I just released a simple little module on drupal.org called Maintenace File. It allows you to put your Drupal site into maintenance mode by uploading a specific file to your filesystem, rather than having to do it through the database.
It comes in very handy for automatic deployment scripts, such as Capistrano, Phing, etc.
Posted on 28 August 2010.For those of you who haven’t been following, the Drupal world has been wrapped up in an extremely interesting dialogue about sexism within the community. I just have a couple of thoughts on the matter that I would like to share. For some context, check out this good article and this appalling article.
One: The Drupal community is awesome. Never, anywhere, have I seen people rally around issues of rampant sexism in such a strong way. I feel extremely happy to have my “radical” (insofar as anti-sexism and anti-homophobia is still even radical) beliefs upheld by such a wide community of seemingly unrelated people. In a lot of ways, the response of the Drupal community against the recent examples of sexism is more forthright, less bullshit-ridden, and more widespread than that of some supposedly-radical “anarchist” groups I’ve been a part of.
Two: I’m really glad this discussion is happening within a tech community rather than a political community. So often, debates about sexism remain purely theoretical and academic in their approach. I feel like the community has done a very good job of keeping the debate practical while still keeping the critique systemic.
Three: My experience with oppressive ideas people have is that once one wall begins to crumble (i.e. sexism), the others are not far behind. I’ve seen this with union organizing; once you begin to doubt the very essence of capitalist production, other oppressive systems like racism, sexism, monogamy, and homophobia just kind of stop making sense. I think it is really cool that a dialogue on sexism has become a dialogue on homophobia as well (partially because the asshole who wrote the bad article linked above also railed on gay and lesbian folks).
Four: I work in an office with all male developers. It’s nice to be reminded (forcibly, even) that not all of the tech world is a sausage fest. I find that when I’m surrounded by all men in this context of my life, it’s easy to slip into ingrained, socially-programmed sexist habits and mindsets. Dialogues like these help me keep that shit in check.
That’s all. While I’m upset that this debate is sort of bringing out the absolute dregs of the Drupal community, I think this is not only a dialogue that weeds those assholes out, but also keeps the rest of us (hopefully, trying to be) good ones in check. So good job, everyone, for being so rad.
Posted on 26 August 2010.Here’s a little presentation I made for work. It’s pretty basic, and is meant to be coupled with something verbal, but I thought I’d post it here anyway just in case. I’ll try to post the audio when I actually deliver the presentation.
Click here for a big version.
Posted on 08 August 2010.I did some work for a client today in which I had to replace every occurrence, site-wide, of (TM) with ™ (the actual trademark character). I though I’d share it here.
The backslash () character in the regular expression is an escape character, so if your pattern does not include special characters (like parentheses, in this case), there is no need for the backslash.
Posted on 22 July 2010.