Whey bread
In the last 24 hours I've made paneer (cheese) using a recipe from World Sweet World, raspberry/fig/cardamon jam, scones and failed to make bread. The first time I made the whey bread I didn't have bran so I added as much flour as the recipe called for bran. And then another cup of flour because it just seemed too wet (total of three cups AP flour and two cups oat flour). The resulting bread was delicious. Still a bit too wet though.
I tried again today and followed the recipe as written. After letting the mixture rise for three hours I stirred it down I realized the mixture had separated and there was a LOT of clear liquid at the bottom of the bowl (maybe as much as 1/2 to 1 cup). There were no instructions on what to do with the liquid, so I mixed it in. I guess I should have poured this off because the bread has failed miserably. The bottom of the pan was an 1/8" of some kind of high salt jelly mixture that I don't think ever would have become bread no matter how long I cooked the bread.
There's been crafting too
I converted my sister's old sweater:
into woven fabric:
which I'll convert into a skirt when it's less than a billion degrees hot out side.
I've also finished the Tuscan path-insipired quilt top. We won't talk about all of the problems I had with things like basic math and simple seam allowances.
Artefacts
I have the most interesting conversations while at open source conferences. A few weeks ago at CMS Expo I had a great conversation with Jeff Eaton about open source as it relates to things other than code. I'm not sure where Jeff had come up with the phrase, but he had recently realized that many of our best third party ("contributed") Drupal modules are "artefacts of paid work." Unlikely many other types of open source projects where a developer was "scratching their own itch", much of the Drupal ecosystem of code has been built by people who were paid for their time.
While this could open up the conversation to all kinds of interesting comparisons and rebuttals and agreements and disagreements, let's head off in a different direction instead. Contributing artefacts has made the Drupal code ecosystem incredibly healthy and a wonderful place to dive into when you are looking to deploy a Web site with a shoestring budget. There are, however, two main problems that we've not yet solved: designs can never be artefacts and training people has no residual artefact.
Advanced Layout Techniques at CMSExpo
Today was my second (and final for the conference) presentation at CMSExpo in Chicago. Advanced Layout Techniques was a 1.5 hour presentation covering the basics of the advanced layout modules (and theme): Skinr, Fusion and Panels. The slides include links to some great DrupalConSF presentations.
Advanced Layout Techniques @ CMSExpo
View more presentations from Emma Jane Hogbin.
If you're interested in learning more there's also an online class starting May 12.
Design to Theme: a taste of what's to come
In about two hours I will be giving my Design to Theme (in five simple steps) presentation at CMSExpo in Chicago. This one-hour presentation covers the basics of how to convert a design file into a Drupal theme. I use GIMP but the lessons work for Photoshop (and Inkscape and Illustrator and and and) too.
Design to Theme @ CMSExpo
View more presentations from Emma Jane Hogbin.
If you're interested in learning more there's also an ebook and an online class starting May 11.
Getting The Work Done
Several weeks ago I decided it was time to delegate some of my work. I needed a set of notes from one of the classes I taught converted into an eBook. I knew that I wanted to be able to edit the material myself and that I wanted everything to be done in an open source tool. "Easy," I thought. "I'll just hire a F/LOSS person to do this for me." It turns out: not so easy after all. I asked my network of people if they knew any graphic designers who did book layout and worked in open source tools. What came back was the sound of crickets. Inconceivable! How could there be no one who did this sort of thing?
A colleague of mine told me that he often uses online "freelance" networks to job out some of his tasks. He recommended both Elance and oDesk. I decided to give them a try. My job description was short:
Promotion ended, results are in
Yesterday I gave out over 300 copies of my new eBook: Theming Drupal: A first timer's guide. What a great response! Thank you to everyone who participated in this giveaway! I'm looking forward to hearing about the new successes you have because of the ebook. And a special thank you to those who emailed me personally, tweeted and commented to thank me for this free gift.
I was a little bit shocked, however, some of the incredibly negative emails I got from people who felt I was being "unreasonable" for ending the promotion before they had downloaded their free ebook. Everyone who emailed after the end of the promotion and nicely asked for their copy was given a coupon for the shop (hint: there was more than one). And everyone who subscribed to the list after the end of the deadline, and is still on the mailing list, will be entered into a draw to receive a free copy of the eBook on the next mailing.
Happy April Fool's Day, here's your free ebook
I'm pretty sure that I really hate being pranked on. So this year to celebrate everyone who got pwned, I'm giving away a free copy of my latest eBook. It's based on the 5-week course: Design to Theme in Five. Twenty nine pages of Drupal intro theming goodness. Make that twenty nine FREE pages of Drupal intro theming goodness. Of course there's a catch: to get your copy you need to sign up for the (also free) Design to Theme mailing list. Don't be a sucker. Don't believe anything else you read on the Internet today. And don't forget to sign-up and get your free eBook. Even if the rest of the world is out to get us, you'll have a free eBook to read while you hide from the shame of being caught in a prank.
PHP What? A Call-time pass-by-reference story
I'm jumping the gun. Drupal 7 may not be ready for production sites, but I've got a book to write and books need examples. As a result I'm migrating one of my sites from D5 to D7. Moshe has been helping me through the migrate.module and I've been trying not to rip all my hair out as I learn new ways to do things incorrectly. (Pages, CCK fields and Events are all importing correctly into D7. Book hierarchy still needs work.) Some of the work I've been doing on my local dev server, but this week I decided to upload the work to date to a public Web site for others to look at. I was greeted by a D7 date.module error:
Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /path/to/modules/date/date/date.module on line 657
Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /path/to/modules/date/date/date.module on line 665
Warning: Call-time pass-by-reference has been deprecated in /path/to/modules/date/date/date.module on line 673
