Blogs

Snow leopard tarball-uploading issues

Here's the scenario:

  1. Create a tarball on your Mac (of a .git repo in my case) [ex, $tar czf repo.tgz repo.git]
  2. scp that up to your server running Linux [ex, $scp repo.tgz user@server.com]
  3. extract the tarball on your server [ex, $tar xzf repo.tgz

And you're barraged with a bunch of the following:

tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.dev'
tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.ino'
tar: Ignoring unknown extended header keyword `SCHILY.nlink'
Read more »

Tomcat 6 on Dreamhost

A short while ago, it was impossible to run Tomcat on Dreamhost PS. It was a bummer, since I needed to deploy my FillPDF servlet (which uses Grails and iText) and I would have preferred to use my favorite hosting service. (A note to people trying every which way to deploy iText on Dreamhost -- don't bother with RJB or PHP/Java bridge on the shared plans -- it just doesn't work). Read more »

Need to test your mobile Web site?

Here's a pretty good Web site to test your site in for mobile development. The application emulates different cell phone browsers and allows you to view how it would look. It will also test your site to see how mobile ready your site is.

The site is called mobiReady

Determine if current page is a panel (Drupal themes)

Snippet that adds "panels" to the body classes of a page if the currently-viewed page is a panel:

function zen_preprocess_page(&$vars, $hook) {
  $vars['body_classes_array'][] = (module_exists('page_manager') && (page_manager_get_current_page())) ? 'panels' : ''; // Page is Panels page
//  $vars['sample_variable'] = t('Lorem ipsum.');
}

svn checkout: "No such file or directory" on Mac OSX

On svn update/checkout, I was getting the following error:
svn: In directory 'goingon6/drupal/sites/all/modules/contrib/ctools/ctools_plugin_example/help'
svn: Can't open file 'goingon6/drupal/sites/all/modules/contrib/ctools/ctools_plugin_example/help/.svn/tmp/text-base/Chaos-Tools--Ctools--Plugin-Examples.html.svn-base': No such file or directory Read more »

Show "Book Navigation" block only on Book pages

Quickie: Only show Drupal's "Book Navigation" block on Book pages:

1) Go to admin/build/block/configure/book/0
2) "Page specific visibility settings" -> "Show if the following PHP code returns TRUE (PHP-mode, experts only)."
3) Insert the following:

<?php
$is_book
=db_result(db_query('select 1 from {book} where nid=%d',arg(1)));
return
$is_book;
?>

Views 1 API - Adding Relationships in PHP

Views 2 has a great feature called Relationships, allowing your view to aggregate fields from various content types which are related some how. For example, say you have a Person content type and a Dependent content type. Within your view, you might want the Person's first/last name, age, etc.. as well as that person's Dependent's first name. With Views 2, you connect these content types in a view via Relationships and all is dandy. In Views 1 (Drupal 5) however, this is impossible without custom code. Read more »

Views Bulk Operations & Actions (plus configurable secondary page) in Drupal 5

Here's a quick example of writing an Action (5.x-2.x, which is a backport of 6.x's API style) for Views Bulk Operations. It allows you to assign selected users from a view (Usernode) and assign them to selected Organic Groups from a secondary page. Read more »

Getting started in the web business

This is a recent email correspondence I think some newbies might find useful:

Hi, I just recently decided I wanted to try and get into web development and I discovered and listened to your podcast. It was wonderful and I was disappointed to discover that it appears to be discontinued. Do you plan on picking up where you left off? Also, would you recommend any good podcasts that start from the ground up? I really like the linux reality one you recommended so far.

I read online about colleges/universities that offer certification programs in different areas of web development; do employers hire these people? Or is it a waste of time and better to get a 4 year degree? Mostly I just want to learn for my own growth, but maybe someday in the future I would like to make a career of this.

Job Market in Web Development

Over the past few months I've applied to 200+ jobs in web development, had ~20 phone interviews and 7 in-person interviews.  I've spoken with a lot of recruiters and technical managers, which has given me a good idea of the skillsets and #years required, location hot-spots, and other resources associated with positions in web development.  In this blog, I'll discuss those job-hunting bites, starting with resources and ending with technologies/locations. Read more »

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