Tech4Him – Technology with Integrity

Today I had a staff member who was create a new page in the Drupal implementation and could not get the bullet syntax of Markdown to render real bullets in the content body. Scratched my head a few times and created a test page.

In a recently released site we were able to help content editors see the evils of WYSIWYG and the benefits of Markdown. Yeah! This was a big win.

Sure enough, I could not get them to render. Puzzled, I headed over to Google and found a post on g.d.o. Thanks to a post by Moshe, I found the solution.

Lesson: Always include a blank line before you start a list in Markdown.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Some of you may already be on the bandwagon but as usual, I’m late to the party. Thanks to beeradb who showed me today the node for Drupal 7 referring to the refactoring of node rendering in Drupal 7. BTW, this is no small task since most of Drupal is about the node. Now in Drupal 7 we will hopefully see more emphasis on fields which is great for us data folks.

First, a big hurrah to the team. I for one believe this is a great continuation of the work started in Drupal 6 toward this goal. By abstracting and fully creating the node object we allow much more flexibility when it comes to the display / presentation side of the house.

Now there is alot to read through there with the 112 comments already in place. Take the time though and go through it. Moshe illuminated what again to me was a revelation that if this goes forward you’ll replace your node op view pieces with the preprocess function: MODULE_preprocess_page(&$variables)

Drupal goodness!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Well, just got back from attending the Microsoft 2008 Launch event. Yes, Microsoft! Come on now, most of us in the enterprises still work with Microsoft products daily. ;o)

It was the standard Microsoft event. Got to the Dallas Convention Center at about 7:20 and there was already a line of cars waiting to pay the $8.00 to park in the Convention Center parking garage. I was going to take the TRE to Union Station and then the DART Red line south to Convention Center Station but change my mind at the last minute. Two escalators up and then to the registration area.

Funny enough, the gal getting me registered seemed to think I looked familiar as she also did to me. After about five minutes of asking questions of eachother, we realized we worked for the same retailer in the early ’90s. Funny!

Grabbed my turkey lunch bag from the table. Wow, neat little black zippered Microsoft lunch cooler. I’ll actually hang on to that and use it elsewhere. Almost worth the trip already.

Now to walk the gauntlet of vendors in the exhibitors area. Met the Microsoft BI folks, talked some non-profit pricing numbers, got some information. Then to the Microsoft Unified Communications guy. Just filled out a form and grab some schwag. Developer evangelist talking to a larger group of folks. Figured I’d listen in. Did he just say that they already have support for programming the IRobot Roomba? Cool! Microsoft Robotics Studio.

A few more meets and greets and I’m outta there. Made a few quick calls back to the office checking on this and that. Headed to the arena for the keynote. Arrived early and got those good aisle seats. Yeah! Running 15 minutes late so we got to view the vendor videos, yet again. UGH! Too much marketing. Keynote was okay but not terribly inspiring.

I was in the Data IT Pro track and it was certainly not too stellar. Demos were a bit rough but I guess that can certainly happen. But the primary speaker for two of the sessions just did not have a great personality for speaking and I think that zoned a bunch of people out.

I did get excited about a couple of things.

Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Remote Apps – Ability to virtualize presentation of applications, not just desktops. Seems like this will steal away from Citrix but hey, good for us.

“Terminal Services (TS) RemoteApp programs are accessed through Terminal Services, and look and act as if they are running on the end user’s local computer. Users can run TS RemoteApp programs side by side with their local programs. If a user is running more than one RemoteApp on the same terminal server, RemoteApp will share the same Terminal Services session.” – Per Microsoft

Visual Studio 2008 will now support PHP. At least that is what the keynote stated. I’ll have to load it up and take a look-see. Also, apparently Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7 is supposed to include support for PHP without us having to go to third party pieces. Keep in mind that I’m skeptical about this. Is this a Microsoft version of PHP? Yikes!

Freebies included:

Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition
SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition
Visual Studio 2008
Windows Vista Ultimate SP 1

I cut out a bit early form there and came back to the office to do some more PHP/SQL coding so the day would not be a complete loss. It was nice to get away from the office for a few hours though and we scored some free licenses of products we will use for the non-profit.

Blessings.

Popularity: 6% [?]