Integrating Democracy in Action with Civicspace and Drupal

I've spent the weekend catching up on some of my development work. Among this weekend's challenges is integrating Civicspace with Democracy in Action's impressive array of tools.

Currently, I'm working on a suprisingly nasty challenge: creating a user registration form that enters info into the DIA database, and creates a user account for drupal. The alternative, which is requiring users to mull through two forms to sign up for the organizations mailing lists, ect. is unacceptable.

Colbert Nation

The Colbert Report is everything I wanted it to be, and more. Steven Colbert doesn't merely read the news to you -- he promises to feel the news at you. By far, my favorite segment is The Word... do watch, if you haven't already.

Watch Colbert's The Word [quicktime]

Thoughts on Spelling

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! So, in short, that is why I don't really bother with spell che

Darn "Sunny Day" Tornados...

This is just too weird:

Its a soccer game. Its sunny, not a cloud in the sky; but then... a tornado forms. The tornado freaks everyone out (obviously), and then it disappears. The sky is clear the entire time. Sleep tight!

Watch Video of Tornado [WMA]. Tip of hat to Fungod.com.

Drupal 4.7

...rocks my world.

Google: Fetch!

Good girl, google. Now focus! This is Pinion Software.

And this is the page of a lovely Austin, Texas based web designer. Now, go fetch a new snapshot of that lovely web designer's page.

Note to humans: don't try to hard to understand this entry -- google and I are just playing... sort of. Let's just say google loves sites hosted on smart campaigns -- and sometimes that can be a disadvantage. ;-)

Social social tagging site tagging

Supr.c.ilio.us, though still in its alpha stage, is the first site that allows Social social tagging site tagging. Que Fantastico!

A Brief Anology

Work is to Blogging as Kryptonite is to Superman

Latest Completed Job:Write On! Austin

Covered about 350 miles of Texas roads today, and have been milling about since 6 in the morning. And that is the update for now.

Sleep Now.

A Practical Tutorial on Working with Nodes

Web Development:

Every Drupal user, at one time or another, has fantasized about having full control over their nodes (That was an odd sounding sentence wasn't it?). Well, fantasize no more, because at this early hour in the morning I will show you one damn useful trick.

node_load()

Let's say I wanted to include the body of a single node into multiple pages, and have the option of nesting those nodes into infinity. Such an include would not only have the advantage of displaying with perfect consistancy across multiple pages; most importantly, it would only need to be updated at one location. And let us also pretend that piece of content happened to be a quote by George Carlin.

Though the Carlin's quote has a path alias, its fairly easy to figure out that its node ID is 415. How do you find a node ID? Well its simple, silly. Usually you can just look at the URL of the node. The number is the node ID. (e.g. yoursite.com/node/666 = node id 666).

Armed with our node ID of 415, I am now able to load the noad.

<blockquote><?php
$MrNode = node_load(array("nid" => 415));
print $MrNode->body;?>
</blockquote>
<em>-<?php print $MrNode->title;?></em>

In line two, we load our node... in this case 415. $MrNode, the name for the node we loaded is actually an array of information. To print him properly, we must be more specific than simply "print $MrNode;". So in this case, we've printed $MrNode's body (i.e. $MrNode->body ). Finally, on line 4, we print the node's title within italics. Below, you see this beautiful code in action:

415)); print $MrNode->body; ?>
-- title;?>

Here is a link to the node which we are using. Cool, huh?

Van Cliburn at the 1st Tchaikovsky Competition

Van Cliburn

Cliburn Performs Rachmaninoff

Words cannot describe the value of these recordings.

Download and listen -- these recordings are free, courtesy of our friends in Russia. What you will hear is arguably the most legendary piano concert of the mid-to-late 20th century.

God I love the internet!

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