News aggregator
Austin Smith: Controlling the HTTP Expires Header
So I just submitted my first core patch, followed quick by several revisions. It felt as good as I was told it would. Still tingling.
Anyways, this is an issue that's got to be resolved--it's been stuck for months on one particular issue, which I don't think should be an issue at all. It's very problematic for developers of large scale sites to be unable to adjust the expiration sent by Drupal to the client. My goal in this patch is to give developers this ability and intentionally not address the issue--which, again, has delayed this patch for months--of how reverse proxies are going to deal with it. That's not Drupal's job--it's the job of whoever is connecting Drupal with the reverse proxy, and any attempt to solve this on the Drupal Core level will require not using PHP Sessions for users that aren't authenticated. Turn the page for the proof.
"Skanks in NYC" blog post leads to lawsuit against Google
Bloggers that wish to retain their anonymity may be watching an otherwise farcical case that's been filed in New York, where a model has claimed that a blog has defamed her and is suing Google in an attempt to discover who's behind it.
Kiwis rally opposition to NZ copyright bill
Two controversial provisions of a New Zealand copyright law, slated to take effect next month, are stirring opposition. Artists and ISPs say the law will result in the disconnection of users and deletion of content on the basis of mere allegations of copyright infringement.
Do Users really love Laptops?
Tao Starbow: Getting with the Grid
I have been hearing more and more about CSS frameworks that use grids, but I didn’t really get what they were talking about until reading Jason Santa Maria article over at 24ways.org: Making Modular Layout Systems. Now I have a better idea of why people are so buzzed about trying to get something like 960 Grid or BluetripCSS into Drupal 7 as a core theme (http://groups.drupal.org/node/16457)
Michelle Cox: Advanced Forum & Advanced Profile Kit status report
This post is for people who use or are thinking of using Advanced Forum and/or Advanced Profile Kit. It contains important information to navigate the version mess I have going on right now.
The current supported versions are AF Alpha 16 (D5 & D6) and APK beta 1 (D5). If you are using these modules on a live site, stick with those versions until we get past this reshuffling. I will be doing "unstable" releases while I get them into shape. You'll know it's safe to upgrade when I go back to named alpha/beta releases. Hopefully this won't take more than a couple more weeks but it's hard to predict with my sporadic time to work on this. I am getting sponsored to work on the D6 version of APK for the bits the client's site needs but there's also bits that won't be going into APK that pull my focus away from it. I haven't abandoned the D5 versions but they aren't getting as much attention as my focus is on D6 and so are lagging behind.
If you are looking to help test the new versions, the rest of this will tell you what you need to know. If you aren't comfortable running devel and giving me reproducable steps, this isn't for you. These instructions are for both D6 and D5 but D6 is farther along at this point and will work better as D5 still needs some things backported to it. Once I've done that, I'll release "unstables" for D5 as well to make testing easier.
Principles of time management
In the previous entry, I wrote about the time management book Do It Tomorrow. This post is about the principles of time management that underlie Do It Tomorrow:
- have a clear vision
- one thing at a time
- little and often
- define your limits
- closed lists
- reducing random factors
- commitment vs interest
Have a clear vision
Have a clear vision of your goals, of the things you want to do and the things you don’t want to do. A clear vision directs your priorities. Setting priorities is only meaningful between projects, not between tasks that have to be done anyway (’project’ is loosely defined here as an activity that leads to some desired result and that cannot be finished in one go).
Your vision is not something static: it will change over time. So frequently revisit your vision, to keep your priorities clear as well.
One thing at a time
Focus, focus, focus! Use for example timeboxing or working with a pair (like pairprogramming) to work in highly focused way. Don’t dilute your focus by having too many projects at the same time.
Little and often
Work on things frequently, in small bits, iteratively and increment, so that results grow over time. If you want e.g. to write a book or finish a Ph.D. thesis, work every day on it. Actually doing something and keep doing it is more important than the amount of time spent.
This works for writing, uncluttering your home or office, bookkeeping, and many other larger activities.
Define your limits
Creative thinking works better within clear boundaries. An example of limits is timeboxing your activities, e.g. using the pomodori technique.
Defining limits is also important for your projects: determine the boundaries (and frequently re-determine them) to get a clear focus of what you’re doing and what you aren’t doing, instead of being busy with a cloud of all kinds of vaguely interesting and possibly relevant stuff.
This week, I’ve started to make a map of all the projects that I currently have and that I want to take on this year. Being an independent consultant, I don’t have an organisational context that sets a lot of boundaries for me so I’ll have to set them myself in order to be effective.
Closed lists
A closed list is a list that has a line under it and that will not change. For every day, you make a Will Do list, a closed list with the stuff that came in the previous day and your recurring tasks. As the list is closed, it will only shrink when you’re finishing items from the list. This will give you a feeling of accomplishment at the end of each day, when all the Will Do items have been checked.
Anything that comes in during the day and that is not a real urgency, will be put on tomorrow’s list or below the line of today’s list. You’ll first finish all the items above the line, before doing the newly added things.
This approach enables you to plan most of the work you do, so you can work much less reactively and much less governed by self-inflicted urgencies. Your day to day planning will become more predictable and you’ll get early feedback when you’re structurally overloaded.
The Will Do list is limited by your daily processing capacity (so you will need to find out what it is), so you prevent backlogs from building up. If you get more work each day than you can handle the next day, you’ll have to either cut down on your commitments, make your systems more efficient, and/or allocate more time for the stuff on your lists.
Willem asked, what do you do when the telephone rings? It depends: you can answer the call, make a note, and take action tomorrow (unless, of course, it’s about your house being on fire). You can also decide that you won’t answer the phone during certain activities, listen voicemail later on, and get back to the callers the next day. It depends on the nature of your work and your preferences.
Another advantage of closed lists is that you don’t have to prioritise between the items. They all need to be done and if the list is limited by your daily processing capacity, it will be finished. Prioritizing doesn’t make sense for stuff that needs to be done anyway.
Working this way gives peace of mind and reduces waste: you don’t have to spend your energy making difficult decisions about priorities. Prioritizing is waste: it’s work that adds no value, but just increases the pressure on you! You’ll have more time and energy left for actually doing useful stuff.
Forster’s recommendation is to start with the least urgent things first. If work has to be done anyway, why not do it right away?
A bright, grand idea like writing a book is not something you can finish the next day. This becomes a project, a task that recurs (a little attention every day) until the work is finished.
Reducing random factors
By preventing most ‘urgencies’, you will reduce a lot of (self-inflicted) variability in your day to day work. Closed lists system make the underlying systems problems visible. You can’t eliminate all variability and randomness, but you can reduce them substantially, giving you more freedom, making sure your important things get done, and enabling you to handle the remaining randomness better.
Commitment vs interest
You can be interested in a lot of things, but you can have only a limited amount of commitments. It is important to know your commitments, as these provide a framework for your decisions. It’s like the pigs and chickens metaphor used in Scrum (chickens are only involved, but pigs are committed). A pig only has limited ham and bacon it can provide… (the pigs and chickens metaphor has its limitations, but that’s another story)
Judge: transcoding doesn't block Veoh "safe harbor" defense
Universal Music Group says that user-generated content sites like Veoh can't dock in a "safe harbor" if they do anything except store videos—even transcoding destroys immunity. A judge is having none of it.
Judge doesn't buy state secrets privilege, OKs wiretap suit
An Islamic charity has established its right to sue the government over warrantless surveillance, a federal court ruled Monday.
Kris Buytaert: Buddylist, Buddlist2, Friendlist
Dear LazyWeb
Buddylist is aimed at Drupal 5, so when porting to a site to Drupal 6, you need Buddylist2. However the BuddyList page mentions one should look at FriendList as that project is supposed finished ..
At first sight it seems like FriendList indeed most advanced in its efforts
As I was also using Invite, which also is still under development for 6,
I was assuming that upon installing it the dependencies would tell me which one to use.. however it seems none of them already hooks into Invite
Am I overlooking a module that solves my needs . ?
