RobsHouse.net

Here is the video of my ApacheSolr presentation at FOSDEM. I had some technical difficulties (thank you very much, Keynote) at the beginning, but you can fast-forward past that bit.

Hello Acquia

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve accepted an offer to join a new company called Acquia. Acquia is the brainchild of Jay Batson and Dries Buytaert (the founder of the Drupal project). The company is based in Boston but I will continue to work from home in Germany.

http://robshouse.net/blog-post/hello-acquia
http://acquia.com/node/33

Comments open on Robshouse

For the first time in many years I’ve enabled comments on RobsHouse.net. Feel free to leave a note on any post and tell me what you think about things. As RobsHouse.net continues to evolve and morph as a website, your feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Presented in FOSDEM

Being involved in the Drupal project has given me the unique chance to put my talents and efforts to use in a way which directly benefits a lot of other people. When I write code for Drupal I have the deep satisfaction of knowing that it will likely run on a huge range of websites around the world and that it will enable people to accomplish things that they might not have accomplished otherwise. For me, one of the greatest perks of Drupal is that my contributions mean something to so many people.

For precisely these reasons I am beyond excited about joining the Acquia team. My role with Acquia will be very closely tied to the goal of helping "Drupal to grow by at least a factor of 10", and will therefore make contributing to Drupal ten times more meaningful than before.

Commit #102102 by robertDouglass at 14:45
Core searches: /modules/coresearches/contentsearch.module 1.1.2.1 @ DRUPAL-5
bug in paths for node search results

Dries has thrown down the gauntlet:

the only way to [...] experience the true benefits, is to take testing to the extreme. There is no middle ground. If we want to be serious about testing, we need to enforce, not just encourage, testing in the Drupal 7 development cycle and beyond.

I couldn't agree more and am thrilled that Drupal is moving so strongly in the direction of mandatory and automated testing. The problem at the moment, however, is that too few people know how to test and fewer yet know what tools to use when using Drupal. If you are one of the legions of developers who have often though "oh, that's something I intend to learn sometime", the time has arrived. Here are some resources that should help you get started.

Drupal 6 has been released and this is cause for much rejoicing. It is the Drupal version that we will live and work with for the coming year and beyond, and more effort than ever has been put into making D6 a dynamite release.

Now that it D6 is out, it is up to us, the "Drupal Community" to spread the word. We will only continue to thrive if we are successful in bringing new talent to the project, and remain an attractive option for businesses looking to launch a website. Your role in this effort is to write about the new Drupal on your own websites, blogs, news groups and email lists.

Commit #100552 by robertDouglass at 21:58
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/memcache.db.inc 1.2.2.11 @ DRUPAL-5

Commit #100552 by robertDouglass at 21:58
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/memcache.db.inc 1.2.2.11 @ DRUPAL-5

Commit #100548 by robertDouglass at 21:50
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/patches/blockcache.patch 1.1.2.1 @ DRUPAL-5

Commit #100548 by robertDouglass at 21:50
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/patches/blockcache.patch 1.1.2.1 @ DRUPAL-5

Commit #100547 by robertDouglass at 21:49
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/memcache.db.inc 1.2.2.10 @ DRUPAL-5
#188751 by mdekkers, modified by roberDouglass: remove DUPLICATE KEY syntax from query.

Commit #100547 by robertDouglass at 21:49
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/memcache.db.inc 1.2.2.10 @ DRUPAL-5
#188751 by mdekkers, modified by roberDouglass: remove DUPLICATE KEY syntax from query.

Commit #100544 by robertDouglass at 21:34
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/memcache_admin/memcache_admin.module 1.3.2.7 @ DRUPAL-5
#215823 by nicholasThompson: improve admin area.

Commit #100544 by robertDouglass at 21:34
Memcache API and Integration: /modules/memcache/memcache_admin/memcache_admin.module 1.3.2.7 @ DRUPAL-5
#215823 by nicholasThompson: improve admin area.

At the beginning of the month I was interviewed by Sean Kerner of InternetNews.com about the GoPHP5.org initiative, and what it means for the state of PHP 5 adoption. The article is entitled "PHP 4 is Dead—Long Live PHP 5" which is a nice tip of the hat to Dries' earlier article PHP IS DEAD ... LONG LIVE PHP!.

The decision to move to PHP 5.2 as the minimum required version for Drupal 7 has already started to influence people's thinking about how Drupal is developed. For example, one of the proposals that came from the recent Data Architecture Design Sprint clearly embraces Object Oriented programming as a principle design decision. The way Drupal handles SQL queries is also likely to change dramatically for Drupal 7. A move to a PDO based solution looks likely, and if Chx has been posting provocative ideas that would combine PDO and object oriented code. None of this would be possible without GoPHP5.

While this now seems like the natural progression for Drupal, it wasn't an easy sell. Many thought at the time we launched the site that we were setting ourselves up to alienate our user base and break Drupal. The final results will have to wait until the release of Drupal 7 to be seen, but I think we're off to a good start.

At the corner of our street is a public indoor pool. In the summer this fountain is there for kids to play in.

I love onions fried up in a pan, but they make me cry! The swim goggle let me do the cooking without wasting a box of kleenex. This is what hungry Drupal consultants look like when caught multitasking.

The Drupal users group of Köln/Bonn will meet in HALLMACKENREUTHER to enjoy some Kölsch and a lot of Drupal. The agenda is not yet set, but anyone who is interested in the ApacheSolr module will be able to see a nice demonstration on my laptop. Everybody is welcome… hope to see you there!

On Google Maps.

Jeffrey McGuire, aka Jam, aka HornCologne writes an interesting and witty blog about music, technology, and life in Europe.

Hello everybody,

Staying in touch is hard to do. I want to make it easier reach out to all of the people I know and let them know what is going on in my life. To that end I’ve relaunched RobsHouse.net and made it easier to navigate and to find things. I’ve also created this newsletter and taken the liberty of subscribing you to it. This first “issue” of the newsletter is specifically for those people who don’t want to receive it =)

If you don’t want to receive any further copies of this newsletter, please use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the mail. If I’ve reached you in error, my apologies. If you would like to write to me you can respond to this mail.

Best wishes,

Robert Douglass
%uri

I’ve relaunched RobsHouse.net on Drupal 5, yay! It was about time, too. For years it was running on a 4.6 Drupal (Civicspace, actually), and I had done nothing but break it more and more over the years. Thank goodness nobody could see the watchdog messages… PHP errors galore and just about everything else wrong as well. This site, however, is a different beast. While it is not comparable in complexity to some of the large media sites that are being launched on Drupal these days, it’s a pretty good effort for one guy over a long weekend. I’m using 54 custom modules on this site! Click here to see the full list. More details after the break.