible for sourcing, managing and coordinating designers, custom module and theme work, and a lot of back end integration. This site was built as a combined effort of four corporations: InterTrust, Sony, Philips and Samsung. It worked out well in ways that are not immediately visible: the backend integration and the fact that the client is able to maintain it themselves.

I proposed Drupal to this client and it has worked very well for them in connecting their disparate systems and combining at least 3 websites into a cohesive interface. The tough nut here was user registration and administration including (initially) LDAP and Salesforce.

To tease or not to tease

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:43:58 +0000

I was never a huge fan of teasers. They just seemed to be an annoying way to break one’s flow while reading and inhibited scanning someone’s blog. But when making a blog they are nice! Is it just me or is it really something writers like and readers don’t I wonder. Certainly the re-do of Fake Steve fell into this category. I used to read it all the time on the iphone but now don’t – because of the teasers and the template which loads like a dog on the iphone.

I have felt the same about tags and categories too. Maybe (Maybe!) makes sense for huge blogs or blogs with a ton of writers but I always felt that between the title and google, categorizing and tagging are covered. Maybe I should categorize more though. I do like one blog (Alan Storm) because he tags his tutorials on Magento appropriately. But I haven’t seen other good uses of the notion.

Working in wordpress

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:04:44 +0000

Wow! Blogging has gotten easier, or maybe it’s more that I haven’t given wordpress a fair shake since I got into Drupal several years ago…trying this new theme, (tanzaku) a Japanese one that resizes automatically. It’s a re-think of “dynamic width” – the articles float into columns based on the window size, which is a great concept.

My old site was actually HTML, I am almost embarrassed to say. It was in blogger originally, and I thought about putting it in Drupal, but was never happy with the UX for editing a blog in Drupal. While Drupal is a very strong platform it’s a sucky blogging tool, but it remains oriented around the blogging concept.

I actually got a bit down on blogging in the past year or so (not that I was ever a huge blogger) for a few reasons: one, DRM which I talked about before, and two because it has gotten so commonplace, that I feel leery of the whole thing. I suppose I’m too non-conformist and that’s just silly – blogging is still worth doing. And finally, and related to 2), the whole issue of privacy online. Although I am somewhat neutral on the topic, Jessica does not want to post photos or videos of the kids online, and I can certainly see where she’s coming from. I have a password protected area on Vimeo which is pretty good…but all the photos I take these days are of the family which really cuts down the material for a blog. Well not all of it but the vast bulk.

In any event, as I move from a focus on Drupal to a more generalized “CMS architect” position, I am exposing myself to more frameworks. Not about to go all Django just yet, but need to calibrate along the PHP axis of WordPress/Drupal/Magento. The right tool for the RIGHT job, as a carpenter I knew as a kid used to say…

Open Architecture Network

admin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:06:47 +0000

I have worked with Architecture for Humanity on the Open Architecture Network two times – once back in 2006 and again in 2009. Both times I worked on custom module development, to their project module and later with a linkage to Nike’s WE system via an API.

Cinegogo

admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:30:55 +0000

Again, a site in development but included because it is an example of an excellent use of Drupal. The customer requirement here is a very comprehensive system for managing venues, films and fans of independent film shown in a variety of screening locations. I tied together custom views, ubercart, and imported over 500 films with some custom scripting to assemble the data with a web scraper.

A Digital Move

admin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:07:34 +0000

I am working on a website for Jessica and I at www.aloftcorp.com. Its only a framework at this point – I am thinking about the theme and logo. I am planning to use it as a pointer to our sites that we run our consulting work through. It’s time to wind down www.drmconsulting.com. It seems Drupal and DRM are just not compatible, and have been thinking about abandoning DRM consulting at least as a main business. I think it’s essentially over – the very notion of DRM is no longer useful because it’s been contaminated by so much bad press.
How did it get so bad? Well, I think it’s a simple case of extremism damaging the environment for everyone. DRM was never as bad as a notion as the EFF oriented people would like to believe. It’s possible to have content that is rights managed that is not even copy protected, something I have always advocated – that the rights are attached to the content and payment etc is handled by the system. There would be a tremendous amount of leakage to be sure. On the other side, the content companies have been so reluctant to get their stuff out there for use that they have encouraged a lot of piracy. Plus they don’t seem to understand the real value in letting content move “on it’s own” and utilizing the peer to peer nature of the web. The recent successes digital delivery like Hulu and even Netflix are really just extensions of the broadcast paradigm, something that the internet is not well suited to at all.

In any event this blog has been running for a while now (it’s not really a blog since it’s flat html – I’ve moved it so many times). It’s time to update our site to match the company and I might as well use this as a chance to build it properly in Drupal 6.

Marlin site totally done

admin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:16:43 +0000

Jan 19, 2009

I got word a couple weeks ago that there will be no new features added to the Marlin site. That’s ok, it’s quite stable and the fact that Intertrust can manage it on their own and don’t need me is testament to how well Drupal works. Looking for work – it’s certainly harder than it was. The recession seems to be at the top of everyone’s mind. Fear seems so powerful that people cut back because they hear about others cutting back. Not a huge revelation but it seems that the economy does badly because the economy does badly. People seem so..I don’t know…influenceable.
In the past I had moved to where there was more work (Tokyo, San Francisco) – now that’s not an option as I am quite dug in and anyway, there aren’t any booming areas.

Maybe because we went fast and in a global, interconnected way into recession we will come out fast.

Random Thoughts After a While

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 02:24:25 +0000

Over a year since my last post. I guess that’s what having a 2nd kid does to one’s schedule. But honestly, it’s been really busy – DRM for video in particular is really getting a lot of attention. Lately I have been reccomending to all my clients that want to put video online to simply go with Windows Media DRM (or rights manager or whatever they call it these days). It goes against my gut feeling about the whole industry (I think Microsoft makes crap products and is finally in serious trouble as Ballmer totally botches what Gates built) but it’s the only game in town for downloadable content because the platform is so ubiquitous. And even though I love Apple stuff, until the allow others to use FairPlay, that’s all we’ve got. Maybe that means the best thing is to simply sell unprotected mp4 files. If I can get that idea to pass I usually try. But usually it is not a popular idea with rightsholders.

I’ve also been playing a lot with DLNA, especially on the PS3. It’s well implemented on the PS3 but I have not found a great option on the server end – at least not in XP. TVersity is not bad. The workflow to get content onto the server is slow and rather cumbersome. But it’s still much better than getting stuff to the TiVo and since it goes to the Playstation which is a great rendering machine, it looks ok. For a while I thought I could play VOB files but it seems the PS3 does not deinterlace properly through the DLNA client.

OSCMS/SD West

admin — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 02:19:51 +0000

January 16, 2007

Last week was splitting my time between the OSCMS, where I presented on Video Delivery with Drupal and SD West. The difference was staggering – the freshness at the OSCMS was exhilirating whereas the mood at SD West among the attendees at least was, well dour.

Dries Butyart and Rasmus Ledorf (in blue – he’s a Yahooligan!) discuss PHP4 vs PHP5 in front of a rapt audience