Nick Lewis: The Blog

I have a friend named Jessica who sends me "the best of" Austin's craigslist personals. Last night she presented me with this magnificent specimen. He titled his ad "want friend will settle for sex".

That's right. The topic this morning is the logistical considerations for public sanitation on the Imperial Death Star. Joshua Tyree of McSweeny's writes perhaps the most insightful piece -- ever -- on the fascinating subject:

I maintain that the trash compactor onboard the Death Star in "Star Wars" is implausible, unworkable, and moreover, inefficient.

The Trash Compactor Debate turns on whether the Death Star ejects its trash into space. I, for one, believe it does. Though we never see the Death Star ejecting its trash, we do see another Empire ship, the so-called Star Destroyer, ejecting its trash into space. I therefore see no reason to suspect that Empire protocol dictating that trash be ejected into space would not apply equally to all Empire spacecraft, including the Death Star.

The Death Star clearly has a garbage-disposal problem. Given its size and massive personnel, the amount of waste it generates — discarded food, broken equipment, excrement, and the like — boggles the imagination. That said, I just cannot fathom how an organization as ruthless and efficiently-run as the Empire would have signed off on such a dangerous, unsanitary, and shoddy garbage-disposal system as the one depicted in the movie. [read more...]

I've put Nick Lewis:The Blog back on the official Civicspace fork. The product has come a long way since I first started using it last November. Civicspace and Drupal are both at a tipping point -- this Saturday, I'll be making the case for Civicspace at Penguin Day in San Antonio. I plan on being rather frank: if you invest in any other platform, you are making a bad investment, and you'll end up moving to Civicspace later anyways. More on why later... I need to get this site up and running again.

The story that unfolded, from Harriet Miers to Alito... at everyone moment it seemed *strange*. I'm now -- personally at least -- certain that Miers was a prop, and that Rove is still very much at work.

Anyone with a background and sales will know exactly why Miers was a great failed nominee to proceed Alito. Without the contrast, Alito would have caused a storm. This Judge, my friends, is going to cause a lot of damage. He needs to be opposed violently -- or we will pay for many years.

When you watch news, always be looking for the puppet shows. The more elaborate and daring the puppet show, the more danger the situation poses to our well being.

Some time ago, I attempted to figure out how to use Drupal's CVS. Going through their guide, I found this "guide". As scanned through the guide and gave up. I think I'm not the only one who gave up early on. The documentation was riddled with some of the most magnificently obtuse writing I've ever seen. Take for example:

Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard−conforming simple HTML designed for human modification.

In short, that's why I'm writing this. CVS is a piece of cake. (warning... not destroying your installs is a whole nuther' ballgame... do not "experiment" on live sites.) Pay attention, this is easier than you think:

One of those weeks. Already clocked 30 hours of work straight work. My skin is turning pale from lack of sunlight, and a combination of constant eye strain, caffiene, and lack of sleep has resulted in me looking like I have too black eyes. And yet, I can't help but admit: I love my job.

Its funny to think that I've only been aware of drupal for a year, and yet it is already paying my bills. Getting to the point where those bills got payed was not easy; and I don't recommend going into this field if you need little security blankets like "money to pay rent", or "enough income to eat a healthy diet". Admittedly, a great deal of the reason it was such a difficult year was that I started with absolutely no background in web development. In many ways, the plight was like that of a college student who both takes on a fulltime load at school, and has a fulltime job to pay rent. You are required to do two exhausting tasks: learn new concepts, and earn money to live.

As I read over the basics of integrating google maps into webpages I began to laugh to myself. My heart started pounding. I thought to myself, "this is too cool...".

It was at that point that I decided 12 hours of exploring ways of integrating content by location was enough... and that I might as well wear a Star Trek communicator pin around, because my level of geekiness has reached pathological proportions. That'll do for tonight.

Seriously though, every developer needs to check out that link I left up top.

Khalid Baheyeldin writes me asking:

Do you have your own version of taxonomy_menu? I used it in the past, but did not like it because it is an obscure item in the navigation menu. So, I am wondering how you configured the "browse" block on your site?

Khalid is actually the developer behind the feedback.module and the sitemap.module. Those modules are highly recommended, btw.

Preface(for kicks)

Requirements: Civicspace 8.1+, or Drupal 4.5+ with the Taxonomy_Menu Module Installed

Attack of the Blogs – the cover story on Forbes magazine, wins this week’s award for shoddy tech reporting.  The article’s lead foreshadows its vague and pompous angle.

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.

Firstly, let me say that I do not spew forth invective – I’ll give an author credit where credit is due. I'll extend the olive branch, and freely acknowledge that “Invective” is a great vocab word. Using it in a sentence is sure to impress the high school English teacher. Nevertheless, the author's mastery of advanced vocabulary words doesn't make up for the article's lack of Substance (with a roman S).   I give Forbes a D minus; but not an F, because there were valid – and good points made. And I’ve listed those below:

My third recording of the Ossia Cadenza from Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto in D minor. Its several parsecs beyond my first take. And, its light years beyond my second take. Still -- not perfect. However, I am officially no longer embarrassed that google puts me at the top of searches for Rachmaninoff's 3rd concerto. Not that I'm saying I'm more deserving than Ashkenazy, Horowitz, Argerich, Kissen, Van Cliburn, ect... However, since I played it, I won't get sued for putting it up. And isn't that what's really important?

Ossia Cadenza from Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto [Listen in MP3]

Performed by Nick Lewis