author: Philip Schmidt
name: Elaine
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/01
date added: 2013/06/24
shelves: gardening, non-fiction, wishlist, home-improvement, read-again
review:
Read date is approx. Some very cool designs in this book, I think it would be my preferred book for plans.
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan
author: Michael Hastings
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/24
date added: 2013/06/24
shelves: autobiography, biography, history, non-fiction, politics
review:
Just finished reading and am still somewhat overwhelmed by a sense of despair. Which is to say that this was a really good book. The author did what I think is a very admirable thing: he took the access that he was given, and instead of using it to get more access, he actually shared what he saw. And put it into the context of things outside of those bubbles. Setting the ideology of the “COINdinistas” up against the reality of both on the ground and surveys like those done by RAND. (Look up “How Terrorist Groups End”, for example.) I haven’t been especially happy about the war in general, but this was…vivid and immediate.
(Minus one star for overly “Rolling Stone” style, which I suppose I ought to have been expecting.)
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan
author: Michael Hastings
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/24
date added: 2013/06/24
shelves: autobiography, biography, history, non-fiction, politics
review:
Just finished reading and am still somewhat overwhelmed by a sense of despair. Which is to say that this was a really good book. The author did what I think is a very admirable thing: he took the access that he was given, and instead of using it to get more access, he actually shared what he saw. And put it into the context of things outside of those bubbles. Setting the ideology of the “COINdinistas” up against the reality of both on the ground and surveys like those done by RAND. (Look up “How Terrorist Groups End”, for example.) I haven’t been especially happy about the war in general, but this was…vivid and immediate.
(Minus one star for overly “Rolling Stone” style, which I suppose I ought to have been expecting.)
The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan
author: Michael Hastings
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2013/06/24
date added: 2013/06/24
shelves: autobiography, biography, history, non-fiction, politics
review:
Just finished reading and am still somewhat overwhelmed by a sense of despair. Which is to say that this was a really good book. The author did what I think is a very admirable thing: he took the access that he was given, and instead of using it to get more access, he actually shared what he saw. And put it into the context of things outside of those bubbles. Setting the ideology of the “COINdinistas” up against the reality of both on the ground and surveys like those done by RAND. (Look up “How Terrorist Groups End”, for example.) I haven’t been especially happy about the war in general, but this was…vivid and immediate.
(Minus one star for overly “Rolling Stone” style, which I suppose I ought to have been expecting.)
quiche experiment
in case it turns out either really well or really badly (it’s in the oven now)
some weird hybrid of these recipes:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spinach-Red-Pepper-and-Feta-Quiche-11515
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/spinach-and-bacon-quiche-recipe/index.html
http://www.food.com/recipe/spinach-feta-quiche-226118
abt 1 lb super-cheap bacon, cook, cool slightly, chop in little pieces
2 c spinach, washed, chopped — saute in a bit of bacon fat, drain water, cool a bit, then squish out the rest with hands
pie pastry – bake 7 min at 425F
put 1/3 c feta & a couple of handfuls shredded cheddar in the pie pan
spinach on top of the cheese
bacon on top of the spinach
beat three eggs w/1c cream, pour over the top. realize that isn’t enough; beat 1 egg with few splashes of whole milk. go look at 1st recipe, realize ratio is all wrong, beat up one more egg and sort of mix it in the pan.
bake at 425 for 15 min; sprinkle a bit more shredded cheese on top; then 350 for 10 minutes (well, so far it’s more like 15) until set. (which hasn’t happened yet)
DrupalCon 2013 other stuff
Driving to Portland – this trip was literally the farthest I’ve ever driven anywhere, the most I’ve ever driven on the freeway, and the first time I’ve driven in Portland. (A city I find remarkably confusing. As I said to Elizabeth: I haven’t been to Portland if I haven’t gotten completely turned around at least once.) And it was fine, even with rush hour in driving rain. The rental car had satellite radio, so I listened to BBC World Service most of the time. I got to enjoy a lovely drive along the Columbia River by the airport. Cruise control was helpful with the long stretches as well, definitely helped my old-lady-knee. I only drove into the convention center area once, on Friday, and otherwise it was very straightforward to drive from my hotel to a park & ride and catch the Max into town.
About that hotel – I’m still annoyed at ending up staying Jantzen Beach (which is a long story) but the hotel was decent enough, and I even got to watch the latest Game of Thrones.
And I also stayed with Mom and Elizabeth in their new pad way out in northeast Portland (practically Gresham), which is a nice place. Even got to have a home-cooked meal, first time eating that way with Mom in probably close to 15 years. I stayed with them Monday night and Thursday night, which made for much more relaxing drives from Olympia to Portland and back.
The “hallway track” – I enjoyed visiting with people I’ve met before (Catherine, Kronda, Dave, Greg D), people I’d only known from the internet (Eaton, Relly, Ashe), and people I met for the first time (Beth & her partner (Matt?), Johanna). I never did get to play Bad Neighbors. 🙁 I think I got some good advice, though, on actual work-related stuff. And it felt good to be in a community, even if I had to deal with occasional bursts of social anxiety and/or imposter syndrome.
By the time I checked in, they were already out of women’s XL shirts. I actually haven’t yet tried on my women’s L; we’ll see how that goes.
The conference website was horribly slow, and terrible on phone/tablet; the app wasn’t available for Android. But the printed schedule booklet was actually useful.
The food was a mixed bag. I actually liked the Tuesday lunch best (sandwiches), over the hot buffet lunches on Weds & Thurs. Wednesday’s lunch was particularly meh. I was very glad that Pantheon (?) had a food truck with breakfast sandwiches on Wednesday, and that I went to j Cafe on Thursday for a breakfast sandwich. Protein FTW.
I didn’t actually go to any of the social events. Loud parties not really my thing, plus the whole mess of the Jantzen Beach hotel. Did get to go out to dinner with a bunch of people on Wednesday, and then saw the opening act of a show after. (M. Geddes Gengras, trance-y synth music; I bought a cassette.)
I took notes (as terrible as they turned out to be) on the Transformer, and I’m glad I had that instead of a full laptop, much lighter, especially for what I was using it for. I have a hunch I may have actually lost some of my notes to the dreadful wifi, although it’s hard to say for sure. I possibly should have used just a text editor instead of the WordPress app.
Coat check was awesome, and more events should do it. (Same with free transit pass, BTW.) If I’d had a nicer knitting bag, I’d’ve just gone with the tablet & knitting, rather than my big Timbuk2 bag.
Overall, I’m very glad for the opportunity to have gone to DrupalCon and I would definitely do it again.
Edit: also, I got to spend a little time (not nearly enough) with Elizabeth late Thursday afternoon, going shopping on Hawthorne. (Bike for her, yarn for me.) It was super-fun, and I was happy to chip in to get her a cool new bike.
Flickr Updates for 2013-05-31
DrupalCon 2013 session roundup
So my individual panel notes are terrible, or at least remarkably cryptic. But I’ve gone through and gotten the highlights from all of them, which should help with using this info later. I’d also like to write up something about the non-session parts of the event, maybe later today, maybe this weekend.
Tuesday
Large-Scale Drupal at OSU — dry, mostly geared towards the Ops side of things. Lots and lots of detail, managing huge numbers of sites. One thing that I want to remember for later is that they’re now using more Organic Groups vs separate sites.
Asset Management in Drupal 8 – part of the Scotch initiative, using some external thing called Assetic, to better manage inclusion of JS & CSS in Drupal themes & modules. Looks intriguing, not sure how much it’ll be in the final D8, or in what form exactly. If it works, it could be amazing, and a huge improvement over both D7 and Cascade.
Higher Ed Unconsortium (panel from 3 CA colleges) – this session had the unfortunate luck of being in a dim room right after lunch. I do like the idea of “messy, hasty pluralism” in terms of trying lots of things in parallel. Want to see their project (http://edudu.org/) at some point.
Post-Mobile – great presentation, not tons new to me, but gave me some things to think about in terms of structuring content for remixing, including the possibility of an entirely different model of content ownership. Cryptic thing from my notes: “model meaning, not presentation (and maybe not ownership, either)”
Content Strategy the RPG – mostly made me feel good about what we’ve been doing with content strategy. Interestingly enough, she recommends manual content audits (vs automagic) so that content owners feel the pain. Three things to look up more about: “page table”, a LEGO methodology, and “orbital content.”
Wednesday
Keynote (Karen McGrane) – Just pure awesome. Interesting that she’s very positive towards Drupal overall, but quite (justifiably) critical of some new initiatives, inline editing in particular. Things to look into: content strategy that includes digital signage; “content packages”, metadata is the new art direction.
Design Ops – Sort of a weird beat poetry/performance Tumblr presentation. A couple of specific things to look into: experience maps, continuing to develop a UI library.
UX Spaces – An interesting technique for handling UX development within the constraints of implementing in Drupal. (I think it can be generalized to UX in relationship to CMSs in general.) Sort of a diagram: in a “space”, there is data, behaviors, and users. Think subject verb object. And having those diagrams allows for reworking into Drupal things. Some interesting modules mentioned: Display Suite, Geofield, OpenLayers, Image styles, Lightbox2, Node Ownership.
Using Twig – The new templating language for Drupal 8; it was “committed” to core on Friday. A interesting demo of the simplicity and readability of the system, plus some ideas for how it might be more deeply integrated into Drupal. I’m very excited about this change. Looks to be easier than both the current Drupal template system AND what’s available in Cascade.
Thursday
Keynote (Michael Lopp) – I am deeply ambivalent about this presentation. Some of it rang true (the general concept of the Engineer, the Designer, and the Dictator; I think my life goal may be “Content Engineer”) and some of it felt off-putting and elitist. In particular, the idea of substituting a person’s digital life for a resume or business card strikes me as prejudiced against people who aren’t able to participate that way: newbies, people with lots of non-work responsibilities, the shy, those under various NDAs, etc., etc. And of course there was the whole “mom as non-technical user” thing that was just a cheap laugh and totally distracting.
Drupal 8 Configuration System – Missed a chunk of this, and ended up sitting way off in the corner, so I feel like I didn’t get as much out of this one as I wanted. That said, I think this is yet another excellent step towards a Drupal that’s going to be significantly easier to run and comprehend. I like the idea of taking configuration out of the database (because I’ve been bit by that), and it sounds like they’ve done a lot of work around creating a good flow for dev > staging > live. (This is not a huge surprise: the very first presentation I saw from Greg, he talked quite a bit about those issues in his work at the Seattle Times.)
Responsive Discovery – Very thoughtful & moving and also good stuff about doing research and tools for understanding process. See http://responsiveprocess.com/ and http://hellofisher.com/secret.php for good stuff.
Friday
Code Sprint – I didn’t get to do much at the code sprint, but I did figure out setting up a Drupal 8 environment on my laptop, got to meet some people, and clicked “re-test” on a bunch of patches for Twig. I’m glad I went, and I’d do it again.
responsive discovery
note: cmi d8 init presentation was interesting. I think it’ll be useful.
haveaproblem.com
responsive process website
experience map: this might be JUST the thing for admissions
lunch & learns: talking to the content creators
ux spaces
“everybody has a role to play in ux” (re twitter convo from last session)
a bounded set of interactions: action <_ ->content model
in a site w/4 menu items, each one is a space
they can be nested
( subject verb object ?)
as a [role], I want to [do a thing] in order to [benefit]
(true thing I heard yesterday: “as a user, I may or may not have committed murder”!)
some interesting module suggestions — take a look at those.
I like this sketching technique for thinking about navigating through the catalog, maybe also the research/application process?