Thoughts

The glossy future

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According to science fiction, humanity should by now be exploring the depths of outer space in sleek, warp-powered vehicles. This fantastical Utopia of the 21st century, however, could hardly be further from our own reality. Will the future continue to disappoint, or will it live up to its glossy predictions?

Movies for the masses

Film has been around for over 100 years now. I just saw a documentary about Cecil B DeMille, one of the world's first filmmakers, and the founder of Hollywood. Watching clips of movies made over 80 years ago gave me an idea about the future of old films.

Busker bigotry

One of life's greatest dilemnas is that you can't drop a coin to every busker that you pass in the street. So how do you decide which ones are worthy of your charity? Those with the least money? Those with the most talent? How can busker bigotry be minimised?

In search of an all-weather bike

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I ride my bicycle whenever I can, but quite often cycling is simply not an option, due to adverse weather. It would be awesome if you could get an 'all-weather' bike, with a canopy to protect you from the rain. Join me in my search for a weatherproof bike.

Showing sneak previews in Drupal

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Drupal comes with a powerful permissions system that lets you control exactly who has access to what on your site. However, one thing that you can't do with Drupal is prohibit users from viewing certain content, but still let them see a preview of it. This quick-hack tutorial shows you how to do just that.

Aussie Daylight Savings PHP function

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Want to know how the GreenAsh clock always tells you, with perfect accuracy, the time in Sydney Australia? Our secret is a little PHP function that modifies the clock according to the rules of NSW Daylight Savings Time. We are now sharing this code with the public for the first time.

Desire and suffering

The Eastern Buddhist philosophy, that desire is the cause of all suffering, makes a lot of sense in terms of material wants. But when analysed in terms of more abstract desires - in particular the desire for knowledge - a challenging question becomes clear: is it good to desire some things?

Hierarchical URL aliasing

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Part 3 of "making taxonomy work my way".

Thanks to the path module and its URL aliasing functionality, Drupal is one of the few CMSs that allows your site to have friendly and meaningful URLs for every page. In the grand finale to this series, I show you how to extend this functionality by making Drupal automatically construct hierarchical URL aliases, based on your site's taxonomy structure.

Cross-vocabulary taxonomy hierarchies

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Part 2 of "making taxonomy work my way".

Category hierarchies are cool, but in Drupal's taxonomy system, they can only span one vocabulary... until now! Join me as I continue my home-renovation of the taxonomy module, by allowing a term in one vocab to have a 'distant parent' in another one. The breadcrumb improvements made in part 1 really shine here, as we generate breadcrumbs that span several vocabularies.