So, in the tradition laid out by Ken here's a "first post" into Planet Drupal now that my feed is getting picked up there. It probably also means that I'll have to work a little on performance modules lest my site get bogged down with the extra traffic.

I don't have much to say except that stuff like being included in the Drupal Planet Aggregator is about as exciting as when my first patch got committed. Maybe it's much ado about nothing, but I think that little stuff like this is what gets people excited about being involved in a project. So, it's very cool.

My involvement with Drupal is based around a small business looking to help other small businesses and communities to get a great website. Ideally a website that will get them laid. There's lots of people in Denver/Boulder who are using Drupal so I sent out some emails and started getting people together for meetups which has spawned the Denver Drupal User Group we're small and turnover is high, but Matt and Mike are getting some value out of it.

In truth, it was these screencasts that got Rob excited enough to ask me to get a feed for Planet. Which is a subtle way of saying you should blame Rob if you find my posts boring.

Fiber? or wireless?

At the end of the article they say

"People talk about the risks of doing this," says Michael Render, who tracks fiber buildouts for RVA, the research firm. What they should be talking about, he says, is the risk of not building out fiber. "The world is changing very rapidly."

This past spring the wife and I saw the Banff Film Festival on tour in Denver. It was pretty sweet. Perhaps the best move was also the first we saw and it was also made by a Boulderite - Danny Brown of Sensei Studios.

Well, I just found it on Google Video - (and no, I still don't have cable, cable is dead).

So, here it is. Enjoy.

I'm convinced that 75% of being an expert is the field's vocabulary.

I may say "enable paging is broken" but a usability expert would say "paging enablement discoverability is low". The concept is the same, but the exact problem is much more clear using the right vocabulary.

Please go re-index the Colorado Linux User Group List Archives because they were offline for a little while and you forgot about them but now they are BACK! And they're badder than ever.

Thanks, you're the bestest,
Greg

I recently purchased a new Dell Inspiron E1705 machine. It's got a nice intel dual core processor, 1GB of fast RAM, a 60GBSATA hard drive, and most importantly a bright 17" screen. Fancy smancy.

At the time I was debating about getting a MacBook pro - basically the same set of specifications, but about $1000 more money.

One concern I had about the Dell was I heard that their support had gotten worse recently, so I purchased the extra 2 year support contract.

I really wanted a Mac - the OS features are great now that they've got BSD underneath it all and with Intel processors it seemed like it would be speedy yet battery friendly. Turns out that MacBook owners are not the happiest bunch of folks.

First, I read about how crappy apple support can be which is really sad. If it were the Dell he would have known that he was purchasing a specific level of support. My level of support - for something like $70 - got me 2 years of next day on site service. I have a problem, I call, I run through troubleshooting over the phone, if it's still busted (like his) someone is in my house the next day to fix it. None of this "sorry, genius bar is busy goofing off".

I've also read about heat problems on the MacBooks - those are pretty standard complaints about it at this point including this guys point that if you don't have a lap tray it will burn your nuts. Sweet.

Finally, today I got sent a link to this video of a MacBook Pro that refuses to come out of sleep. The best thing about that video - it's hosted on a mac.com homepage. Priceless.

Lots of times people will ask open source projects how they can help if they aren't a coder. Generally every person can review documentation, help with translations to other languages, maybe donate some money, help with bug triage, and of course do person-to-person evangelism.

feedback loops

Feedback loops are the system where feedback about an item is given back to the originator of that item. So, at a restaurant the feedback loop might be from the chef's meal, to your table, to your comment to the waiter, back to the chef. That is fairly tight and it helps the restaurant become better.

In fast food restaurants the feedback loop is long - the chef prepares the food, you get it at the drive through, you eat it, and then maybe a week later you mention to the drive through attendant what you think about the food. She has no idea who your chef was last time and can't do anything about it. This is a "large" feedback loop and is not constructive.

Generally speaking, it's better to have a tight feedback loop

Helping Drupal by closing a feedback loops

In the case of Drupal, a quick change in your module configuration helps the Drupal developers know the most popular modules and themes. Knowing the most popular modules and themes in turn lets developers know where to spend more of their time in debugging, adding features, and improving code. The system works by sending a message back to the drupal.org server letting the server know which modules and themes are enabled, a little bit about the number of users and visitors your site has, and your email address/site slogan/mission. This information is only used in aggregate to help guide resources. Currently, the subject of which modules are used is hard to guess - modules are frequently downloaded, tested out, and discarded so download numbers are unrelaible. This system is a vast improvement on the "download frequency" test.

In a patch to the welcome message, Khalid Baheyeldin of 2bits Drupal consulting has provided these instructions on the welcome page to urge users to enable this feature. It's possible that in future versions it will be enabled by default.