CivicActions

Two recent projects at CivicActions had some queries that were causing performance issues. What is interesting to note that in both cases, we found that adding a correct index to a table or two helped mitigate some of the issues.

I noticed on the Drupal development mailing list, that Drupal 7 has some significant changes for file handling. From Angie Byron (webchick):

I just rolled the second in the series of Drupal 7 unstable releases for developers (see http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/development/2008-October/031094.html for more info). Among the highlights this release are:

* Several awesome File API improvements. Files are now "first-class
objects" like nodes and users are, the API has been dramatically cleaned up for better consistency, AND there are a slew of new hooks like hook_file_load() and hook_file_validate() for contrib modules to react to when stuff happens to files. This is a great enabler for some awesome stuff in core like image handling and document management. See http://api.drupal.org/api/search/7/hook_file for more info. A HUGE shout-out to Andrew Morton (drewish) for sticking with this patch throughout its long, LONG development cycle. :)

Have I ever told you how much I love data? After listening to Larry Garfield's talk Drupal Databases: The Next Generation, I now love data more than ever!

The database layer for Drupal 7 has been completely rewritten to take advantage of PHP's PDO extenion. Not only does it allow Drupal to work with many different database types it also simplifies how developers interact with the database.

Drupalcon Szeged is one week away. I am glad I am attending, and I am planning on leading a Birds of a Feather (BOF) during the conference. The focus of the BOF is creativity and programming. I want to discuss the weird mix of human behavior and code. Sounds strange I know, so let me describe in more detail.

DrupalCamps help bring out creativity. This weekend I attended Vancouver's DrupalCamp, and I really enjoyed myself. On top of it, I am always amazed by talking with others at these types of events. Other developers who I think really know their stuff said to me, "The camps are great. They remind of how much more I need to learn." I thought they knew it all!

I had the joy of attending Linuxfest Northwest on April 26 in Bellingham, WA. The weather was great (just like last year), and the atmosphere relaxed and fun.

Linuxfest is a 2-day community event, run by volunteers and free to the public. It is such a cozy atmosphere, and it is easy to interact with the speakers and the exhibitors.

An acquaintance of mine was detained by Homeland Security. His recently expired US visa landed him in the detention center in Tacoma, WA, where he had no legal counsel for 6 weeks:

Last Wednesday, our Seattle Drupal User Group (SEADUG) had the unique experience getting insight from our city's newspaper switching to Drupal.

The Seattle Times senior engineer and producer were kind enough to share their experience of converting NWSource to Drupal.

I found several concepts very intriguing during this 2 hour presentation:

• they spent about 8 months investigating 50 - 70 content management systems

A couple of engineers at CivicActions were interested in the Views Bulk Operations module. Me too! So I checked it out.

Easily installed, the most important bit I can tell you about is this:

• clone the view that comes with views_bulk_operations (admin_content)
• in the clone be sure to go to the Filters and select all content types for the Content Type filter (so you can
  see all nodes with the view)
• click Save, then start messing with it!

Are you interested in Media Mover? It is a new framework available for your file processing pleasure. Developed by Arthur Foelesche, Media Mover allows site administrators to manage and process media files like images, video, and audio. Media Mover provides an API, so developers can easily write modules which hook into the Media Mover system.