June 2010 Tucson Developer Co-op Meeting
Next meetings are:
- Thursday May 27th 6-7:30PM in the Martha Cooper Library meeting room. Location
- Wednesday June 30th 6-7:30PM in a Himmel Library meeting room. Location
Cub Scout Pack 124 Tiger Den on KXCI Radio
I am the Tiger Den leader for Cub Scout Pack 124, and my son Cooper is in the Tiger Den. We went on a field trip to KXCI radio station recently and they recorded a public service announcement for Earth Day.
It played today, check it out:
Skip thru the first minute, sorry. August (and little brother Albie), Nathan, Cooper, and Zack are all on there.
Happy Earth Day all!
Next Tucson Developer’s Co-op meeting
Come join us at the next Tucson Developer’s Co-op meeting:
We have the Santa Rita meeting room at the Main Library next Wed Apr 28th from 6PM – 7:45PM
(Himmel is often busy – I checked when we left the last meeting and the 4th Wed was taken; and Martha Cooper has conflicts on Wed evenings, we can only meet there on Thursdays. Suggestions welcome for alternate locations/days that are best for everyone. If Himmel is the best spot I can see how much ahead of time its possible to book for and try to grab the 4th wednesdays there)
Any suggestions/requests/offers for presentation for next week? We could also see about inviting guest speakers, get some people from local companies or organizations to visit us.
Thanks all and I’m looking forward to seeing you next week, I hope!
hmm…
Working away at computer, my son Nate walks by and I hear him say “I’m just a rascal.” He said it like to himself, in a very matter-of-fact way.
Wonder what he is up to???
Tucson Developer’s Co-op
If you are into programming, web programming, and even just into discussing what’s new out there in web tech, come to a Tucson Developer Co-op meeting. Very informal, very informative.
From my friend Golda: “Check out http://tucson.devcoop.org, where me and a few friends are kicking off a new group of indie developers who get together to check out each other’s stuff. I like having collaborators but can’t stand meetings, so this is an ‘unmeeting’ – bring your laptop and plan to get a bit of stuff done while there.”
Next meeting is at Himmel Library March 31st 6pm – 7:45 pm.
Latest meeting was Feb 25th at the Martha Cooper library. For that meeting everyone pretty much ended up chatting, with each person tending to present some info on a particular subject of their choosing. So we talked about development tools/ needs, the semantic web, the latest developments in SDD drives, and more. And it was all good.
Join us in March! No membership, no fees, just hang out, network, and talk tech.
Overheard from my 4 year old…
Overhead from Nate: “My pee is like lasers and my poop is like bombs!”
Drupal Classified Ads Modules Options / Choices / Comparisons
This post discusses the options / choices for having classified ads on Drupal websites. So it is a comparison of classified ad solutions for Drupal, if you will. Drupal is an open source content management system for building websites and it has lots of contributed modules that can often solve your needs without any custom programming on your own part. And luckily, there are at least two contributed modules for classified ads, plus the more jack of all trades modern solution of using the CCK and Views modules to roll it together.
I want the ability for users to add and edit classified ads. There is a Classified Ads drupal module available, that allows just this functionality. The only problem is that it requires the ads to expire at some point, and then removes them from your site. I do not like this because I would rather have items marked “Sold” or “No Longer For Sale” instead of being deleted. Why? Because I want the content to stay forever, for SEO reasons. Webmasters developing content websites work so hard to get content, why give any of it up?
I do like however that it integrates a “My Classified Ads” tab into the user profile “My Account” pages, and that it handles email notifications to remind customers when their ads are going to expire. Very nice features.
Another alternative is just to create a new content type for ads (using CCK), and then create views to handle display. This does not give you a tab on the user profiles page, although they can view their ads from their “My account” page by clicking on the “Track” tab if you have enabled the Tracker module.
Another alternative is the drupal module Zipsads. This was overkill for me, I did not want to link ads to zip codes, as I wanted all ads to be worldwide.
There is one other classified ads Drupal module, called classifiQ but there is no published release for it. So oh well there.
I think my solution will be to create the ads using the CCK / Views option, and down the line when I get time figure out how to code in a custom tab in the user profile.
Well, but I like the idea of getting rid of old ads. But what about if people link to them? I do not want to lose the link juice. Maybe what is needed is a redirect solution for 404 errors in general, or else specifically for expired (and thus unpublished) ads… so that it redirects to the main classified ad page. Any ideas?
A Miserable Day, Review: Old Tucson Studios = Lame, & Wildcats embarrassed.
My sister is in town from Washington, so we went and visited Old Tucson Studios. I had never been there before, surprisingly, even though it is a major tourist attraction in Tucson. Felt really bad for my sister as Old Tucson was totally lame. Huge disappointment. If you are visiting Tucson, go to the Desert Museum, go to the Pima Air and Space Museum, enjoy a great time at each of those. But skip Old Tucson, it was a rip-off. Waste of money and time.
Come home from a disappointing day at Old Tucson, looking forward to watching the Arizona Wildcats play in the Holiday Bowl. At the moment, we are getting totally embarrassed. Looks like it will end something like a million to zero. I guess some days you just gotta write off. Then again, you could not beat the weather here today – sunny and cool but comfortable. Heck of a lot better than being stuck indoors in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Summer Vacation 2009 – Forest Lakes, Arizona – Fishing
Well, if you really want to catch a fish, go to the paid fishing pond, where anyone and everyone can catch as many fish as they can pay for. It’s fun, easy, and a great first timer fishing experience. We all (Nate especially) kind of felt sorry for the fish though.
Ace Nicholas – Mechanic’s Twas the Night Before Christmas
My Dad wrote this version of Twas the Night Before Christmas — inspired by his youth growing up around an auto repair shop. I think it is outstanding, and it is Christmas time, so to share with everyone I posted it to my Land Rover site, even though it is more general car or car racing or mechanics oriented than Land Rover or 4×4 oriented. Check it out: Ace Nicholas — I would just reprint it here, but do not want Google giving me duplicate content penalties.