Vancouver TechFest 2007

I thought February was supposed to be a slow and boring month. Another technology related event for consideration:

vancouvertechfest.com

"TechFest's are about the community at large. They are meant to be a place for developers AND IT Professionals to come and learn from their peers. Topics are always based on community interest and never determined by anyone other than the community."

Speaker list available on their website

Vancouver Django Jam

Django (www.djangoproject.com) is one more popular Python web frameworks, and is used by the likes of Google and the Washington Post. There's a couple of Python user group events happening over the next week if you're interested in learning more:

Introduction to The Django Web Framework: Sunday, February 4, 2007, 1pm-4pm
Adrian Holovaty: The Django Web Framework: Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 7pm-9pm

Complete information at http://www.vanpyz.org/Djangojam/

Drupal Dojo Rocks

Drupal DojoIf you're looking for a venue to learn more about the inner workings of Drupal I can't recommend the Drupal Dojo Group (http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo) highly enough. joshk with the help of many others is doing an awesome job of Drupal education.

January 2007 League of Drupalers Meeting

Drupal MeetingThursday's Drupal meeting set an attendance record. It's hard to tell from the picture but around 30 people turned out. The meeting notes I took for posterity are hot off the press at: http://groups.drupal.org/node/2553.

A sizable number of people adjourned to a local watering hole afterwards. This is the first technology group I've been involved with that regularly attracts the people who are sponsoring the projects as well as the people they hire to implement them. I love hearing how people are using technology in general and Drupal in particular to meet their goals.

Drupal 5 Overview Video

Awakening Voice Screencast Screen ShotAs highlighted by Dries and flagged in the Drupal forums, a Tour of Drupal 5 videocast by Awakened Voice.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Drupal 5.0 Released and a Plan Comes Together!

I love it when a plan comes togetherDrupal 5.0 was released yesterday on Drupal's 6th birthday. Yeah!

My first Drupal 5 guinea pig was Digital Doodles, my "non tech" website. I'm very pleased with the results. The Double D wasn't using a large array of modules but does have a highly customized theme and many PHP snippets using the likes of db_rewrite_sql, db_query_range, and node_view. I was expecting a little bit of post-upgrade work but it was all good! Both the theme and my snippets continued to work.

In those immortal words: I love it when a plan comes together!

An aside: The PHP snippets were used before I realized the full potential of the CCK/Views dynamic duo, and to work around a little problem with the Excerpt module. I wouldn't do it this way again.

Based on a sample of one for a basic Drupal site I'd say a 4.7.x to 5.0 upgrade is no more difficult than a 4.7.x to 4.7.x+1 upgrade.

.htaccess Rule for Limiting File Access by IP

Bèr Kessels gives an example of using a .htaccess to limit file access to update.php:

Disallow anyone but you, to reach the update files

Always nice having an explicit example handy, so I've added it to the Drupal Compendium.

New Drupal Page on Group42

Book and QuillI've been playing around a Drupal reference page for a while. Someplace to capture those interesting interweb articles, blog posts, and search engine results that never seem findable 48 hours after reading them. The page seems to be at a point where others might find it useful so I'm releasing it into the wild.

For your consideration: http://www.group42.ca/drupal

Embracing My Inner Moose - Northern Voice 2007

Northern VoiceNorthern Voice is one of the few local technology conferences not focused on technology. It's less about the technical fiddly bits of the technology and more about the social stuff enabled by the technology. Anyone that knows me knows I love the technology fiddly bits, but fiddly bits are pretty sterile unless they're doing something. Northern Voice is about the doing something part!

More importantly, Northern Voice has a great energy. Not only have there been good presentations but the majority of the people attending are passionate about what they're doing, creating a nice, positive vibe. And the diversity of people makes for a terrific melting pot. I loved seeing all of the different purposes, methods, ideologies and techniques. My idea hamster got a dose of adrenaline.

I've liked Northern Voice so much I decided to volunteer. I expected to do some general dogsbody type work but found myself somewhat more involved: Dale McGladdery joins the Northern Voice team as webmaster. And I'm having fun.

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