SteamedPenguin

Allie Micka of Advantage Labs is presenting "Why Drupal?"

Drupal has many millions of dollars of development money involved. Lots of developer mass.

Drupal gives developer the advantage to be able to hand off projects to the next developer. It also makes maintenance easier for you.

Current issues being addressed in Drupal:

• Internationalization
• OpenID integration
• handling media
• scalability
• permissions
• usability studies and improvement

Drupal is empowering:

Experienced administrators can build applications without programming knowledge.
Gain a rich foundation to start from.

Making it easier for client to edit information:

Permissions help you lock down the interface
WYSIWYG is possible if you need it
As users become more proficient you can upgrade them

Developer, developers, developer
Lots of preexisting functionality
Extend functionality, don't create it
Thousands of really smart people will help you

Advantage Labs likes to use install profiles

Symbols are a powerful tool to push ideas forward. To promote the idea of a one state solution I am trying my hand at designing a flag to symbolize one country combining Palestine and Israel.

I am using the 5 Basic Principles of Flag Design, part of Good Flag, Bad Flag, published by the North American Vexillological Association:

Keep It Simple

The flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory

Use Meaningful Symbolism

The flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes

Use 2–3 Basic Colors

Limit the number of colors on the flag to three, which contrast well and come from the standard color set

No Lettering or Seals

Never use writing of any kind or an organization’s seal

Be Distinctive or Be Related

Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections

I want the flag to be easy to draw for a child. The blue flagstaff and the rising sun are easy for a child to put to white paper. The olive branch is also easy; it is big and has distinct shapes and colors.

The symbols come from the joint history of Palestinians and Israelis:

• The blue flagstaff uses the blue stripes from the flag of the State of Israel to represent the Mediterranean Sea
• The rising sun symbolizes renewal and hope for the the future.
• The olive branch on the white field represents peace.
• The colors combine the four Pan-Arab colors and add the blue of the flag of Israel

The last three principles are preserved except for the principle of not using more than 3 basic colors.

I am preparing myself for a presentation on using the Zen theme for Drupal. I could, and should, use another site to play around with but I tend to use and abuse SteamedPenguin because it is handy and because it is easy for me to work with an actual product rather than having to create a design to be populated. When I do web development I prefer to have the actual content before starting to work. Content is still king, right? Creating designs from scratch has zero appeal to me because design is supposed to follow from form not the other way around.

In playing with Zen on SteamedPenguin I desired a graphical representation for this site, something that had been lacking for several years. Looking for graphics of penguins that are licensed freely really pushes you towards using a representation of Tux the Linux mascot. This posed a problem for me as using software like Gimp or Krita isn't a core competency. While looking through the Wikipedia article on Tux I saw the very pretty and shiny Crystallized Tux. I saved the image and opened it up with Inkscape.

I made two small modifications to the original image. I inverted the line that makes the penguin smile and flipped it so that the contented smile turns into a curl is displeasure. Next I created two areas with the Bezier tool to conform to the upper curvature of the eyes so that the open, happy look turns into a scowl.

I am sitting at Advantage Labs this evening for the monthly Twin Cities Drupal Group meeting. Gabe Ormsby is presenting for Friends of the Mississippi River today.

I am sitting in a mixed group of people, most of them are developers of some sort or the other. I am holding down the fort for the hobbyists since I am not doing anything professional.

The presentation wasn't exactly Drupal specific, at least until the end, but that is quite OK. It was interesting to see the process of development laid bare as it makes it easier to apply to Drupal.

The subsequent discussion was a bit high-level which might be due to Gabe's high-level approach which might be a bit difficult for people unfamiliar with the terminology to feel comfortable discussing.

I was telling my sweetie about a project to have plants notify their tenders when they need water via Twitter. Hat tip to SlashDot.

After telling my sweetie what the project does, she reacted with: "That's creepy!". I asked her why wedding technology to biology would make her express such horror, to which she responded with: "It's one step away from Hostas taking over the world!"