/dev/random

Aaron Swartz notes that the stimulus bill requires that each government agency report the money they give out with Atom or RSS.
For each of the near term reporting requirements (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) agencies are required to provide a feed (preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS) of the information so that content [...]

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I’ve cleaned up a few more issues with the Drupal to WordPress conversion. The major remaining issue is converting users. If I can get an acceptable solution for users, I’ll set up a public test site. I may just have to require all users to reset their password the first time they log in.
One common [...]

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I’ve started testing the Drupal to WordPress migration using a local copy on my Mac. Using D’arcy Norman’s script as a starting point, I was able to convert most of the content. I still have a lot to clean up. Once I work out some of the problems, I’ll set up a test site for [...]

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I’m becoming very disappointed with Drupal, due to version 6’s lack of backward compatibility. A lot of very basic modules still haven’t been upgraded to work with Drupal 6, yet they’re already working on Drupal 7. I still haven’t upgraded any of my sites to Drupal 6 and I probably won’t upgrade them. I doubt [...]

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I noticed something very unexpected in my MediaTemple account GPU usage report: an unusually high number of hits for /user/register and /user/login, which I would expect to account for little or no usage. The only explanation I can figure is spambots attempting automated logins & registrations.
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

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I just upgraded this site to WordPress 2.6 and MacMegasite to Drupal 5.8. Both upgrades were quick & painless.

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A lot of the news I post at MacMegasite comes from prMac. Until now I received the news articles via email and would clean up, reformat, and post the items manually. Recently the people at prMac released a Drupal module that automatically retrieves and post news. For the last few days I’ve been having it [...]

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I’m starting to get pretty disgusted with Drupal 6. I took another look at it today and the module compatibility situation is still dismal. Common modules like CCK and Views still aren’t fully compatible with Drupal 6. For MacMegasite, I would lose the buddy lists, user points, and custom home pages. The situation is even [...]

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I’ve been trying out Drupal 6.0 and it looks like this will be one of the most painful upgrades. I tried it with a local copy of MacMegasite and I found that it broke almost everything.
I don’t use too many modules, but I use some pretty basic stuff like user points, buddy list, bbcode filter, [...]

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Drupal 6.0 has finally been released. This weekend I will probably start working on upgrading MacMegasite, since it will be a lot more straightforward than worldbeatplanet or my2unz, which depend on a lot of extra modules for content types and features.
Some of the enhancements in Drupal 6.0 I’m especially excited about include:

Simplified administration: instead [...]

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I’ve created a Facebook app for my2unz. It doesn’t do anything other than let you visit and log in to my2unz, but I intend to use it for embedding playlists in facebook profiles.
Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

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The third release candidate of Drupal 6.0 has been released. I’ll probably try it out on my local machine this weekend. I should be able to update MacMegasite without too much trouble since it doesn’t use too many modules. WorldBeatPlanet & my2unz.com, on the other hand, use some modules that have aren’t compatible with Drupal [...]

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I switched to a new theme & logo at MacMegasite, and I also de-cluttered the sidebars. I’m still looking at more themes and working on the logo, so I may still change it if I find something I like better.
The last few days I’ve looked at a lot of WordPress & Drupal themes. Almost none [...]

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I’ve made a few changes at MacMegasite and there will be more coming in the next few weeks.
First of all, Daniel Brusilovsky is officially a staff member! Hopefully we’ll add more staff this year. Look for a staff bio page to be added soon.
I’ve also added the mysite module, which lets users set up their [...]

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I’ve adjusted the cache settings and added the Block Cache module to MacMegasite, which seem to improve the performance. I’ve also had to increase the memory & CPU for my DreamHost Virtual Private Server several times in the last few days when the load got too high. Hopefully with the cache changes I won’t have [...]

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I’ve added a Macworld tag to MacMegasite, which will list all articles tagged with that category. I will use it to post all Macworld related items.

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Anyone can now register at my2unz.com, although the site is still in beta and not feature complete. I’ve finalized the database structure and cleaned up a lot of stuff. Uploading iTunes playlists & exported libraries should be a lot more reliable now.
Other site features include music discussion forums, buddy lists, and private messages, I plan [...]

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I’ve uploaded the changes to the live my2unz.com site and updated the database. All of the original content is still intact. I disabled playlist import, however, since that feature hasn’t been thoroughly tested.
I’m now using standard CCK fields & standard views, along with the content template module for track, album, artist, and playlist forms rather [...]

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Things have been pretty quiet with my2unz.com lately, but I have some big programming changes planned. I finally got a chance to do some work on it over the weekend.
The site uses a custom Drupal module for iTunes integration. In addition to importing iTunes playlist or library XML files, it also defines several content types [...]

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Drupal 5.3 was released with several important security fixes. I upgraded both MacMegasite & WorldBeatPlanet. The upgrade took only a few minutes and was painless.

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