jbrown

Leona Lewis - Forgive Me

jbrown — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:38:16 +0000

Episode 41 - Jump the Shark

jbrown — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:03:00 +0000

Lala gets her sea legs.

Database Fun with Schema Module

jbrown — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:43:04 +0000

This video is an introduction to the Schema module. This is a great module if you'd like a peek at how your Drupal database is set up (with descriptions!) or if you are building a new module and you'd like someone else to magically create the schema for your .install file. It can also check your database and tell you if anyone has monkeyed with the way Drupal thinks it should be set up. This introduction touches on all of these features and gives a good overview on how to use this really cool module.

Using Secondary Menus

jbrown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:11:37 +0000

This video looks at using Drupal menus, specifically how to use the secondary menu concept to create a relation between your top level menu items and a child menu. Once we set them up, I play around in the theme to change up where they get displayed. I also play a bit with the CSS classes that are used. Besides learning about secondary menus, this video is also a brief intro to tweaking the page.tpl.php file of your theme.

DVD Outtake: Drupal Module Selection Tips

jbrown — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:38:41 +0000

One of the hardest things to do after getting your Drupal installation up and running is deciding which Drupal modules that you're going to use. There are literally thousands of modules to choose from, and so this can be quite a daunting task. It's even more overwhelming if you don't have a clear strategy for searching through, filtering down, evaluating and testing the viable module candidates in the vast Drupal contrib repository.
You may have already come across valuable resources such as Lullabot's Top 40 modules podcast, the user ratings and feedback provided at DrupalModules.com, as well as the recently published module usage statistics on Drupal.org that allows you gauge how many people are actively using any particular module.
These are all great resources to be sure, but there is also a lot of really useful information on the health of a module that you can gather directly from the links on the module's project page if you know where to look.

This 8-minute video is an outtake from the "Understanding Drupal" DVD / digital download that features the Lullabot team sharing their module evaluation tricks of the trade. They'll walk you through some of their favorite strategies for quickly filtering down the number of viable module options down to a reasonable number.
If you enjoy these types of insights, then be sure to consider coming down to the "Do It With Drupal" Conference in New Orleans from December 10-12 where team Lullabot and a host of Drupal and outside community experts will be giving out a lot of practical Drupal site building advice like this. This is the last week of the last early bird discounts, and so save yourself a couple of hundred dollars and register today.
read more

Building Views with Fivestar and VotingAPI

jbrown — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:15:48 +0000

This videocast covers three modules, wrapped together to provide a flexible solution for displaying information about content ratings in a list.
VotingAPI: Central storage of votes and rating information.
Fivestar: A flexible widget for registering votes on a 1-10 star basis.
Views: The ultimate Drupal query builder, capable of pulling out lists of information from the database.
In Drupal 6, the options in configuring views has become drastically more complex. This videocast helps understand how to setup views that display information about the current average rating for piece of content and also how to pull in an individual users results, each displayed as Fivestar widgets.

Imagefield and Imagecache

jbrown — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:14:16 +0000

On this week's Mustardseed Video Podcast, Bob shows you how to deal with images in your CCK content types. There's always a million ways to skin a cat in Drupal, but this method has been consistant and maintained nicely over time. He couples Imagefield with Imagecache to get some simple image handling in as a CCK field.

Freedom Fry — "Happy birthday to GNU"

jbrown — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:26:19 +0000

Drupal's Webform Module (Screencast)

jbrown — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:44:36 +0000

Episode 39 - Backstage Bender

jbrown — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:35:00 +0000

Menage of mistakes and outtakes.

Tiki Bar TV Trailer

jbrown — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:48:00 +0000

Show it to your friends. They might understand the show. (Maybe)

Filefield + jQuery Media Screencast

jbrown — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:53:33 +0000

Here is a fast lesson on one of the many (many) ways of hosting and presenting video on your own Drupal website. The CCK Filefield and jQuery Media modules are a one-two knockout combination that allow users to upload media files to fields in your custom content types and then play back the media files in the correct player or handler. It's a great replacement for the video module and integrates nicely with any modules that like to do things with fields.
Let this screenie get you started in only 13 minutes, and please drop me a line or leave comments if this is meaningful to you. Also note that the Boston Drupaltherapy workshop on July 25, 2008, is coming right up - if you are seeking excellent training this summer, this is a great opportunity. read more »

Porting Drupal Modules

jbrown — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:42:20 +0000

Now that CCK and Views have release candidates for Drupal 6, it's the perfect time to start hammering down on the list of modules that haven't been ported yet. This video demonstrates how anyone with basic copy/paste/modify PHP skills can help port Drupal modules. Really! It's not nearly as bad as you think. :)
Topics covered include:

How to tell the module portage status of your Drupal site with the Upgrade Status module.
How to perform basic community research to determine the actual porting status of your modules.
Overview of the amazing Coder module and how to configure it.
Where to find more information about changes between Drupal versions.
How to use Coder module to convert a simple module from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, step by step.
How to test to ensure the porting status was a success.

Jeff Whatcott on Acquia

jbrown — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:10:28 +0000

John Eckman of Optaros sat down with Jeff Whatcott, Acquia's Chief Communicator, to talk about Drupal and Acquia.

Quantum of Solace

jbrown — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:59:51 +0000

Drupal usability tests from the University of Baltimore with community solutions

jbrown — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:03:04 +0000

The Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore and a team of eight graduate students in the Research Methods class, taught by professor Kathryn Summers, have completed a usability study on Drupal. The Drupal community has been working with Becca Scollan in the usability group.

The usability research used video recordings and eye tracking tools to follow participants gaze in the Drupal interface. The study used eight participants, which is considered a valid sample. The study duplicated some tests done in usability testing at the University of Minnesota, and confirmed several results.

Episode 38 - Beatnik

jbrown — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:59:00 +0000

Beat off to a different drummer.

You Can't Picture This

jbrown — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:58:52 +0000

Thousands of UK residents have signed a petition against a law preventing photography and filming in certain public places. Yet this all turned out to be a misunderstanding, and no such law was proposed. Rajesh investigates the way we view the lens and the way it views us.

Introduction to the Drupal.org issue queue

jbrown — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:44:41 +0000

Almost all community work really "happens" in the Drupal.org issue queue. This is where the community can track all of the todos for all of our projects. Every project has a queue. This means Drupal core, contributed modules and themes and even the drupal.org website and documentation have queues. This video covers how to find the queue you need, gives a little orientation, then shows how to search for existing issues and create a new issue.

CopyRight Criminals 2.0 - Charlie Angus

jbrown — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:41:50 +0000

deepfreeze sync test

jbrown — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:14:55 +0000

Episode 37 - Apocalypse Tiki

jbrown — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:12:00 +0000

Art of darkness

Imagecache + Imagefield Screencast

jbrown — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:46:55 +0000

This screencast demonstrates the recipe for Imagecache and Imagefield (for CCK) to build a system for posting images on your Drupal website. This is a robust and flexible system for handling images and has a bright future with more helper modules born every day.
This micro-lesson depends on prior understanding of the CCK module and the Views module. This example uses Drupal 5 since the Image* modules for Drupal 6 are not available (yet).

Add a handbook page to Drupal.org

jbrown — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:16:10 +0000

Everyone with a Drupal.org account can add new pages to the handbook. This video shows how easy it is and walks through the entire process of adding a new page for a contributed module and making an issue to get the link added to the module's project page.
This is the third video in a series that also shows how to get an account and take advantage of advanced search on Drupal.org.

Will Hutton on the future of public service broadcasting

jbrown — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:46:38 +0000

Blue Drupal

jbrown — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:32:29 +0000

Searching Drupal.org

jbrown — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:12:33 +0000

This is a short video that shows how to use Drupal's advanced search feature on Drupal.org. Many people find searching on d.o overwhelming and often overlook a few easy ways to narrow down searches. This is the second video in a series about getting involved with Drupal and utilizing community resources that started with getting an account on Drupal.org.

Stephen Fry on the future of public service broadcasting

jbrown — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:37:10 +0000

Sir David Attenborough on the future of public service broadcasting

jbrown — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:40:33 +0000

Windows Media Audio Pro

jbrown — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:53:25 +0000

http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=0x0162

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2008 trailer

jbrown — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:24:07 +0000

Watching Video on Ubuntu

jbrown — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:38:12 +0000

Van Morrison at the BBC

jbrown — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:06:31 +0000

This video was acquired from the BBC iPlayer with a utility called iplayer-dl (http://po-ru.com/).

Wanna Work Together? - Creative Commons

jbrown — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:11:05 +0000

Barry Jaspan (Acquia) at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008

jbrown — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:51:27 +0000

Episode 36 - The Roman

jbrown — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:10:00 +0000

Italian balls in the bar.

Stuff of Life - Amnesty International

jbrown — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:24:00 +0000

Southern Boi - Brentley

jbrown — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:24:30 +0000

Bout Dat Entertainment presents Southern Boi by Brentley from the album Handwritten.
Director: Zbigniew Zarudzki

Feed API + Emfield Screencast

jbrown — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:15:57 +0000

Here is a quick recipe that uses Drupal's Feed API, Feed Element Mapper, CCK and the Embedded Media Field to create independent embedded video nodes on your Drupal site by RSS. This is our first screencast and first contribution to the Drupal Dojo, hopefully you will find this interesting and try it out yourself. As usual, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Get an account on drupal.org

jbrown — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:28:36 +0000

You can get a lot more out of Drupal, the software, if you engage with the Drupal community. This video shows you the first, easy step in that direction - getting an account on the drupal.org website. The video briefly discusses why you would want to do this, walks through the sign up process, then takes a quick tour through your account and shows some handy tools that you can enable.
This is the first video in what will be a small series about ways to get more involved and use the Drupal community resources.