Posts from January 05, 2011

This blog and the handful of modules I use has been upgraded to the final version of Drupal 7.0 which was released today.

I was quite pleased that I used Drupal 7 from the early beta versions and then tracked the D7 release candidates as this gave me valuable experience in upgrading Drupal 7 relatively quickly while preserving my additional modules without losing all my data which always helps. It's worth noting that although I barely scratch the surface of Drupal 7's wide range of functionality, the quality, reliability and performance of Drupal 7 was perfectly fine for this blog.

Personally (and rather selfishly), I hope that the formal release of Drupal 7.0 will encourage more developers to upgrade which, in turn, which provide impetus for more Drupal modules (and themes) to be ported and made available for Drupal 7.

Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, posted a interesting set of reviews looking back on 2010 with his hopes and predictions for the coming year for:

• Drupal - the open source content management system.
• Mollom - comment spam service with commercial pricing for larger sites.
• Acquia - Dries' startup offering Drupal based services including hosted Drupal sites
• Drupal Gardens.

Steve Rubel has resolved to return to feed reading in 2011.

However, I have been using Google Reader since 2007 and use it daily to catch up with the tech and sports news in addition to my favourite blogs. I honestly can't imagine life without it. I was also interested by a recent article (prompted by the demise of delicio.us) that described the use of Google Reader as a bookmarking service.

Steve Rubel sings the praises of Markdown and good old fashioned text editors.

I agree and for a long time have dithered over whether to write all of my blog posts in Markdown. This makes sense as it simplifies the syntax and theoretically should make writing content easier and quicker. I was particularly struck by Caius Durling's use of Markdown on his Habari blog and the use of the plaintext plugin to reveal the raw Markdown.

However, despite experimenting with both the Markdown plugin for Habari and later the Markdown filter module for Drupal, I have actually never taken the plunge.

I think the subconscious reasons behind for my reluctance to bite the bullet and fully embrace Markdown are:

1. Knowing the subset of HTML tags I commonly use, I am finally relatively comfortable composing posts in raw HTML.

2. Although Markdown uses a simple, easy to learn syntax (which is rather the whole point after all), the Markdown markup would be a slightly different syntax to learn and master.

3. I am (justifiably in my case) worried that I would constantly produce incorrect Markdown syntax and hence generate flawed HTML so I would be forever reviewing the generated HTML which again would be time consuming and self-defeating. A side by side split, live screen Markdown/HTML preview would be really useful.I have just discovered the Live module which looks like it could be used in conjunction with the Markdown filter to create similar functionality (but only when this module is ported to Drupal 7).

4. Sometimes I embed images from Picasweb or YouTube and I'm not sure how these HTML embeds would work in Markdown or whether the Markdown processor will accept raw HTML for these occasional exceptions.

5. Drupal supports different filter types on a per post basis but I have concerns about attempting to migrate a blog containing a mixture of HTML and Markdown posts to different blog platforms and I'm hardly likely to convert 1,000 historic posts to Markdown. However, if the Markdown is processed and the generated HTML is stored in the database, this may not be a problem. Another obvious solution is trying to curb this constant urge to tinker with the underlying technology powering this blog but that is unlikely to happen.

Anyway, time to stop procrastinating. I have managed to write this post in Markdown and already I like the modified, simpler syntax, so I will endeavour to follow Steve Rubel's advice and join the ranks of the 'modern communicators'.

Manchester, near England - Wednesday 5 January 2011

The footballing world was left reeling yesterday at shock news emanating from Manchester Citys training facility at Carrington. A local man, Frank Booth explains: 'I always pass the City training ground on my way to work so I always check out the players going through their drills. Yesterday I was quite shocked to see all the players smiling and laughing. I couldn't believe my eyes so I stopped for a closer look.

'The senior players appeared to be discussing the presents they had received at Christmas. Emmanuel Adebayor was sporting a lovely Inter Milan shirt and Carlos Tevez was passing around some Braun hair straighteners. All of this just two days before a crucial top of the table clash away at Arsenal that could decide the destiny of the league title and end 35 years of hurt. The Italian manager, Mancini, was no better and appeared to be trying to place a Christmas Angel on top of Yaya Toure's head using a small, portable step ladder. For a laugh, each squad player had given Mancini an identical pale blue and white City scarf so he was attempting to wear all 23 scarves at once.'

Roberto Mancini attempted to justify this unexpected outbreak of peace, love and harmony: 'At this moment, this is very normal for the players to be relaxed and smiling. In the recent moments, we had tough matches over Christmas so now we relax just for one of the eight daily training sessions. There is no problem with morale in the squad in this moment. The Inter Milan shirt for Adebayor is not a problem. In fact, that was, how you say, my Secret Santa gift for him'.

In an exclusive interview, Chief Executive Garry Cook attempted to give a managerial spin on this remarkable turn of events: 'It is absolutely ludicrous and completely untrue for amateur journalists from tabloid newspapers to print these despicable lies just before a crucial match. There is no suggestion whatsoever of any harmony within the club - either on the training ground, in the dressing room or on the coach to away matches when Joe Hart, Kolo Toure and Gareth Barry squabble over the front seat near Roberto. Why - only this morning, I was having a chat with Carlos about the imminent arrival of Edin Dzeko from Wolsburg. I told Tevez, that we had been forced to offer Dzeko a basic salary £375,000 per week and Carlos was moaning that this was higher than his £350,00 a week and he was going to cry and cry and scweam and scweam until he got an improved offer of £500,000 a day'.

'I replied this simply wasn't possible and anyway his annual net income would exceed £775,000 when we win the Premiership, The Carling Cup, the Fair Play League and the Champions League this season. Tevez didn't take this very well and exploded with rage, mumbling something in Spanish about City not even being in the Champions League. He then proceeded to strangle me with his snood and Brian Marwood had to intervene and restrain him before I was choked to death. So, rest assured, there are still internal squabbles, player disquiet, unrest and petty arguments in the Manchester City dressing room and I wouldn't have it any other way. It shows that the players care. It shows the player are passionate. About money'.