Nick Lewis: The Blog

Give me a break: nApple has annouced that it seeks to move into the web publishing market. Ha!

Apple's browser Safari can't even read Javascript correctly! Have you ever seen a javascript-compatible wysiwyg editor that works with Safari? The answer is no, because for whatever reason, the engineers decided that the key language that drove all web 2.0 applications was not important. No -- following the typically apple game plan, they decided to think different, and thus use a different standard that the rest of the world would never care about or support.

Stumbled across this eyebrow raising site, they rule. The site allows you to explore the connections between top corporate officers, government boards, and other "important" decision making bodies. The interface is somewhat "old news"; however, the association that the interface allowed are anything but old news. I'm guessing that the visualization engine is java-based -- though it seems a little too fast.

After reading what I wrote above, I wondered if I should have even bothered giving you my "insight". And no, I did not cast that comment into the great sea of codependency hoping to catch a compliment. Rather, I was just reflecting at my use of the words "interface", "visualizations", "engines", and felt a slight hint of self-loathing.

Fortune Magazine's website (or is it now CNN/Money on the web?) has gone through a full re-design. Overall, I think its a solid improvement to their old site. Even on line one of the source code, you can spot a solid improvement: this time they bothered to declare the a freakin' doctype.

That said, given the vast resources of AOL-Time-Warner, you'd think they'd have somebody on staff that knows how to code and style an unordered list. Take this markup for a list of recent stories:

In short, that is ridiculous markup. And no, this ain't nitpicking. You might wonder what that "#149;" crap is... well I'll show you: • 

Today while going over my drupal-related RSS feeds, I ran across a very advanced module that is currently in development: the category module. I've noticed this module several times before, and I must admit that I was skeptical. This skepticism was undoubtably due to the module's colossal function:

The categoryi module allows you to structure your site into a tree-like hierarchy of pages, and to classify your dynamic content, all within one seamless interface. Gone are the days when these two tasks were carried out using separate and incompatible tools: now it's all one and the same. Built upon the solid foundations of the book and taxonomy modules, the category module overcomes the weaknesses of both these tools, to give you more power than ever before in customizing the navigational experience of your Drupal site.

However, this module has started creating an unusally large amount of buzz, so I decided to register at the demo site, and give the module a spin.

I'm not dead yet. (i'm feeling better...)

I'm currently in the midst of learning some awful lessons about providing customized drupal installations. Because of this, I'll be following a couple strict rules in terms managing all future projects. For those of you who may just beginning in this field, save yourself, and follow these rules from the get-go:

• If you work by contract, always bid the project for significantly more than you think its worth. (hint: if you bid under $950, you've underbid) Even when you overbid, don't be suprised if the number of hours divided by your bid come out to a 5-15 dollars an hour range.(When I was contracting, some of my first projects ended paying under minimum wage per hour)
• Schedule your projects in blocks, and never take on more than one project at a time. If your potential client or supervisor needs the project before you have a free block, you should nevertheless say no. If they protest, explain to them that your effectiveness per hour decreases exponentially for every project you take on. If they still refuse to accept your answer, respectfully remind them that you both have an interest in having projects turn out well, and that taking on another project jeapordizes your mutual intersts. If that doesn't work, I'd consider quitting.
• If you think a project is going to take 24 hours of work, than be prepared to expect 72 hours of work. If your working with drupal, than your job description will have expanded dramatically from that of a typical web developer's. Thanks to email, phone call's, planning, research, and other activities that usually aren't taken into account in the beginning, I'm left with less than one third of a work day to spend on actual development.
• Remember that you can't read minds, and you're supervisor or client nearly always wants drupal, and 3rd party modules to behave differently than they do by default. Typically, you'll find your job is not to combine, and configure drupal. Forsee specific areas where you will need to extend, combine, or rewrite modules, and let everyone involved with the project know about them.

Remember, save yourself, and follow these rules. Do not put yourself through the hardship of learning these lessons through experience. It ain't worth it, kids.

"The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."

Chapter 1 of a yet to be named guide on writing in the blogosphere.

In general, bloggers are terrible writers. They may spellcheck,proof-read, and provide sound, well-structured arguments. However, as any honest writing instructor knows, A+ papers are often excruciatingly dull. Yet, a paper that receives an F's can be so funny that the instructor can't help but but put it on the refrigerator of the faculty lounge. In the abstract sense, the F paper could be considered good writing in the blogosphere. Nevermind that the writer made a fool of themselves.

As any observer of the medium knows, MSM's high council on blogospheric trends has proclaimed this to be the beginning of the end for'their' media. Using rhetoric and fervor that would make even an 18th century revivalist ministor blush, they warn terrified congregation sof media executives of the "balkanization" of their once great unified audience. In praise of folly, I can't help but laugh at their obsurd proclamations.

They say the audience has "balkanized". Yet, in so far as I'm aware, the audience hasn't changed at all. Rather, the audience is beginning to find alternatives to NBC that better suit their interests,tastes, and individuality. Is it not so telling that the language big media is using means -- by definition -- that their audience at one time was a single entity? That particular choice of words offers a subtle clue to big media's inability to see the reality.

Today, I’m flying to Santa Fe. I have a new fondness for air-travel thanks to a magnificent tool I recently stumbled across. XAMPP is a free, open-source, simple, nearly idiot-proof LAMP emulator that lets me create fully functional drupal sites on my laptop, complete with full database, and php support. The thing even has freakin’ phpMyadmin* installed. You can even switch between PHP 5 and PHP 4, and I also believe you can switch between mysql versions 4x, and 5x with the proper extension. All in all, its increased my productivity astronomically. Its funny – I never bothered to think of how much time I wasted over months watching a status bar move during an FTP transfer. Or – actually, I take it back, that’s not very funny.