These Things Matter to Me
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
These Drupal links matter to you 20080909
- Drupal consultancy Lullabot has a new podcast out. It mostly recaps last week's Drupalcon Szeged, and is good as always.
- Oh yeah, Lullabot is the primary organizer behind a big Drupal conference, Do it with Drupal. 3 days in New Orleans in December. No BarCamp or Drupalcon, it looks to be a highly curated event, with major speakers from within and outside the Drupal community, 1000-2000 attendees (?). I'm super excited that Drupal is getting a major event like this. The Drupalcons and Drupalcamps are great, but I think this kind of context for Drupal can legitmize in some corporate environments.
- I swear I don't work for Lullabot, but another announcement related to them: There are some Lullabot Drupal workshops next week in Portland.
- BTW, Drupalcon Szeged was very well documented, often with full videos and slides from the talks. Check out the full session page with links to files and descriptions for the Drupalcon Szeged talks. Bravo to the group who ran it. I've heard only good things from those who attended, that it was a great atmosphere. Also, as somebody viewing from afar, the speed with which they've uploaded videos after the event is quite fast!
- This is interesting. Web-learning mainstay Lynda.com has Drupal training videos. As with most Lynda.com content, there are some free samples on the course page. It's great that they have some Drupal training, but it's confusing that they cover MAMP and WAMP installation, but neglect what is by far the most prominent Drupal hosting environment (or any web hosting environment): LAMP (Linux). Maybe the context is proof of concept?
Also, Lynda.com has WordPress coursework up, so Drupal is not the first open source tool to make the cut, but it's still significant that a site mostly known for teaching HTML and Final Cut Pro has Drupal videos. - LA People, DrupalCamp LA is next week, September 13th, 14th
(Very cool Drupal knitting chart by ejhogbin)
Labels: Do it with Drupal, drupal, Drupalcon, Lullabot, Lynda.com, pdx, portland, training
Monday, September 08, 2008
How to install the Python prerequisites for the Memetracker Drupal module
1. Make sure you have all "normal" LAMP and Linux utilities installed for your typical Drupal install.
How to install the Python prerequisites for the Memetracker Drupal module.
Usually the installation of Drupal modules is pretty straightforward:
- Download module to modules/
- Uncompress
- Enable
- Configure
- Profit
But the Memetracker module is a bit different, requiring a bunch of Python stuff, and ideally, "root" on your server. It's not that hard to set up, but if you're not used to installing stuff outside of the Druapl-verse, these notes might help you.
(These instructions are for Ubuntu Hardy Heron. The steps are likely very similar on other Debian-based distributions, including earlier versions of Ubuntu.
I've also successfully installed Memetracker on Centos 5.x/Redhat Enterprise Linux 5.x. I have a document for that coming soon, though the packages and steps are very similar, and you could extrapolate these notes and apply to other Linux versions.)
Most of you should skip to step 2, as you probably already have Drupal running..
1a. Install the LAMP stuff, mail server stuff that Drupal requires.
# apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql mysql-server php5-gd postfix
(Note: Though Drupal core can run on PHP4, the Memetracker module *requires* PHP5, so that's what we're using here. You don't have to go out of your way to get this on Hardy Heron, but there is a small possibility some of you went out of your way to get PHP4, so I'm steering you towards PHP5 here.)
1b. Though not required to run Drupal, these additional packages make life much easier, and it's just a matter of time before you miss them:
# apt-get install openssh-server wget build-essential groff-base man-db unzip
2. Unlike most Drupal setups, you also need to have some Python resources handy to run Memetracker.
2a. The first bunch of Python tools already have nice Ubuntu packages already made up for you.
# apt-get install python-numpy python-numeric python-dev python
2b. Pyclust doesn't have an Ubuntu package made for it. We need to compile it from source (There will be a python-cluster package in the next Ubuntu version, Intrepid Ibex.)
Get the source:
# wget http://bonsai.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~mdehoon/software/cluster/cluster-1.41.tar.gz
(Note, this is the newest version as of 20080908. Please check http://bonsai.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~mdehoon/software/cluster/software.htm for newest version.)
Uncompress the source:
# tar -xvzf cluster-1.41.tar.gz
Now install it:
# cd cluster-1.41
# python setup.py install
You now have all your Python stuff installed.
Let's verify it works:
# python
>> from Pycluster import *
(You will get your Python prompt back if you have your Python stuff installed correctly.)
That's it. You now have your environment ready for Memetracker. There's lots of other stuff you can do to optimize your system for Memetracker, and I have some additional Memetracker documentation coming up. However I noticed an immediate need for this Python stuff to be written down in a step-by-step manner, as many Drupal folks don't usually have to do so much Python/Linux stuff.
Labels: drupal, linux, memetracker, python, sysadmin, ubuntu
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
When Chrome crashes
You're almost pleased.
When a page bombs out, it only kills that one tab/window.
Notice only one unhappy tab. The rest go on living.
Labels: chrome, crash, protection, software, tabs
Monitoring Chrome's Ascent
In the 24 hours since Google released Chrome, its browser share has reached 2.6%, at least amongst the 45,000 sites tracked by browser stats tool GetClicky.
Do with that information what you like.
(via Techcrunch)
Labels: browser, chrome, Google Reader, market share, oss, webkit
