Ahasae Tharu . net

Its another rainy day in Boston. Medford isn't looking too hot either. Looking out the window at the wet deck - rain drops falling. I'm hoping it will clear by afternoon so I can run out and get some groceries.

Today is a cleaning day - need to wash the floors, clean the surfaces and bathroom. My parents are coming to town & of course I'll be wanting to give them a good impression of our new home. I'll be posting pictures after their visit!

We bought our furniture from a wonderful place called "Metamorphisis" near Porter Square. Eddie, the gentleman who runs the place and Alexander his side-kick are very nice people. They have a fantastic selection of old used furniture which they proceed to clean up and re-paint to give a retro style or classic style to your home furnishings.  Eddie loves to paint things up in lovely colours - which you may or may not like - as Steph would find out when the legs of his desk came to us in a brilliant shade of tourquise (quite reminiscent of my bridesmaids' saris).  But at the same time, Eddie insisted on taking the furniture back and repainting it a more suitable color - black in this case.  In the same way, our dining table has been going through various stages of painting and as a result we are still waiting on the dining table and a pair of book shelves.  I would recommend Eddie and Metamorphisis because of his desire to make sure that every customer is satisfied, his interest in testing and trying new 'art' furniture on his customers to get their reaction, and yet he's happy to go ahead and put it back the way you actually wanted it - if it turns out you don't like the change.  The other nice thing is we did buy all of our current furniture (minus the futon and bed) from the one shop for one fairly decent price (for the amount of furniture)!

Now I only hope that we get the dining table back before my parents arrive!

At my first Drupal Boston meet up - lightening presentations by Christefano, Peter, Ed, Kelley, Erik, Jake, Scor,  & Dave.

Christefano & Lee (a Drupal husband and wife team) started off talking about a Drupal-based facebook-like site for kids featuring facial recognition.  http://whatswhat.me

For kids who are 8 to 14.  Separation of kids by school, by age, by groups - allowing for more protection and control of what and who they are accessing. 

The question was - how do you ensure there are no adults pretending to be kids?  Their answer - facial recognition to determine whether you are who you are.  The interface works seemlessly.  The baseline photo is taken every six months to ensure it still matches the growing child.  (It works by 1. Recognize face 2. Match face)  Things that cause problems - Lighting can cause it to fail.  Hats and glasses. Smiling and teeth. Pictures are screened for adults by administrators & moderators causing a secure playground for kids.

Peter talked about drush on a PC - a command line interface for drupal (scor already introduced me to this one for MAC!).  It can be a little involved to get it working on a PC and so he's looking for some volunteers with PCs to help test it. 

Ed started a good conversation - Imagecache and the FCKeditor - How to add your own styles to the WYSIWYG editor - assigning different toolbars to different users.  He opened the fckeditor.config.js file and edited as he wanted.  (But this can also be done via Drupal directly). CKeditor is the new version of FCKeditor.  Using WYSIWYG you can connect input filters by role and better formats.  There's a libraries module that handles this. 

Imagecache is an invaluable tool.  Allows you to assing presets to the image.  You can sharpen, crop, etc. Its like having a lightweight photoshop tool on the Drupal server itself allowing for live editing of the image.  This will be part of core in Drupal 7.  Paired with image resize filter is said to be amazing.

Kelley is working on a site for a non-profit - Mass alliance on teen pregnancy.  The issue is one of taxonomy versus menus.  As well about how to layout blocks versus existing layout.  Suggestions included pre-populate module... Views paired with Panels... context module with menus... menu block... already being used is footer map (but with some problems).  Taxonomy blocks... views combined with blocks.  So lots of potential solutions and as usual with Drupal - many ways to make things work.

Erik asked a question of grouping of taxonomy.  Unfortunately, my attention span drifted and I lost the gist of the discussion.  Views_embed_view/Views_pre_render.  Actually, this is way over my head. 

Jake asked a concept question - trying to determine the benefit of being involved in the Drupal community - interested in creating a standard format conference/meetup model for the quick and efficient advertisement of upcoming camps and meetups.  This was also brought up at the Drupalcon Paris (Benjamin, Stella, Heather, etc.).

Scor declared himself as a Drupal developer as opposed to site-builder.  Patching... simpletest... here we go off the deep end!  (At least he's not talking about RDF again! As his wife I'm allowed to complain).   Uh.. well, he snuck it in as an intro!  He showed us how to review patches... and what is a patch too. He also showed us what a test is and how to test it on Drupal core. Dreditor - Drupal editor. 

Dave talked about imagecache_actions and other extensions to imagecache.  imagecache_customaction

So ended a good session - looking forward to going home and getting my dinner!

Today is the first day I've had the time and energy to start searching for work. Resume posted on monster.com; a quick browse with applications sent off to the few desirable jobs; followed by the usual fluttering butterflies and anticipatory nervous energy wondering how long it will take for a head hunter or perspective employer to bite. The whole question of having an SSN or not - poses a slight worry. I know I qualify for the NAFTA TN Visa - but that said - I hope it doesn't become a chicken & egg scenario! Will keep up on the Drupal front in the meantime - just in case the 'real' work doesn't show it's pretty head for some time.

After a long and hard struggle with determining what services were available in our area - we finally got hooked up with T-Mobile's webconnect USB stick. We both prefered mobile internet to static - since we plan to travel to Toronto and back and also - T-mobile allows for free wifi usage in T-mobile hot-spots world-wide! This means when Steph is off on his conferences or workshops, it'll be that much easier to connect. On other news... it's a rainy wet muddy day in Boston today. I was hoping for good weather so that we could actually see a bit of Boston for a change - but looks like it'll be another day spent indoors. I've already soaked my one pair of runners!

I am finally hooked up with internet and a mobile phone! This last week without has led me to start crawling up the wall - especially with furniture being delivered to our empty apartment.

Nice things about Boston/Cambridge/Somerville/Medford

• Found a corner store that sells Barry's Tea (imported from Ireland)
• Beautiful weather - it's been mainly sunny and hot since we've arrived
• People are nice (though had only 1 bad-Am. experience so far - type of thing you would never experience in Can.)
• Boston accent is nice to hear (you just want to squeeze cheeks... granted, I doubt they'd appreciate that!)
• Walk friendly city... been walking everywhere! Like Galway, it's better for walking than taking public transport.

So have managed to get my bearings.  But still haven't found a department store where I can buy pillows and bed sheets.