Posts from December 2010

People never ask me Hey Norman - what modules have you installed thus far on this wonderful Drupal 7 powered blog ?

• Archive - monthly archives.

• Disqus - although I had some problems with this module so I am currently using a simple Disqus block.

• Global Redirect - ensures that 'node/1234' is redirected to '2010/21/22/blog-post'.

• Google Analytics - mandatory to torment myself over visitors statistics using GA.

• Markdown Filter - although I haven't fully embraced this yet. Old (raw HTML) habits die hard.

• Mollom - Disqus provides built-in spam protection but I use Mollom to guard the user registration and contact forms which is very effective.

• Pathauto - to map Drupal nodes to my date based permalink structure.

• Token - required by Pathauto

• Tagadelic - marvellous, configurable, graphic 'Tags' page to aid Bill's navigation of this site.

• Wysiwyg - evaluating various options but not found nirvana as yet.

• XML sitemap - produces search engine friendly sitemap.

I also modified the 'page.tpl.php' template to reinstate my wonderful, award winning rotating tagline (or slogan in Drupal terminology).

Curiously, I haven't enabled the D7 core 'blog' module as I don't need multi-user blogs. Each post is simply an 'Article'.

The date for the long awaited Drupal 7 release has been announced as 5 January 2011.

Dries should just play this video. Then he should simply read the following and leave the stage.

Straight as an arrow\ Defect defect\ Not straight, not so straight\ Reject reject\ Towards anti-social\ Solo solo

Standing on the stairs\ Cold, cold morning\ Ghostly image of fear\ Mayday, mayday\ Gonna leave this region\ They'll take me with them

Drupal 7\ Drupal 7\ Drupal 7\ Drupal 7\ Drupal 7\ Drupal 7\ Drupal 7\ Drupal 7

Theres a common saying in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) circles along the lines of:

It takes 10,000 times more time/money/effort to acquire a new customer than it takes to retain an existing customer.

Evidence of this is commonplace; introductory offers, improved interest rates, free Parker pen and pencil gift set and enticements for new customers for which existing customers are ineligible.

Now I occasionally claim that I am writing this blog purely for me, myself and I. What I mean by that is that I tend to write what I want when I want and don't feel pressured to produce content on a regular ongoing basis. However, that's not entirely true; if it was I could equally well write this stream of consciousness into a A5 notebook locked in my top drawer where no-one would ever see it.

Let's be honest - people are blogging to get noticed and everyone likes feedback (even if it's negative feedback) and it's fantastic if, just occasionally, someone says 'God - that post about LinkedIn and pole dancing made me laugh'.

A recent comment by Bill (which I will reproduce here) rather took me by surprise and made me pause for thought

I like your blog, but just one thing about it frustrates me - you “tag” posts, but I can't seem to find an index of these tags. (?) For example, I like to read your comments on emacs - but without such an index, I am forced to use Google to search your site.

Now here was a potential customer (an interested like-minded reader or even hopefully, that rare animal, a brand new subscriber) for my business (my humble blog) and what was I doing to welcome him, to encourage him, to help him find his way around my blog ? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

After giving this some thought, I decided to take prompt and decisive action:

Many thanks for popping by and bothering to leave some constructive criticism about the lack of decent navigation options on this blog. There's a couple of reasons for this:

1. I recently moved this blog to Drupal 7 and I didn't actually know how to add tag clouds, archive pages, previous/next post, related posts or search functionality.

2. In the past, I have played with all of the above on both WordPress and Habari in an effort to keep casual readers lingering for longer and my gut feeling was that none of these additions made a blind bit of difference to Pages/Visit and merely cluttered up the blog.

However, prompted by your comment, I have now added 'Tags' together with a search box on the sidebar and an 'Archives' tab allowing you to browse by year or month.

Unfortunately, I never heard from the mysterious Bill ever again. A cautionary tale and a valuable lesson in CRM for all small-time bloggers.

Shamefully, I dont read many books so an eBook reader has never been high on my list of priorities as it would probably become a moderately expensive white elephant and yet another gadget to carry around.

However, Amazon's high profile marketing campaign for the Kindle eBook reader sparked my interest sufficiently to download the free Kindle Reader application for Android to sample the experience of reading an eBook on a mobile device.

In addition, I've just purchased a higher capacity (16GB) SD card for the Android phone which means it could replace my iPod Touch as I can now store all my music on the Android phone and start to consolidate two of my mobile devices. If the Android Kindle Reader application is usable, could the HTC Legend also fulfill the role of an eBook Reader ?

I downloaded Tom Reynold's 'Blood Sweat and Tea' mainly because it was free and I had previously enjoyed Reynolds' blog about his experiences as a paramedic working for the London Ambulance Service.

I have had (courtesy of my employer) an HTC Legend for 3 months and I have been staggered at the razor sharp quality and resilence of the screen. Even without a screen protector, the display is pristine and crystal clear despite moderate use during that period.

Reading text on the Android is pretty easy on the eye. The font is large enough and clear enough for me to read easily and the contrast is excellent. Also, I am only reading for short periods (up to half an hour on my commute into the city) and the fact that 'Blood Sweat and Tea' is merely a compilation of blog posts means each story is a very short and manageable chunk. This light, casual reading may be slightly easier on the eyes than ploughing through 'War and Peace' for prolonged periods.

The larger screen on the Kindle does look great and I have heard great things about the screen technology but there's one reason I would currently not even contemplate buying a Kindle.

I selected a popular book being advertised for Christmas - 'The Fry Chronicles' by Stephen Fry. The paper edition of this book costs £8.20 at Amazon (UK). To my amazement, the Kindle version of the same book costs a staggering £12.99.

Yes - you read that correctly. £8.20 for the hardback book and £12.99 for the electronic version of the same book for the Kindle.

Now let's think about this. For the paper edition, the publisher has to print a book on 448 pages of paper. The book also has to be bound and this is the hardback edition. For the Kindle edition, the publisher has to, err, well, create an electronic copy of the book.

How in God's name can the publisher/Amazon justify charging an additional, extortionate, staggering premium of 58% for the Kindle edition ?

Now this may be a one-off rare example and it's true that some books are cheaper on Kindle than for the paper book. For example, the popular 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' is slightly cheaper on Kindle (£2.68) versus £3.89 for the paperback edition. Now I don't have the time or inclination to exhaustively check the comparative prices of paper versus Kindle editions for the remainder of the best seller lists and it is true that some classic texts (e.g. Treasure Island, Sherlock Holmes) are freely available for eBooks.

However, in a sense that's irrelevant - the Kindle edition should always, always be cheaper than the paper book - guaranteed, 100%, every time for every book regardless. Until that is the case, I won't be buying a Kindle or any other eBook reader.

Frankly I think the pair deserve each other but some excellent quotes from Tevezs agent, Kia Joorabchian, on Garry Cock.

‘Garry Cock thinks hes bigger than Carlos Tevez.

‘Garry Cock has an inflated opinion of himself. I brought him in from Nike after he begged me to get him a job in football.'

‘I got him a job which paid him more than four times what he was earning at Nike and he didn't complain about me then but it's all gone to his head.'

‘Maybe because he played no part in bringing Carlos to the club that's a problem for him. Maybe he's upset because he didn't have any input.'

Last week, I went to see The National at Brixton Academy. Twice. Both shows were great (Monday just shaded it) and the band resurrected a rarely played classic ‘Lit Up (one of my all-time favourite National songs) on both nights which was an unexpected and brilliant bonus.

I’d been eagerly waiting for these dates to come around since I saw the band on election night back in May at the Royal Albert Hall.

This beautiful photo taken by Alison Philcock brilliantly captures the mood and sense of expectation shortly before the band took the stage.

My family were genuinely perplexed as to why a grown man was going to see the same band play twice within three days and were unimpressed with my reply of ‘Well, I couldn't get tickets for Tuesday'.

I also won a £10 bet with Norma who bizarrely insisted that the band would play the same set in precisely the same order. On Wednesday, two of my favourite songs ‘All The Wine' and ‘About Today' replaced ‘Runaway' and ‘Little Faith'.

At the weekend, I purchased a new printer after replacing the ink cartridges failed to reinstate the ability to print in black on my Canon IP4000.

Previously, I'd researched which printers had decent Linux support and decided on an HP Deskjet 3050. This is a wireless printer so I hoped that the Windows PC's in the house would be able to print directly and the management of the printer (inkjet levels) would be easier. My current Canon IP4000 has served me well but is pretty old and I was surprised to find I could pick up an HP wireless printer for £34.

I checked the price on Amazon to find the price has risen to £38.99 in the intervening two weeks - not just at Amazon but at all online retailers I normally use. No problem - still excellent value. As Norma is patiently waiting to submit a couple of essays for her course, I decided to venture out to try to buy a printer as delivery times from Amazon could be delayed given the recent cold spell.

I walked into Comet - the HP Deskjet 3050 was on the shelf listed at the price I'd originally seen - £34.00. I darted next door to a cavernous PC World which is the size of a aircraft hanger and a gadget heaven. They also had the printer but now at the higher price of £38.99.

I went back to Comet, picked up the last remaining Deskjet box and walked up to the till. The girl swiped the barcode and said (much as I expected) - 'That will be £38.99, Sir'. 'Oh I think that's a mistake - it's listed as £34.00 on the display'. 'No, sorry, Sir. It's coming up on the computer as £38.99'. 'Sorry but the price on the display is £34.00 and you have to charge me that price for the printer. It’s the law'.

She interrupted me ‘Well I will have to see this for myself. Can you show me ?' So we both ambled over to the display area of various printers. The shop assistant wasn't best pleased and she muttered ‘Are you absolutely sure it's the same printer, the same make and model ?'

We arrived at the display item for the HP DeskJet 3050 printer where the price was displayed as clear as day, in black and white as £34.00. She turned back towards the till without a word so I duly followed, feeling slightly guilty.

'Right then, Sir'. And she entered a manual override for the price and entered £34.99. That will be ‘£34.99 please'. ‘But the price is £34 dead, £34 exactly'. 'Was it ?' By now my patience and my good humour at finding the desired printer in stock and saving £5 was being tempered by this girl's surly and unhelpful attitude.

‘Listen. We've just walked over to check the price. We did that because I know what the price is but you don't. Didn't you even look at the price ? What was the point of going over if you're can't be bothered looking at the price?'

‘So you're really going to argue with me over 99p are you ? I've already keyed it now.'

'Yes - because the price is £34.' She emitted a long sigh under her breath and she entered the correct price and I proferred my credit card.

And now in a voice scarily reminiscent of Catherine Tate as the TGI waitress; ‘Would you be wanting extended insurance cover with that, at all, Sir ?'. 'Oh no - thanks - just the printer, thanks.' 'Insurance cover is available for just £24.99 for 3 years and £34.99 for a full, comprehensive 5 years peace of mind'.

'I’m not really likely to insure something that cost me £34 for £35. If it blows up after 1 year and 1 day, I’d just buy another printer that is likely to be better, faster and probably cheaper.'

‘Well that's entirely up to you, Sir but these printers can be quite unreliable.'

'No really. Just the printer thanks'. 'Right - so that’ll be £34.00 for the printer then.'

I went to nudge the printer box towards me in a precursor to leaving this godforsaken store and erasing this girl's morose, stupid, miserable face from my memory bank. For ever.

‘Can I interest you in more ink cartridges, Sir ? Special offer in December on all inkjets - buy one set of ink and get another one at half price.'

‘No thanks. I normally get my cartridges off the Internet.'

‘OK, Sir. That's entirely up to you but I must tell you that printers only come with a 'starter pack' which only print 50 pages or so so you might run out very quickly.'

I smelled bullshit here but I wouldn't put it past the printer companies in an effort to recoup their loss on the actual device to ship with smaller, low capacity cartridges. Worse, the spectre of Norma printing out several lengthy papers and articles and the ink running out just as she printed of the final revision of her essay for submission was hovering overhead like a hungry vulture.

'No thanks. No insurance. No additional ink. Just the printer. Thanks.'

I got home, quickly installed and configured the printer and discovered HP provide two standard cartridges (black and the 3 colour mix). No starter pack.

I quickly checked wireless printing from three Windows computers (XP, Vista and Windows 7) and downloaded the latest version HP native Linux software (HPLIP) to configure and manage the printer which was conveniently available in the Fedora 14 repositories.

Finally, I ordered two spare cartridges from Amazon for £20 compared to £24 at Comet.