The Next Step

Boston has eaten enough of my umbrellas, and I hate the idea of having to put on a pile of rain gear every time I go out. I tried the so-called windproof “Gustbuster”, and it lasted for about a month of early spring weather in before a nor’easter killed it.

For anybody out there who designs umbrellas for a living (or wants to take a shot at it), I have just a few simple requirements. I want some kind of device that:

1. Does not break in heavy winds. No umbrella I have yet used can handle Kendall square on any kind of regular basis.
2. Keeps you dry even in rainstorms with heavy winds. Yes, the rain is falling close to sideways. This is the way rainstorms work. Deal with it.
3. Is easy to pick up and carry around. Yes, I have other things to carry to work besides an umbrella.

It’s 2010. Until we catch up on the whole weather control thing, we should at least be able to stay dry in a storm.

The newest version of WordPress has made updating ridiculously easy. When you sign in and there are updates available, you see a link that says “Click here to update.” This makes it incredibly attractive for projects where you’re working with people who have little to no technical skills.

I appreciate this more now since I just had my first experience with updating Drupal. While I was fairly impressed with the simplicity of the initial installation for Drupal, updating was clearly neglected (although at least someone seems to have their eye on this). Updating, especially between minor security revisions, really should be easier. In most situations that I’ve worked in, a CMS is supposed to let users manage the web site without giving them the ability to damage the web site to much. Making updating difficult is one of the most dangerous things you can do since people just won’t do it if they don’t know how.

I’ve been asked to investigate Drupal as a possible CMS offering to diversify BigBad’s portfolio of CMS offerings. I thought, while I’m at it, I can share some tips and tricks I discover along the way. One of the first problems I ran into when I started making my custom Drupal theme was that the editing interfaces looked really bad in it. Like, unusable bad. Things like deleting nodes or viewing their outlines, editing users, or even logging in were difficult or impossible. So I set out to try to find a way to make all admin and editor interfaces use the administration theme, and found my solution in the Administration Theme module. This module adds more options to your Site Configuration > Administration Theme that let you specify that batch processing and Devel pages should show in the admin theme, and also gives you free license to enter Drupal paths for any other pages you want to use the admin theme, complete with a wildcard character.

Here’s what I put in my Custom Pages:

node/*/delete
node/*/outline
user/*/edit
user
users/*

I’ll probably end up with more entries in there as I run into more snags, but this seems to be working pretty well for me so far.

I am sitting in class. It’s thirty degrees Fahrenheit outside. And in here? The air conditioning is on.

I should be studying, but I couldn’t let this pass. It’s just too painful.

Every member of the Red Sox has let me down, with the notable exception of Manny Ramirez, of all people.

And that calling is writing everything I could possibly need to know for a final exam in the space of one 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper (or 8″ x 5″ card, depending on I’m allowed to bring for that particular exam).

Some random thoughts regarding August 31/September 1 in Boston:

• On the T yesterday (which was a little more crowded than usual), an older woman talking with a friend on her cell phone commented “The darling students are back,” as we watched a few U-Haul and Penske trucks go by. “The economy demands it.”
• I was walking to Lee’s market today with Lauren because she needed to load up her Charlie Card. We were both wearing our Red Sox hats and waiting to cross Allston street when some jackass leaned out the passenger side window of a car and yelled “Go Red Sox!!!1″ to us (loosely translated to bloggish) I replied “You must be new to this city.”
• If you ever need furniture and aren’t overly concerned with quality, the last week of August is the time to get it. Just get yourself a truck and drive around Allston and Brighton inspecting the
  
  sidewalks. There is an unbelievable selection of free furniture simply left behind by apathetic and unprepared college students.
• This neighborhood isn’t exactly known as the cleanest one in Boston, but during the last week, it has been absolutely disgusting. All the vermin have been displaced from the just-vacated apartments they were living in, all the dumpsters are full and have piles of trash stacked around them, and sidewalks are hard to walk on between the sheer volume of garbage piled on them and the moving trucks parked haphazardly on the curb.