Mark Dorison ~ 140+

Adding All New Files to Subversion

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:07:07 -0400

One thing that has always bothered me when working with Subversion is the inability to easily add a large number of new files to the repository. Subversion does not have an equivalent of ‘git add *’, so we are left to add all of the new files, at best, one folder at a time.

Imagine doing this for a Drupal site that hasn’t been touched in a while and you need to apply security updates for core, along with a large number of modules. You could very easily spend more time typing in all of your ‘svn add …’ commands than getting the updates applied.

Using the following command, you can affect an ‘svn add’ command on every line returned from ‘svn status’ that has a question mark associated it (ie. new to the repository).

svn status | grep "?" | while read f; do svn add $f; done

Hopefully, this should make adding large numbers of new files to Subversion quite a bit easier. Of course, you could always just use git!

Apache Solr / Drupal search performance tip

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:26:00 -0400

Apache Solr / Drupal search performance tip:

A great tip by Davy Van Den Bremt of Drupal Coder on disabling Drupal’s core search indexer when using Apache Solr.

Creating a new Drupal site from a Drush make file

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:09:00 -0400

If you spend a fair amount of time creating new Drupal sites and are not using Drush you are missing out! I used to maintain a subversion repository with my most frequently used modules just for this purpose but this was a very tedious, manual task keeping these modules up to date (almost more trouble than it was worth). With Drush Make however, you can just fire it off, and right before your eyes, you will have a brand new directory with the latest versions of all the modules you specified, downloaded and ready to go.

From Drush make’s project page:

Drush make is an extension to drush that can create a ready-to-use drupal site, pulling sources from various locations. It does this by parsing a flat text file (similar to a drupal .info file) and downloading the sources it describes. In practical terms, this means that it is possible to distribute a complicated Drupal distribution as a single text file.

Below is an example Drush make file.

; CORE
core = 6.x
projects[] = drupal

; MODULES
; acquia
projects[admin_menu][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[cck][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[filefield][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[imageapi][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[imagecache][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[imagefield][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[pathauto][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[token][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[views][subdir] = "acquia"
projects[webform][subdir] = "acquia"

; administration
projects[password_strength][subdir] = "other"
projects[userprotect][subdir] = "other"

; development
projects[coder][subdir] = "other"
projects[devel][subdir] = "other"

; THEMES
projects[zen][subdir] = "other"

I have shown the example above to illustrate the make file syntax. This example is a bit more lean, module-wise, then even my bare bones make file is. I have separated out the modules contained in the Acquia distribution, of which I am a big fan of, but this is just for organization’s sake.

Once you have created the make file that you are going to use you can implement it with the following command:

drush make "path_to_make_file" /path_to_newsite_/

I have published a standard and a bare-bones make file on GitHub. Please feel free to fork with your changes/additions!

Links of note:

Overriding a Drupal Views SQL Query

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:53:00 -0400

We all know and love Drupal Views. The queries that it builds are most often very elegant, but there are certain cases where you need to use a query that is just a bit too complicated for the Views query generator to build on its own. I ran into this recently where I could not accomplish my task without a join to a sub-query.

If you find this to be the case, you can utilize the views_pre_execute hook to override the query being supplied by Views.

Implementation

function hook_views_pre_execute(&$view) 
{
  if($view->name == 'your_views_name') 
  {
    $view->build_info['query'] = "SELECT * FROM node"
  }
}

Once you have implemented this in your custom module, if you edit the view on your site, any changes you make that would normally change the query (sort criteria, filters etc.) will have no affect. However, you can utilize the options in ‘Basic Settings’, ‘Page Settings’ to edit the properties of how/where the view is going to display. When you use the ‘Preview’ button to test your view with various displays, your custom SQL query will be displayed so you can verify that it is being used.

Note: You could just create a custom module with custom sql in lieu of using a view. However, if you have already built a view and styled your page/block based on the views generated elements you might not be looking forward to this. In this case you could use the above technique to override the query without disrupting the rest of the work you have done relying on the view.

merlin: Check out TextExpander’s new “Fill” functionality. In....

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:04:00 -0400

merlin:

Check out TextExpander’s new “Fill” functionality. In. Sane.

My love for TextExpander knows no bounds.

Pasties for the three snippets I mentioned (which need to be tweaked for your own setup):

youtube embed

mp3 embed

flickr link with credit

Also mentioned: Make Link is an indispensable Firefox extension that lets you grab a customized, marked-up, “one-click” pasteboard of the current web page (including variables for title, URL, and quoted text).

Blizzard Wonderland

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:02:46 -0500

Blizzard Wonderland

Updated Florida Gators 2010 Football Calendar

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:35:00 -0500

Updated Florida Gators 2010 Football Calendar:

I have updated my Florida Gators Football calendar for the 2010 season. If you add this calendar as a subscription in any calendaring program that supports the iCal standard (iCal, Google Calendar, Outlook, etc) it will update itself on a regular basis with game times and channels when these become available! Florida Gators 2010 Football Calendar.

Optimizing Multiple Domains for Google Using Apache's mod_rewrite

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:55:00 -0500

If you own more than one domain but point them all to the same site, a portion of your virtual host file may look something like this:

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName maindomain.com ServerAlias www.maindomain.com alternatedomain.com </VirtualHost>

The problem here is that Google sees the same content being served on multiple domains and will knock down your search ranking as a result. The way to remedy the situation is to utilize Apache’s mod_rewrite so that a 301 request pushes the user to your main url. The only caveat being that no matter which domain you type into the browser url bar, it will then be rewritten to the main domain. Here is an example of the code below that you can add to your virtual host file:

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.maindomain.com|alternatedomain.com) [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://maindomain.com$1 [R=301,L]

Save the file, restart Apache, and your alternate domains should then be rewritten to your main domain, your Google ranking preserved, and all is right with the world.

Siberian Hudson in Central Park

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:59:44 -0500

Siberian Hudson in Central Park

Handy TextMate tips for working with HTML & CSS

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:49:36 -0500

emilbjorklund:

I use TextMate a lot when doing web development, and I absolutely love it. Some of my friends and colleagues also use TextMate, and I get questions like “what was that thing you did with the thing with the text” sometimes. Here, I thought I would document some of the ones I use most frequently.

Creating tag pairs

To create a tag without having to type those pesky angle-brackets and other thingamabobs, there are a few ways to go about it. First, if you find that you already opened the tag “manually”, you can always close a tag by pressing ⌘ (cmd), ⌥ (alt) and “.”. Secondly, you can open a pair of opening and closing tags by using ctrl and “<”. That gives you a default tag of “
”, which you can then either just change into whatever you want by typing the tag name, and the closing tag automatically changes, or you can tab into the middle if you’re happy with creating a p-tag (same goes for when you have changed it, press tab to jump into the tag).

This way of creating a tag pair allows you to type in attributes before tabbing into creating the content of the element. There is a second way to use this command, and that is to type the name of the tag first (like for instance “li”) and then hit ctrl and “<”, that will give you opening and closing tags and the cursor placed inside straight away.

If you already have a piece of content (a line of text or other HTML elements) that you need to wrap in a pair of tags, you can use ctrl, ⇧ (shift) and “w”. Too bad it doesn’t reindent your code for you, but you can’t win all the time…

Working with selections

Speaking of wrapping stuff, one really useful command when wrapping text with “”-tags is to use ctrl, ⇧(shift) and “L”. That means the text you selected becomes a link, and as an added bonus, the contents of your clipboard gets inserted as the value of the href-attribute. Pretty handy, eh? When I create dummy links on a page, I just copy a hash-character (#) and then just zoom through the text, adding links where necessary. You can also use the same command without selecting text, which gives you an empty “”-tag, then just tab into entering the link text when you’re done with the attributes.

TextMate also has the lovely quality of being able to select text over specific columns as well as multiple lines. This means you can make a selection of a specific part of multiple lines and enter text into this spot on all lines, simultaneously. The easiest way of doing this is to hold the ⌥ (alt) key while selecting an area with the mouse. Try creating a few lines of empty space, select a column across all lines and type “
List item
” - Hey presto, a list with multiple dummy items in one fell swoop! If you’re not a mouse user, you can enter this multiple-row-editing mode by creating a few empty lines, selecting them (by holding ⇧ (shift) and using the arrow keys) and then pressing ⌘ (cmd) + ⌥ (alt) + “a”.

Element specific stuff

There’s also an abunance of element-specific commands to use. When creating a new HTML document, you can either use one of the templates that ship with TextMate, but if you prefer to do everything “by hand”, try typing for example “doctype” followed by pressing tab (and then hit the number key for the option you want), or why not “head” + tab? There are too many of these to go through, but apart from the above mentioned “doctype” and “head” shortcuts, try tabbing after typing “form” or “table”. That gives you some default scaffolding instead of the tedious work of typing out everything in these elements by hand.

You don’t do the math

When editing CSS, I don’t use as many shortcuts, I find that they mostly slow me down. A couple of things worth noting is that most properties can be tab-completed, if you’re unsure of spelling or syntax. Try typing “background” followed by a tab, for example: that will give you a couple of choices for background properties.

One thing that is quite handy, though, is the built in math bundle: you can do calculations of measurements inline! Say that you’re trying to calculate the em-size of a particular piece of text, and you want it to harmonize with the vertical rythm of the page. You need a line height of 18px for text set in 14px, in ems. Just type “line-height: 18/14em;”, select the “18/14” part and press ctrl + ⇧ + “C”, which gives you a couple of options for calculating a value. Choose “evaluate and replace expression” (no. 2) and you’re good to go!

Finally, it’s also worth mentioning in this context that all of the defaults for what happens for a specific command is easily customized via Bundle Editor, accessed via Bundles - Bundle Editor - Show Bundle Editor (there’s even a keyboard shortcut for that: ⌘ + ⌥ + ctrl + “B”).

Happy coding!

Great name. Great business card.

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:57:05 -0500

Great name. Great business card.

Repair a Non-booting Mac after Linux Install

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:46:11 -0500

mccarron:

While at NSCoder Schaumburg last night I installed Ubuntu 9.10 to a USB stick attached to my MacBook Pro. I mistakenly didn’t check the bootloader installation settings, as I thought it was safe since I was installing to the USB stick. That was a bad idea, because I rebooted to a find the dreaded Question Mark Folder on my screen.

This basically means the system can’t find a disk to boot from. In this case, Ubuntu removed the expected EFI boot code and replaced it with their own code. My data was all there, just the drive wasn’t bootable. Also since I wasn’t at home I had no boot disk on hand to fix the problem. Luckily fellow NSCoder Kevin Mitchell had his Mac OS X Snow Leopard disk with him.

I figured it would be fixed with a simple “Disk Repair” command in Disk Utility, or a simple command line to restore the boot code to normal. But after trying various methods to repair the system, I was getting no where. I was worried I’d have to re-image the drive once I got home. So I started to Google around as I knew a solution had to be out there. I eventually found this article on macosxhints.com that had a simple solution that worked flawlessly! A simple resizing of the Mac’s HFS partition will reset the EFI boot code.

Run Disk Utility and click on your internal hard disk (the disk itself, not the partition under it).

Then click on the Partition tab. If you move the triangular slider that adjusts the partition up and then back to where it was, the “Apply” button becomes active (it starts greyed out).

You can now click “Apply,” and the partition will be left alone, but the bootloader will be recreated.

This tip saved the day for me, so I figured I’d share it. As I hope it is a tip that someone can use in the future themselves.

The snuggie on steroids juliaroy: I am strangely really into...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:00:21 -0500

The snuggie on steroids

juliaroy:

I am strangely really into this thing…

giannii:

I can use this right now. I’d wear socks though.

thedailywhat:

What hath Snuggie wrought?

[via.]

"I don’t want to hear that the son of a [bleep] can’t throw,” an Alabama coach told..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:46:00 -0500

““I don’t want to hear that the son of a [bleep] can’t throw,” an Alabama coach told me later. “Every time he needed to make a big throw against us, he made it. There really isn’t anyone else like him.””

- Alabama Coach on Tim Tebow

Demo of Glyph iPhone Web App

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:26:20 -0500

Demo of Glyph iPhone Web App

Hudson Enjoying Central Park

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:28:33 -0500

Hudson Enjoying Central Park

Relatives, please take note.

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:49:28 -0400

Relatives, please take note.

How to Recover From a Broken Mail.app

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:10:00 -0400

After upgrading to Snow Leopard and starting up Mail.app for the first time I was notified that some of the plug-ins that I used under Leopard were not compatible and would no longer be active. No big deal, I figured until I looked at my Mail window.

One of the plug-ins I was using was WideMail. What WideMail does is turn your normally two rows of data in Mail.app (messages & preview pane) into two columns of data, arguably more suitable for wide-screen monitors.

The big trick here besides just physically moving the layout is that what WideMail does is create a new data column which contains the data of your choice (sender, subject, date received etc). You then disable the other columns and you are done, right? Wrong. Mail.app does not let you turn off the Subject column. WideMail hacks this and makes it disappear.

Fast forward. You install Snow Leopard, WideMail gets deactivated due to incompatibility and you go to turn on all your traditional Mail columns but Subject is still nowhere to be found. After trying to delete the WideMail packages, the plist files etc. the only solution I could find was to reinstall Mail. You can do this by

Deleting the ~/Library/Mail folder (hopefully you are using IMAP so this shouldn’t be much of an issue)
Delete the file titled com.apple.mail.plist from the ~/Library/Preferences directory
Inserting your install media
Navigating to the Optional Installs folder
Activating the installer
Select Mail from the Applications section and reinstall

Following this you should be back up and running with a pristine version of Mail.app!

mikegermano: This confirms my feelings regarding Sloane...

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:15:47 -0400

mikegermano:

This confirms my feelings regarding Sloane Peterson was/is the perfect girlfriend. Plus I think she is totally hot even with that White Leather Jacket.

condicondi:

THE GUIDE TO BEING SO CHOICE aka How Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Taught me how to be an Awesome Girlfriend.

Get along with his friends if you don’t get along with his friends you are done. seriously. That is number 1. Even if you think his friends are uptight weirdos or hypochondriac freaks, HEY, he is friends with them for a reason, so cut the shit. You’ve probably got some weird and crappy friends too…

Rein him in, but only when necessary you are his girlfriend, not his mother. If he wants to sing to the city on a giant float, let him do it. He’s a big man and he can deal with the consequences. You can nicely remind him, Look, if you do that there might be trouble, but if you throw a bitch fit and give him the silent treatmeant you will look fucking retarded when he has a new girlfriend on his arm from the impressive stunts he’s pulled.

Be funny “He’s licking the glass and making obscene gestures with his hands.” simple as that.

Be confident Look, one of the reasons Ferris loved her was because she was cool and classy lady, she didn’t stress. She uttered the words and believed “He’s gonna marry me.” She probably knows if her boyfriend was running through a backyard and saw 2 girls tanning he probably would stop and say hello, but she also knows that he would spend hours of stress and risk his neck to get her out of school to just see her. Relax. You have him. He’s not going anywhere, and if he talks to other girls who the fuck cares YOU are the one he wants to marry.

Say Eloquent Shit did Sloane ever use the word “like” as much as you do in your daily conversation? No. Drop the habit that makes you seem like a dumb valley girl and trade it for stellar vocab terms like “warmth & compassion” and “devastatingly handsome.” Once you’ve mastered talking like an adult, you’ll be able to spew pearls of poetry like “The city looks so peaceful from up here…”

Pack lightly ever notice how tiny Sloane’s purse was? The bigger the purse, the lamer the girl. Its called baggage for a reason.

Be able to keep up with the boys Hey, if you’ve got cramps, take a fucking midol and strap in. You don’t ever wanna be the girlfriend who is a drag and never wants to go out. A girl who can say she cruised with the top down in a convertible, swung by the Stock Exchange, and took in a Cubs game all in one day, is sorta girl who you wanna keep around.

Look badass in a jacket with fringe The End.

Every dog lover should....

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:31:40 -0400

Know his dogs birthday;
Get birthday gifts from the dog;
Consider getting a cat for the dog;
See babies and think of puppies;
Have a near miss in traffic because a dog was walking by;
Have stepped in some, barefoot, in the dark;
Know better than to leave the closet door open;
Know all dogs by name if not all owners;
Be pleased to learn that 63 percent of you sleep with them;
Buy anything a dog is selling;
Should be counted on to ask no matter what other awful things are reported, was the dog okay;
Understand they are never replaced; and you will fall in love again…

A friend of mine saw this poster in a doctor’s office and copied it down to send to me. It was much appreciated.

Mark Dorison ~ 140+

Adding All New Files to Subversion

Apache Solr / Drupal search performance tip

Creating a new Drupal site from a Drush make file

Overriding a Drupal Views SQL Query

Implementation

merlin: Check out TextExpander’s new “Fill” functionality. In....

Blizzard Wonderland

Updated Florida Gators 2010 Football Calendar

Optimizing Multiple Domains for Google Using Apache's mod_rewrite

Siberian Hudson in Central Park

Handy TextMate tips for working with HTML & CSS

Creating tag pairs

Working with selections

Element specific stuff

You don’t do the math

Great name. Great business card.

Repair a Non-booting Mac after Linux Install

The snuggie on steroids juliaroy: I am strangely really into...

"I don’t want to hear that the son of a [bleep] can’t throw,” an Alabama coach told..."

Demo of Glyph iPhone Web App

Hudson Enjoying Central Park

Relatives, please take note.

How to Recover From a Broken Mail.app

mikegermano: This confirms my feelings regarding Sloane...

Every dog lover should....