I had this in the back of my head all week, but never really put any deep thought into it. So this morning I was stumped. Writing about Mom and technology would take more time/energy than I have right now; I realized that I had exactly two female math or science teachers – 6th grade math, 7th grade computers – and while that 7th grade computer class was…interesting…I didn’t have much to say about her either. (As in: I don’t remember her name, even!)

One of the things keeping me busy today was preparing to be gone from work for a while, and one of the things I’m going to be gone for is the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit. So as I was going over what I need to take from the office, I realized: webchick! (Angie Byron, but in the Drupal community, she’s pretty much always known as webchick.)

Even with that, I’m still a bit frantic to write anything terribly good. All I’m going to say right now is that I admire her a great deal as a programmer, a communicator, and a community leader, and frankly, as just a really nice person. So yay webchick!

Here’s her website, and here’s my crummy notes from her keynote at last year’s summit, which was fantastic. (Yes, she signed my copy of Using Drupal. So did Nathan Haug.)

I’ve been posting links to Pinboard.in for a while now. And then sometime later I decided I wanted to cross-post my links here, because I’m a belt-and-suspenders kinda gal.*

What I’m doing is ridiculously simple: I have the RSS Digest plugin set to create a daily digest of my Pinboard RSS feed. (A typical result.)

The Pinboard RSS feed is formatted like this: http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:username/

You put that URL (with your username) in the Feed URL field, set the rest of the options however you want them, and that’s it.

It’s worth noting that this doesn’t save any private links, which includes anything marked as “to read”, since it’s taking from your public RSS feed. You could in theory use the feed with the secret token.

And I haven’t yet worked out how to include the tags, although it doesn’t look like that can be done with RSS Digest. I also have the FeedWordPress plugin installed, which is what I use to repost the reviews I write on Goodreads. (Why do I have two different RSS posting plugins installed? No idea.) It looks like the custom post settings in FeedWordPress could be used to do that. If I try it, I’ll report back here.

* I signed up for Pinboard really early, when it was in beta and it was free. I’d been using Delicious for a long time even then, since before they got bought by Yahoo. I poked around with Pinboard, but still liked Delicious. Then there was a scare (in 2009?) that Yahoo was going to be bought by Microsoft or something. I don’t really remember. But it made me nervous, so I switched over to Pinboard full time. I actually prefer having a doubled-up system with both my site and someone else’s service. For several years I had disastrous experiences with webhosting, which once included having to call a colo in Colorado (!) and beg for access to my files because the reseller I’d bought hosting from had vanished from the face of the earth. So I have paranoia in both directions.

OMG SHINY. Really, I like the screen size & quality a LOT. When it’s off, the smudges really show, altho they don’t bug me much when it’s on. The keyboard is a little tricky to type with, but I’m glad to have it; definitely better for me than the on-screen keyboard. I also really like the slide-out motion. I’m glad I got a rubber case for it. Makes it kinda bulky, OTOH I don’t feel anxious about scratching, dropping, etc. Nice camera, good enough for snapshots. I found a simple app for uploading to flickr, too. Haven’t tried making any videos.

I’m having a silly amount of fun futzing about with my various home screens.

I’m trying to be judicious about what apps I install; so far just freebies, big thumbs up for Weather Channel, ZipList, the NPR app, and Google Reader. I’ve created a “know-it-all” screen, too: search, Ask-WA, IMDb, Google Goggles, and a browser shortcut to Wikipedia. Trivia searching while watching vids FTW!

I’ve installed FOUR ebook readers. (OverDrive Media Console, Aldiko, Google Books, and Amazon Kindle) I have a hunch I’m going to end up keeping all four, at least for a while until I figure out which has the combination of features that I like best. I tried searching through OverDrive for recent books from my library, and it SUCKS. The selection is terrible, and I have yet to get the actual book downloading to work. (Through the phone, I may try downloading to computer and then transferring to phone. We’ll see.) It’s a decent reading experience in all of them…also decent reading in Google Reader; overall just a hair smaller than a paperback book, with crisp (and adjustable) lettering.

Speaking of Google Reader, I’m still working out a solution for bookmarking/saving links. For right this minute, I’m just starring things in Reader with the intention of going back on a desktop to re-read and save on Pinboard or whatever. (Oh, it looks like there’s a way to do something with Reader in Pinboard. Something to try….)

I have yet to get my own music on here, but I’ve installed doubleTwist because it seems to be well thought-of. Pandora was nice for Christmas music over the weekend! (Via wifi, passed through our little bookshelf stereo.)

I’m still trying to figure out a password management system that syncs over my phone plus 2-3 other computers. I was really liking LastPass for the desktop, but the Android version is a bit lacking. Erratic filling in of browser passwords, no management outside of the browser, and it doesn’t even actually use the built-in browser. And when I’m done with the trial period it’ll be $12/year. Might try KeePass, synced through Dropbox.

Also trying to figure out a task management system: I’ve been using Remember the Milk, albeit erratically, for about a year. Astrid, which seems to be super-popular, doesn’t sync with RtM anymore. (Something about an API use violation?) And the official RtM app is $25/year. (Yes, I know, that’s actually the cost of a Pro account. But that’s the only thing I need a pro account FOR.) They have a mobile site, but it’s weak. I’ve got Astrid installed, and it’s a nice little setup, but I’d need to use either Producteev or Google Tasks (?) to have desktop access. So I’m waffling. Location awareness in RtM would be DAMN nice…but I could also get that with Astrid’s Locale Add-On, plus Locale, which would be about $10 altogether.

Speaking of location, I’m wondering whether to try Locale or Tasker. (Tasker looks crazy-complicated, but more powerful.)

The battery seems to be good for about a day; I’m taking Lifehacker’s advice and just plugging it in whenever that’s an option. It does seem to power back up pretty quickly.

I need to see about a Google Docs app; even if I can’t create documents, I have too much stuff that I need to be able to get at.

I installed Evernote, but have no idea WTF to do with it yet.

Overall, it’s just nice to have an outboard brain that I can carry with me all the time. I think it’s going to be both useful & fun.

(BTW, C got an HD7 last week – two for one phones FTW! – and is planning on swapping it for his own G2. He was not especially happy with the Windows 7 phone experience, for a variety of reasons.)

answer 1 support request a day (in install support forum?).

make progress on one issue per day. (views or another module you know well) mark duplicate, answer support request, etc.

when you learn something new, document it as you go.

/contribute – places to jump in. but she prefers /community-initiatives. highlights things that are important.

irc

git

try D7, possibly for the feedreader pet project

documentation patches, “novice” tag

look into D7 multigroup issues

themekey: re-read code of the alternate themes, also just try reinstalling at next update.

review ALL the tips in the server optimization notes.

try yslow

idea: create map/app of walking tour brochure. experiment with map of recreation facilities (see maps notes, also http://github.com/tylor/quickmaps)

create a personal/site issue queue: view ads ctr counting, quickrates loan issue, ecard

write blog post about drupal/enterprise and/or “year with drupal” (see JK keynote notes)

upgrade to webforms 3 [notes]; write bolt-on module to connect with campaign monitor. if ENA goes to Drupal use webform for membership signup.

drush.

try login_security

look at role_delegation for intranet?

“scrum” meetings in our department: what you did, what you will do, what’s blocking you – under 15 mins total meeting

features & context, for real this time.

web widget for rates?

missed a chunk for a phone call.

I’m still really intrigued by deploy, generally speaking.

important to note that there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to be turned on in the live site.

sessionid authentication: how does it work?

[I REALLY need to move the awards section to a totally different site. For reals.]

have to manage site title by hand after deploying. so would it be most appropriate to run during the OMG EARLY updates? not so great for regular content updates. hm.

[to go on the to-do list, for the 987th time: drush.]

what? cck fields can be difficult? o.O wondering what 3rd party modules are problematic.

what’s left to do for deploy to get out of dev? well, he does want to get it done before leaving for sweden, so that’s something.

seen in irc: “You could set the $site_name in the settings.php file in the $conf array”

no cck3 support, does that also mean existing multigroups? (multigroups are a BFD for me.)

oh, am I remembering correctly that services requires PHP5.2? hrm.

argh, all this is way too distracting! not just the webinar window & audio, but IRC, the usual distractions of the web, and the usual noises of the office.

ah, of course PHP’s implementation of uuid isn’t actually standard. :\

and zooooom, went over my head. I’ve got lots of other things on my list, I think deploy will, alas, have to continue to wait.

research tools that they would like to make

putting technological & non-tech people.

alphabet as organizing projects

alphabet garden: a real garden, someone who works for civic actions. blogging about the garden by letter, then starting over after Z, facilitating community storytelling – aha! give people prompts to get themselves going.

command line = chef knife (I would love to be able to take a command line 101 class)

codelandstorytimecollective.org

she’s a museum person! background in explaining science – how can that be done with technology?

explaining memory links & garbage collection using bunnies. inspired by commoncraft videos

resource sharing technologies

mapping!

vozmob

fun games with git, “cubby holes” – “nobody wants to waste their time learning something useless”

human internet game – using real people to act out aspects of the internet. “what’s going on behind the beachball” (oh, freegeek chicago)

web-based irc – and using chat, skype, etc to talk about what was going on with irc.

chach is very enthusiastic, but this is a little drifty.

“spot-check” on individual learning projects.

jing – free cross-platform for making screencasts – free is 5 mins/200mb only, but that’s actually a plus, makes you condense. takes 1-2 hrs to make a really good 2-5 mins vid.

“lab hours”

she just jumped past the concept of “neutral space” – wonder what’s that about.

I wonder if we should have “scrum” meetings in our department: what you did, what you will do, what’s blocking you – under 15 mins total meeting.

to be honest, I think I got more out of the conversation we had hanging out in the lobby.

web widgets module – embed drupal content on another site – gives you a script to use on wordpress, etc, tho not facebook

http://garden.localbiology.org/

about 50 people involved – 10 learners – plus mentors, etc. just about the right size for a single main teacher.

where from here:

she’s delightful but rambly!

http://www.drumbeat.org/festival

http://github.com/chachasikes/opengarden