Blog

Die, Derek, Die!

A little Simpsons joke right off the bat to warm up the crowd after nearly a two month absence from the Great Hall of Developers.  One might say that Derek is the quintessential non-yes man.  I request a simple confirmation that an idea has merit, and then an hour later I am befuddled with his five alternatives.  Such a man is trouble, people.  Thankfully, he does fine coding and saves me from troubling affairs of state, so I guess it all works out.  Good night, Derek, good work,...

I Wanted My Site to be a Lumberjack!

You’ve seen Paul and I encourage the creation of and use of Extensions.  Encourage, perhaps, is not a strong enough word.  From the top of a mountain, wearing lederhosen, and with the booming, echoing voice we shout, not “Ricola!” but “Extensions!”  Certainly you noticed that ExpressionEngine Version 1.5.2 and version 1.3.2 of the Discussion Forum module added a number of new extension hooks.  Many of these were in direct correlation to developers’ requests, but here’s the secret:...

A Corruption of Principles

Having gotten my bachelor degree in Philosophy and written my senior thesis on the rights that one has in the realm of privacy, you could say I have strong opinions about principles.  Principles are those guiding ideas in your life from which you base all of your decisions and ethics.  They are the truth of who you are as a person.  The source of who you are and what you are willing to do.  By their nature, I feel (cannot prove) that they should be uncompromising.  This has the...

Turkeys and Documentation

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States and as such I will have many people over who will assist in me stuffing my face with all manner of tasty goodies.  What a quintessential American holiday Thanksgiving is.  Take two days off.  First day, have friends and family eat together with the guys typically watching or playing some manner of sport.  The next day, the biggest shopping day of the year and all manner of purchases typically occur.  In the spirit of such giving, I...

Developers, Developers, Developers

As you might have heard, ExpressionEngine is Dead and we intend to bury it with full programmatic honors.  Sadly, we forgot to send a memo to Rick to inform him that there will actually be one more version in the much loved 1.x series of ExpressionEngine.  While Derek worked on a Discussion Forum update, it was determined that there was no way around requiring another release of ExpressionEngine to handle some of the core changes.  Alas.  So, we have been adding a few more features...

Sweet Emotions

Every word we as humans speak is emotionally charged.  Except in online communities because you have no vocal tone, facial expression, body language, etc.  The more context you can give, the more emotion is correctly conveyed.  A small article may have to rely on punctuation and typeface alone to help convey emotion.  A larger body of text such as a novel can convey emotion by describing the surroundings and reactions to words; or simply tell you what the emotions are outright.  In...

Blurbfest for October 2006

Instead of troubling you all with whatever manner of CTO angst is occurring at work these past few weeks, I have kept silent and taken more walks in this fine Portland autumn weather to relax.  Picked myself some pumpkins and might have even done some yard work too.  And yet, I felt neglectful.  I do have some short little tidbits, blurbs if you will, to mention, which might hold you over until clearer skies (figuratively) appear.

Simon Rudkin of Agenzia is currently a Guest Author...