Mike Cantelon

After getting impatient trying to track down the Linux version of the Asus EEE Box, I ended up begrudgingly buying the Windows XP version. Having bought a Windows license, I decided to use Ubuntu in in a dual-boot configuration (as there are rare occasions when I need non-virtualized Windows).

According to Drupal usage stats, over 40 sites are using the Multiforms survey/contest module I developed with the help of Geoff Burke and Miles Kier. That's not a huge number, but will motivate me to clean up the code and improve the documentation. I've definitely learned a lot about Drupal, and development in general, since I started the project a year and a half ago.

Syntax checking from vim is handy. By checking your Javascript syntax from vim, rather than the browser, you'll save time and aggravation. To do it, you'll need Spidermonkey, which allows you to run Javascript without a browser, and JsLint, a Javascript syntax-checker writter in Javascript.

Installing Spidermonkey

Consult the build instructions page for installation instructions for many architectures, or use the quick instructions below for Ubuntu and Centos.

The Django databrowse application is an interesting piece of software that I've wanted to try out ever since its creator, Adrian Holovaty, demoed it in Vancouver last year. Its purpose is to allow you to navigate data, using a web interface, looking for trends and other interesting aspects.

The first monthly meeting of the new Vancouver Django group took place today. Good times and Django lore abounded. Want to come to the next one? Check out the Meetup page.

Here's a simple script to monitor a web app hosted on a Centos/Red Hat server for the "white screen of death" that you'll get if PHP runs out of memory or you get a fatal error with error display turned off.

Two projects I am watching with a lot of interest are Pinax and Drupy.

I just committed a Drupal input filter for Haml to Drupal.org: http://drupal.org/project/haml. It depends on phpHaml, which in turn depends on PHP 5.

While setting up an automated rsync over SSH, I learned about the useful keychain utility which makes using ssh-agent easier for passwordless authentication. Although the links to the project's source code were dead, "yum install keychain" conveniently installed it in Centos.

I've posted the slides from today's Sphinx talk at Vancouver Drupal Camp.

Ianiv of NowPublic pointed out that while Sphinx is quick to search, its updating speed is less than that of Xapian, another C++-based search engine. Nonethess, Sphinx is going to dramatically increase speed and search quality for the vast majority of sites.