The Kieffers - Geek

Site updates

chad — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:05:46 +0000

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I'm currently in the process of updating the site to Drupal 4.7 and Gallery 2.1. I'm using the process to get familiar with both application's multisite hosting capabilities. The upgrade of Drupal went smoothly. Left on the to do list is to update the Kubrick-based theme which currently does not display my primary links. I'm fairly pleased with the updates I've seen in the interface. The gallery should be back on line later today. I'll add additional information as I complete these updates.

Updates

4/8 - Posted a patch to the Drupal blogapi module yesterday that's awaiting review. Reintroducing a bit of code that was deleted seems to have fixed things for Ecto, let's hope it didn't break things in other blog clients. 4/8 - I've reverted to a previous version (1.71) of Drupal's blogapi.module to get categories saved from Ecto. I hope that whatever was changed in this module is corrected before Drupal 4.7 final release. 4/6 - I spent a great deal of time cleaning up stuff in the database. I decided to just dump my taxonomies and recreate them. Doing so has cleared up a few problems, but Ecto will not save categories correctly when editing existing or posting new entries. 3/31 - Yay! Drupal 4.7rc appears to have fixed my menu links to work correctly. I'm now having issues with adding terms and I haven't been able to find any bug reports on drupal.org. I was forced to add new terms directly in the database. I believe a problem with choosing categories in ecto is related to this issue. Hope someone updates recipe.module soon! 3/28 - ARGH! I'm having a hell of time getting links to work correctly. Everything's fine in my standalone gallery but none of the album links work correctly with short URLs. So, I disabled short URLs in both Gallery and Drupal, but the darn primary menu link only seems to want to display when I use short URLs/Drupal path links (i.e. gallery/caro instead of ?q=gallery&g2_itemId=4510). 3/26 - I've had difficulty with getting primary links in the Kubrick theme to display. The paths are b0rked. After correcting them I do have some of my links back in the header. I like the menu enhancements in Drupal 4.7, especially the control of where menu's appear (sidebars, header, footer, or content area). I'm also having a bit of difficulty with short URLs in my setup. That's the next task.

Separation of family and work

chad — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:44:53 +0000

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I've been blogging occasionally for a few years now. During this time I've mixed my thoughts about work with posts about my family, but no longer. My new blog will

separate work/technology related posts from family-related posts. If you're interested in the techy stuff, visit the 2 tablespoons web site.
provide existing and potential employers, customers, collaborators, and peers with information about about my professional thoughts, abilities, and interests.
compliment my knowledge of open source web applications by using WordPress.
present samples of my work and work processes.I plan on rambling on a variety of topics including visual design, web development, open source software, collaboration, and, of course, Apple Computer.

I have moved most of the tech-related posts from this site to http://2tbsp.com. Here's a change.

Music sharing hits the road

chad — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 20:59:43 +0000

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Shortly after I started using my iTrip FM transmitter with my iPod I started wondering what will happen when iPod transmissions collide on the road. There are a lot of car owners who rely on these transmitters to play our tunes in the car because we don't have a jack or a cassette deck to plug in our iPod's. And of course, the number of iPod owners is growing everyday.

During my commute home I had the pleasant surprise of picking up Billie Holiday singing while tuned to my frequency of choice, 87.9. It must have been one of the cars whizzing along side of me on NM 285. I didn't mind it at all since I wasn't into what I was listening.

Music sharing on our nation's highways and byways. Hopefully no road rage ever ensues.

InterLab 2003 fun

chad — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 00:34:02 +0000

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I just returned from the InterLab 2003 Conference held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California. A gaggle of my coworkers also attended and we had a great time. It was a great bonding experience without the distraction of work.

It was great drinking beers and catching up with my friend, former office mate, and now Californian, Chris. Chris, Warren, and I enjoyed some great micro-brew and good conversation at Half Moon Bay Brewery.

I actually gave my first presenentation of the Lab and I was told that it was relatively well received. It's amazing how stressed I get over public speaking. I just don't do this often enough to get over the fear. Oh well. Thanks to Bob J. and Ann R. for helping me shape my presentation into something more than a bunch of bullets.

The best part of the trip was travelling with Bob T. Bob is one of the coolest, laid back guys I know and I thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with him. Althought it was a fun trip, I'm glad to be back home with Amy and the boys.

Portland Open Source Software Conference

chad — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 15:20:06 +0000

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The first thing I need to say is that it's so nice to see so much green. Portland's downtown is beautiful with big maple and oak trees lining the downtown streets. The riverfront park that separates downtown from the Willamette River stretches quite a ways and provides the path from the hotel I'm staying at to the conference location. It's hard to believe that Portland and Oregon have the highest unemployment rates for US cities and states. It's such a great town, who wouldn't want to locate a business here?

The conference has been been a good experience. I'm a geek, or at least an aspiring geek, and had worries that the conference would be over my head. I had pictures of alpha geeks hacking my laptop over the wireless connection. I was afraid to ask any questions for fear of the kind of derision SNL's Jimmy Fallon's character, Nick Burns your company's computer guy, dishes out. Luckily, my experience has been far from my original expectations. I've had a great time, and have been able to talk to a few of the authors and developers that have written articles that helped me to learn the PHP programming language and the MySQL database server.

Here are pictures and coverage from the O'Reilly site.

Web site redesign (in progress)

chad — Sat, 22 Mar 2003 06:05:46 +0000

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Family

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I've meant to update our site for a while. It wasn't much of anything before with the exception of the caricature of the family that Amy had drawn.

I started to build a few features but never used them and thought of several others but it wasn't until a few few weeks ago that I started to put my money where my mind was.

For friends and family I've started to display upcoming birthdays on the homepage. The latest photo albums now appear on the homepage and each of us now has their own page.

I hope to add a recipe section to share some of our favorite dishes. I also hope to build a way for visitors to respond to things on the site.

Anyway, hope you keep coming back, and come back often.