laryn's blog

Joomla!
 

Joomla: Open source content management

Joomla! is one of the primary CMS's that I use to develop sites at the moment (the other being Drupal). I often recommend Joomla! for smaller sites without complex hierarchies or the need to tag beyond a simple section or category.


Drupal
 

Drupal: Open source content management

This site is running on Drupal, a powerful and flexible open source content management system which runs on PHP and MySQL. Drupal has a slightly steeper learning curve for development and doesn't have as much eye-candy in the back end as does Joomla!, but it more than makes up for that with its robust system of tagging (which is referred to as "taxonomy"). Where Joomla! requires categorization of content with one section and one category within that section, Drupal allows multi-tagging, hierarchical tags, and even free tagging where you can type tags on the fly. See my portfolio on this site for an example of multi-tagging: items are tagged with client name, client type, and project type, so each page can show up in multiple locations on the site, depending what the user is searching for.


Banksy's Simpsons opening (Updated)

The recent Simpsons opening has created quite a viral stir online. (For good reason -- it's must watch in my opinion. See below for a Hulu link)

A Facebook friend notes, "Fox pulled it off youtube, but put it onto Hulu. For a minute there I suspected censorship, but nah, it's just commercialism." I find that more than a little ironic given the subject matter. Update: It's back on YouTube on Banksy's channel. I've swapped out the Hulu embed for a YouTube embed since it's more universal (ie. can be seen outside the USA). If you want to watch on Hulu for some reason, it's right here.

From the interview linked above:

Q. Were you concerned that what he sent you could get the show into hot water?
A. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it for a little bit. Certainly, Fox has been very gracious about us biting the hand that feeds us, but I showed it to Matt Groening, and he said, no, we should go for it and try to do it pretty much as close as we can to his original intention. So we did. Like we always do, every show is submitted to broadcast standards, and they had a couple of [changes] which I agreed with, for taste. But 95 percent of it is just the way he wanted.


The Gobi Lumberjacks and the art of urban pranks

The cover page of the local alternative weekly caught my eye the other day, as I have a soft spot for pranks and pranksters: "Pranksters. In praise of pantsless train rides, public park pillow fights and shattering the human condition." I learned of the Gobi Lumberjacks, "a ragtag group of urban jesters who've helped organize...anarchic displays of surrealism in Atlanta since early 2008."


They Structure How We See

"[We] must begin to see our houses, buildings, farms, businesses, energy technologies, transportation, landscapes, and communities in much the same way that we regard classrooms.  In fact, they instruct us in more fundamental ways because they structure what we see, how we move, what we eat, our sense of time and space, how we relate to each other, our sense of security, and how we experience the particular places in which we live."

David Orr
The Nature of Design, quoted in "The Daily Asterisk" (Feb. 18, 2010)


Dordt Alumni in Design: Laryn Kragt Bakker

I am currently the featured on the Dordt College AIGA blog. See below for an excerpt or read the full article.


Open source software meets street art and paralysis: the EyeWriter

I found this to be a fascinating intersection of street art and open source software: "Low-cost, creative technology to enable graffiti writers and artists with paralysis to draw using only their eyes...Free and open source software for commercially available eye tracking devices...And DIY hardware and free software for users with only $50 and a computer."


Ill-considered Audi ad screenshots
 

"Ill-considered" Audi ad mocks people who care, then tries to sell them a car

I have to wonder who Audi is targeting with this ad. Are they really mocking their target demographic and then trying to sell them a car? I suspect they are trying to target the people who haven't yet worked up the energy to ride their bike more often, who realize the environment is important and that they should be doing something about it, but all that they know in terms of alternatives are stereotypes (which Audi plays firmly into as they try to sell more cars, making people who choose other options look uncomfortable, inconvenienced, or dorky). Either way, I agree with @chrisbaskind that the ad is "ill-considered."

I'd love to see a parody of this ad along the following lines (I'm sure someone else could polish this more, but you get the concept):

Scenes: Woman in car in rush hour traffic, obviously frustrated, horns blaring. Man on the side of the road with steam coming out from under the hood. Woman trying to start the car in the morning and it just won't turn over.

Voiceover: Many people assume they can't do anything because of the way things are. Some want to change the way things are.

Scene: Man on bike passing rush hour traffic on the shoulder.


New York Post (Special Edition) / Yes Men
 

"Special Edition" of the New York Post from the Yes Men

The Yes Men strike again! Today's "special edition" of the New York Post on climate change is a classic, with the headline blaring "WE'RE SCREWED." "It’s Coming! According to a high tech study commissioned by a concerned Mayor Bloomberg and generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, climate change caused by human-created greenhouse gases is threatening the health, livelihood, and security of New Yorkers—especially those who take the subway to work."

A hoax with a twist: "Everything in it is factual." You can find the online edition here or view a short video about it below.

UPDATE, NBC New York:

One insider at the Post, noted that the faux-paper was pretty funny, and was in fact being passed out in front of their offices at Sixth Avenue and 48th Street.

The Yes Men were proud of their work, and say they handed out nearly a million copies across the city today.

"This could be, and should be, a real New York Post," said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. "Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem."

"Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts," the group said in a statement.

Carefully checked facts? Wait, that doesn't sound like the Post at all!

YES MEN press release:


Facebook preview (before/after)
 

Making your Drupal page Facebook "Share a link" friendly

How to tell Facebook which image and what description to use for the preview when people post your page as a link on their profile

I was about to post a link to my latest portfolio entry on my Facebook wall and I realized it didn't pull in the correct image. I did a quick bit of research and found a solution that took only a few minutes to implement and allows you to spoon-feed Facebook a title, description and image for your page.

The "Basic Tags" section on this page gives you the three lines of code you need:

<meta name="title" content="Smith hails 'unique' Wable legacy" />
<meta name="description" content="John Smith claims beautiful football is the main legacy of Akhil Wable's decade at the club. " />
<link rel="image_src" href="http://www.onjd.com/design05/images/PH2/WableAFC205.jpg" />

In my case, I already had a Drupal CCK field containing the image path I wanted to use, as well as a page title and a short description, so all I had to do was add the lines above in the <head> seciton of the page and replace the content with the PHP variables containing the appropriate field information.

Facebook will try to guess which images to include if you don't do this, so you may find it unnecessary if it's guessing correctly. On my site, the images Facebook guessed on a number of pages were the RSS, Twitter, and Facebook icons -- completely unrelated to the content. If you're having similar issues or if you're just a control freak, the code above should help you out.

 


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My novel, Clutching Dust and Stars, was named "Best First Novel, 2009" by Hearts and Minds! Click below to learn more or order a copy.

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