The Space Foundation team, 350+ volunteers, 165+ exhibitors (with 40+ first time exhibitors), 100+ speakers (over 9,000 participants total) from 30+ nations enjoyed a successful 28th National Space Symposium April 16 – 19, 2012.

Credit: Space Foundation – Check out photo galleries here.

Every year the Space Foundation strives to make the event the consistent premiere quality experience, while also re-inventing elements and delivering something new. This year, a LOT of new features were delivered. A large, permanent concrete pad was installed at The Broadmoor to allow for a huge new pavilion structure, greatly increasing exhibitor space, adding an “Open Space Cafe”, book signings and other events. Consecutive sessions were introduced on Wednesday for the first time to accommodate a growing audience with diverse interests. There were a lot more events, added international participation, interesting panels, dining events and more.

This was my third “NSS”. My primary part in the action was digital, making sure people could see what was going on (live scrolling agenda seen above), where it was going on, and where to get free food (very important!). This was executed through development of the National Space Symposium website (built with Drupal) maintained by several Space Foundation team members and designed by my co-web developer/designer, Luciana. A new mobile app was developed by Raytheon (with live data and nagging provided on my end). A new calendar (iCal) feed let people add the agenda to most mobile devices and calendar programs. Agenda and special announcement presentations were created and shown in multiple areas of The Broadmoor. I was also in charge of other items behind the scenes such as the second version of the “Space Foundation Seat Master”, a web-app helping in the process of seating hundreds of people at five dining events.

This year was quite a bit different for me compared to previous years. I was able to automate a lot of tasks for myself and others, opening up time to help with other items. For example, instead of creating endless and constantly changing PowerPoint slides about what’s going on (also requiring a painful error prone review process), I created a replacement Flash based Adobe AIR app. It fed in the agenda and slides from the website in real-time, scrolling what was going on and showing special announcement slides in-between sessions and in the hallways. Slide and agenda changes were made from an office while updates showed up everywhere within minutes. As a result I was able to watch things more closely, deliver more materials, offer backup support for the team and spend more time with customers!

I had a chance to meet some AMAZING people this year. While helping with meal seating at one of the events, Neil deGrasse Tyson stopped by (who was GREAT at the opening keynote). We shook hands and had a great casual conversation. I also had a chance to meet Bill Nye (above), who sparked much inspiration while growing up through his energetic TV show, now doing great things as Executive Director of the Planetary Society (and who knows – maybe the Planetary Society will team up with the Space Foundation sometime soon. The two organizations have some excellent educational and awareness goals in common). There were also astronauts, generals, and other Earth shakers who stopped by the Space Foundation booth for a visit.

Credit: Space Foundation – Check out photo galleries here.

Every year the exhibit center changes up and there’s always new things to see (great for creative inspiration as well). This year in addition to seeing a new huge and bright exhibit space, I personally enjoyed seeing the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center’s Soviet space artifacts. Kansas Cosmosphere loaned the artifacts to the Space Foundation to be shown in our upcoming visitors center for a while. Seen above is a Soviet Lunokhod model (left). Two of these unmanned rovers explored the moon in the early 1970′s, returning pictures and lots of scientific data to Earth. Luna 16 Robotic Probe (right – half-scale model) was part of the first Soviet lunar sample return mission, following the Apollo 11 and 12 missions. There was also a cool Sokol space suit on display, designed for wearing in the shuttle in case of accidental decompression (same use as the orange suits U.S. astronauts use today). More information is available here.

Credit: NASA / GSFC: NASA gave a special Science On a Sphere (SOS)^® demonstration to HM Elizabeth II, Queen of England and her husband, HRH Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and other members of the Royal Family on Tuesday, May 8, 2007.

A huge Space Foundation announcement at the Symposium was a hearty $375,000 donation made by Northrop Grumman. The donation is being used to build a science center and teaching lab. It will include Science On a Sphere (example above), a huge globe projected on from multiple angles showing multiple simulations suitable on a sphere (weather patterns, planets, etc. – I would love to build a simulation of my own on this thing!). A teaching facility will be included for STEM education programs and for community outreach. More information is available here.

Now that the event is over, Amanda and I are heading back to Earth (she was just as spaced out as I was having to deal with me, her school studies, and work throughout Symposium preparations). We made it as far as Wyoming last week to spend quality time with family. We just touched ground at home, with a brain exhaust flushing process commencing.

Tomorrow I start again on several new projects! There’s never a dull moment.

The Space Foundation launched a brand new website! Our team leaders even brought in a cake to celebrate.

http://www.spacefoundation.org

Read the press release here. Learn more about my favorite experimental piece to this project here. A more detailed report on the hows, whos and whats will follow soon when I have more time and energy regained.

The Space Foundation supported my coworker designer/developer Luciana and I in a trip to New York to attend Do It with Drupal October 11 – 14, 2011, organized by the Drupal training experts Lullabot. Previously attending the 2009 event, this was something I was highly looking forward to revisiting.

New York was amazing and overwhelming. It was quite disorienting, even dizzying at first, especially since I had some ear fluid buildup as a result from the flight (very odd, sure you wanted to know). Outlook improved quickly after food, rest and jumping on the subway to re-connect with a college friend who lived in the area. I had a chance to meet his wife and their very cute new baby girl! I’m extremely happy for them and the visit even chiseled on my heart regarding the whole having kids topic (oh no!).

The Do It with Drupal conference was three days of action packed Drupal goodness. I had a chance to network and have fun with other web developers with similar goals and challenges. The session tracks were full of great topics I was highly interested in including some great case studies where we were able to take a peek inside the workings of successful websites. I was also able to interact with some of the top Drupal gurus, quickly ironing out burning questions I was struggling with. On the flip side, what I learned sparked new burning questions (that’s how it works, right?).

Answers to Burning Questions

Keeping in mind that there are multiple ways to prepare a plate of spaghetti, Here are answers to some of the questions I had. Perhaps it will inspire something. Feel free to correct or add your own.

Q: How do I add dilithium crystals and warp engines to my website? (translation: increase performance and scalability)

A: Nathan Haug gave a great presentation on how to make a website deliver content quickly and handle a LOT of traffic without breaking a sweat, running out of bandwidth before the server CPU gets tired (and what to do to prevent running out of bandwidth if traffic is that high). Some notes taken from his presentation which can be downloaded from here (my notes are super abbreviated: I totally recommend watching the video at drupalize.me when it is available).

• Common culprits for website performance:
  • Statistics module (comes with core, try using Google Analytics instead)
  • Tracker module (comes with core)
  • XMLSitemap (1.x branch – upgrade!)
  • Nodewords (not sure if I’m getting rid of this one personally for great keywords and such, might look for alternative solutions though…)
  • User Relationships module
  • Access Control Modules (Organic Groups, Taxonomy, Access Control)
  • Not caching content
  • Loading lots of media content from the same server
  • MySQL queries (database is generally the biggest resource sucker)
  • Server configuration not optimized
  • Server missing software that could really help juice things up
• Steps that can be taken to improve performance/scalability:
  • Enable page caching at admin->settings->performance with a cache lifetime of five minutes (even one minute can help!)
  • Disable modules that are not needed.
  • Optimize software (e.g. use Pressflow, a 100% compatible replacement for Drupal core – I’m skeptical but will be trying it out for sure and looks VERY well maintained and up-to-date with Drupal changes.)
  • Try Boost module, caching requests as static HTML files (quick and easy)
  • Make use of APC (Another PHP Cache)
  • Reduces disk access when parsing PHP files by keeping parsed files in memory
  • Recommended shm_size = 128M setting in php.ini to fit all of Drupal in memory
  • See slides for further config info and links
  • Optimize MySQL
    • Make use of database slave servers if using a multi-server setup, with paged and LIMIT queries hitting the slaver servers.
    • “Protect” the master database from queries whenever possible (caching content helps with this if not in a multi-server environment)
    • Turn on query caching and set innoDB buffers (see slides for more details)
  • Calculate MaxClients for Appache to prevent BAD STUFF from happening
    • Default ServerLimit and MaxClients of 256 is generally set TOO HIGH.
    • Run the “top” command to see what average httpd size is
    • MaxClients * httpd size = memory usage (figure and allow for other cached items and general server use)
  • Add server software
    • Memcached
      • Stores Drupal cache tables and sessions in memory, avoiding the mess that happens with excessive CPU/disk access
      • When page cache is enabled in Drupal, memcached serves entire pages to anonymous users from memory
      • Give room to grow, 128MB to start recommended
      • See Nathan’s slides for additional info and links
    • Apache Solr
      • Great for speeding up searches
      • Java technology that requires TomCat as host
      • Best used if on its own machine due to high CPU usage
      • Acquia Search is a hosted alternative that makes use of Apache Solr
    • Varnish
      • Reverse-proxy cache that serves images, static files and anonymous pages from memory
      • Accessed before Apache, allowing for existing configuration to remain in place
      • Cookie-based skipping of Varnish lets users fall through to Apache
      • Checout cookie buster script for allowing of anonomous form submissions at http://lb.cm/cache_buster
    • NGINX
      • Alternative to Apache and Varnish
      • Combined reverse-proxy and HTTP server
      • Slightly faster than Varnish and Apache (I may skip for my current configuration – don’t want to take a site down or change servers at this point…)

Results: For my personal needs, it looks like I could go from X (not sharing) requests per second to over 8,000 requests per second, without spending extra money!!! HUGE improvement. I also plan on building an expansion and a “when ship hits the fan” plan for when that’s needed. Thanks Nathan!

Q: How big are other design/development teams that make similar sized Drupal websites, and what is the production time looking like for the sites they build?

A: I wanted to know how our production compared to other teams out there and if we needed to step up our game or are undermanned or over-committing in some way.

I attended a case study on Energy.gov, a website that currently fits the scale and complexity of an upcoming phase of SpaceFoundation.org (soon they will be bigger as they’re merging 100′s of sites!). Four core developers with up to ten contracted developers (flex, as needed) developed the site in roughly five months, two months being time for discovery. Beautiful site! It was great to see some of the inner workings that made this website come to life.

Other case study websites had closely sized teams. Speaking to other attendees however, there were a lot of smaller teams handling bigger websites. I noticed this especially with education based teams and a few freelancers.

Results: With two designer/developers here, my gut feelings are saying that we should slow down just a touch and take more time for development, or higher additional developers. However, the current state of Space Foundation websites (REALLY OLD), budget (we are non-profit after all) and ambitions organization endeavors (us web people are not the only ones working hard, EVERYONE is) say that we simply need to hunker down and deliver, and deliver we will!

Q: Is it better to develop websites with Drupal 6 or Drupal 7 at the present time (October 2011)?

A: No doubt: Drupal 7 for the win! We’ve been working on a new Drupal 6 website for some time now and D6 is something that I’m very familiar with. After attending Karen Stevenson’s session on migrating from D6 to D7, I found out that the upgrade path is not a clean one yet. Views (views 2), content profiles, user profiles and some other content will not simply transfer at this time. The team here unanimously decided that switching to D7 now will cause some pain in a short migration, but will save much blood shed a year or two from now when we have a lot of content that could fall apart from D6. Besides, Drupal 7 is WAY COOL! We’re going there.

Q: How do I migrate a Drupal 6 website to a Drupal 7 website?

A: Five pints of blood. You don’t have to lose it all at once as that could be fatal.

Karen Stevenson showed how to migrate a D6 website to a D7 version. At the time of writing it’s not super clean, with the requirement to completely rebuild views and user profiles (to some degree). Other than that, here are some tools/tips/options that may help (get the more detailed presentation files here):

• New D7 Requirements:
  • PHP 5.3+ is recommended
  • 32MB+ memory (was 16MB, I’ve had better personal success with a higher number)
  • PHP Hash and JSON extensions (was installed by default on a couple of my machines)
  • PHP SSH extension for the D7 update manager (was installed by default on a couple of my machines)
  • PHP PDO Extension (NOT PECL – I think I was set here by default as well)
  • PHP Tokenizer extension (try to see what you have for PHP extensions)
• Look at switching to InnoDB in database tables
• Always look at the UPGRADE.txt in D7 core files for helpful instructions and developments
• Read this: http://drupal.org/node/948216
• Don’t overwrite your old site. Instead, make a new one with a new database so that you can start over if it all smashes on the ground.
• Switch to Garland theme on the new install as both D6 and D7 have that theme.
• Run update.php on the old site first and make sure all modules are up to date before migrating.
• Uninstall unused modules before migrating.
• Use the Schema module to find unused tables in your old install.
• Use Hacked! to find altered code which may help troubleshoot some issues before migrating.
• Use Variable Cleanup to clean out unused variables on the old install before migrating.
• Upgrade Options:
  • Drush + Drush Make: Will remove modules no longer needed (some modules have been absorbed into D7 or replaced with other means), also add new modules and revise module versions.
  • Upgrade Status module will check the status of D6->D7 modules
  • Migrate + Migrate Extras modules offer mechanisms for migrating content.
  • Look into the profile migrate module for user profile options.

Migrating is definitely possible. It’s just not a one-click process. You have to work it!

Q: How do I post news to multiple areas of a site and assign sub-themes that are visible when viewing news in the different areas?

A: This was a rather complicated topic I’m working out. There’s a chance I might be producing a custom “multipath” module with noindex meta features to handle some of this, but the Context module will help a ton in regards to showing different sub-themes and menu blocks in different “contexts”.

Q: What are the latest techniques for making Drupal websites ready for mobile?

A: Mobile was a BIG theme at Do It With Drupal 2011. I attended keynotes and sessions covering different aspects of mobile including where mobile is at in general today, trends, and even how to start integrating Drupal with mobile apps.

Notes from Jeffrey Zeldman‘s opening keynote (Jeffrey Zeldman is known as the “king of web standards” – slides available here):

• Content is a design problem, and our designs are becoming hostile to content.
• The more we make content hostile, the more people take content into their own hands.
  • Example: InstiPaper transforms icky cluttered websites into clean and readable documents that can be read online or offline or on the go.
• We may no longer be in control of the visual experience.
• So what do we do as designers? Serve the customer! Designs that don’t serve the people don’t serve business (Do website visitors really want to see what you’re showing them, or are you forcing them to view what you want them to see? Hmmm).
• Don’t destroy the customer experience by forcing “dark patterns” on people like bebos did when they had people mass-email invites to their entire address book when signing up for example (more examples to avoid at http://wiki.darkpatterns.org).
• Good web design starts with content. Design is topping of the content cake.
• Design is hard when you don’t know the content.
• The “This content is best view with….” days are over.
• “Progressive enhancement is a universal smart default“
• People doing well have a mobile strategy, may get by with a small screen strategy.
• Responsive web design is design that responds and adapts to different screen sizes and situations, designed not only for the desktop experience, but also other devices: progressive design taken to the next level.
• Small screens force us to put the user first (no room for all that extra crap).
• mobile first = user first = content first

Key notes from Jeff Robbins‘ keynote:

• Think about the term, “clik here”, because the “click” interaction is changing (examples: “touch”, “tap”, “hold”, “yell” – I’m sure some interface wants you to yell at it).
• Jeff gave the example of the wifi lamp, a lamp that changes color based on some condition like weather change or number of website visitors. No clicking!
• Accessibility isn’t just about blind users, but perhaps sighted users who are driving down the highway.

Notes from Josh Clark‘s keynote, “Mobile Context Is a Myth” (This guy tweeted his presentation in real time WHOA! – slides available here):

• Mobile isn’t always on the run. It’s also on the couch.
• Don’t take out features on a mobile app, otherwise people are likely to leave the mobile version to swim around the huge version (or not swim at all).
• eBay sells cars via their mobile app.
• 25% of web users exclusively use mobile.
• 8% of adults exclusively use mobile.
• “Complexity is not a dirty word.” (complications is)
• “Just enough is more for most…”
• More clicks doesn’t mean more bandwidth if caching.
• click quality vs. click quantity
• Mobile = more (GPS, camera, audio recorder, etc. – Does your desktop have all that?)
• Don’t think in terms of website, but of experiences.
• Use mobile to focus, remove the surrounding crap.
• Three reasons people use mobile:
  I’m micro-tasking
  I’m local
  I’m bored
• Create opportunities for exploration.
• Mobile audiences:
  • BlackBerry: 40% of global enterprise with text-heavy interaction
  • iPhone: active lifestyle, biggest buyers, emotional connections, statistically have more sex than Droid users
  • Android: tech, tools, features, make it your own, younger audience
  • Windows Mobile: aiming for personal experiences, active families, with personalization
• Consider SMS apps since so many people use it now (75% adults, 90% kids)
• API (Application Programming Interface) runs the show: Content and API first, mobile platforms come second. Think service, not app.
• A mobile apps is not a strategy. It’s an app.
• Thing customers, not technology.
• Visit http://www.futurefriend.ly

Q: How are other web developers going about making mobile apps?

A: I’ve been experimenting with Appcelerator‘s Titanium Studio to develop cross-platform (Droid/iPhone) apps, pulling in data from a custom Drupal based JSON feeds with mild success (lots to share soon on this!). It looks like Sumit Kataria (developer of the DIWD app), Greg Dunlap (leading Drupal 8 initiative) and others were on the same track with their sessions (I heard someone was using PhoneGap for their apps, but I could never get this to work for me). It was fun to continue experimenting and get detailed feedback on some of the challenges I’ve been having with Titanium. The biggest gem of advice I received from Sumit was to start with the iPhone app, then apply an extra 10% of work to get it working in Android. I’ve been going the opposite direction since I own a Droid phone and have been running into walls that I can see resolved already. In regards to Titanium Studio, there was not a lot of code sharing. Greg Dunlap’s pantsquare website may have some examples soon. In the meantime, there’s a great “Kitchen Sink” app available that demonstrates a lot of functionality.

Q: How do I connect my Drupal website to my mobile app?

A: The goal is to get data into portable JSON format and send it to the app to parse, also receiving data and parsing. Also, REST services tend to be the most easy to manage. Greg Dunlap in his session, “Drupal as a mobile application platform” (slides here) gave some great methods for passing data form Drupal to and from an app and back in a couple of ways:

• Services module is great for handling data that involves user interaction. Users can login and do stuff using services as if they were visiting the website. This is great for mobile apps! The downside is that Services doesn’t work with Views module yet (although basic lists of stuff can be created with Services alone).
• Views Datasource module is a great way to package and send anonymous views. For example, it would be great for getting a list of speakers at an event, but not good for getting a private list of user friends.

Focus here again was on the API, not so much the app. Greg did mention versioning the API so people who don’t upgrade right away can still access data that is being provided in the old format (good to know!).

Q: Why should I use Drush?

A: Drush is awesome, and saves a LOT of development time. Use it.

Q: How do I ____ with ____ module?

A: You missed it. I was able to get a lot of module specific answers while in New York that were tough to get through forums or IRC. I’d love to hear about some of the questions you had answered.

Modules of Plenty

When someone asks a question of how to do something in drupal, the answer is usually similar to, “There’s a module for that”. Below is a list of modules/tools I heard about in various sessions and discussions in New York, some of which I’ve used, some new, some just worth mentioning and a few that I’m revisiting or giving second chance. Additional modules are listed in a previous blog post from two years ago when I went to Do It With Drupal in New Orleans here. Also, feel free to add a comment if you have one you would like to add to the list.

Backup and Migrate
I wish I knew about this module sooner!! The Backup and Migrate module looks like a great option to backup and restore Drupal databases with various compression options available. In combination with supported Drush commands (see below), this module will greatly accelerate database backups and disaster recovery if I mess something up (hey it has happened – this tool will help make those times less noticeable). Backup and Migrate + Drush will cut a lot of prep time for me when making big updates. The migrate part is pretty cool too. Just note that it’s not a clean migrate and requires other steps. Check out [Karren's] session, “[session name and link]” at drupalize.me for more info.

Boost
Discussed in the “Performance and Scalability” session, Boost is offers static page caching of content for sites that get mostly anonymous user traffic. It removes a lot of need to run big MySQL queries to deliver content as the database queries are the thing that slows down a website the most. I know of one website that this can be applied to right away when I get back.

Chosen
This simplish module makes use of the Chosen jQuery plugin to make pretty, user friendly select elements.

CTools
This module is requirement of a lot of other modules mentioned, mentioning this module as a requirement naturally. Use of this module offers several APIs that make the Drupal development experience nice (which is why a lot of modules depend on it).

Drush
While available for download as a Drupal project, Drush is not a Drupal module. It’s the command line tool of awesomeness that runs locally, connecting to local websites and live websites (via SSH), automating a LOT of repetitive Drupal tasks. For example it can manage full website module updates with a few key strokes or backup a database. Many modules installed on a website include Drush commands which offer a lot of wonderful options. I heard about it before and set it aside as I like to interact more with the update and other processes. However, clicking in a GUI a bajilion times to update a website gets OLD. After taking an introductory session on Drush, it’s going to become quite the assistant (perhaps even help automate some areas completely).

Drush Make
Also not a module, Drush Make is an extension to Drush. A person can create a “make” file that describes all the pieces of a Drupal website distribution (Drupal core version, modules, themes, patches and external libraries like TinyMCE for example). When running a make file, Drush downloads all the specified stuff. Drush then can be used to turn on modules and configure it all. This is super helpful for quickly gathering and placing common resources for a new website (no more visiting every module page one at a time for the latest download!). Also, make sure to check out [make.me] website for a handy online make file generator.

Display Suite
Does drag-and-drop design sound better than constantly messing with template files? The answer is yes, it sounds awesome! I have not used this module yet, but will investigate as it may allow for more client control over content layout, or make the web team’s job simpler. At the moment I’m skeptical as I don’t want to install yet another module (as usual), but could change my mind once giving it a shot.

EVA: Entity Views Attachment
EVA is the D7 solution for D6 views attach module. It attaches views to content, allowing one to show related content as one example. One example could be a podcast, attached to it being a list of other podcasts in the same series.

Hacked!
This module looks for changes in files. It takes note of current Drupal core, module and theme files, downloads them again, and shows exact changes in conjunction with the diff module. Cool stuff! Note: does not prevent a website from being ‘hacked’ as mentioned on the project page.

Heartbeat
I caught this one from a tweet during an unrelated session (maybe from the “Pineapple Store” session? Related or not, I’ll definitely be watching that one on drupalize.me when it’s available). It looks like it formats and displays a nice list of user activity, great for social sites and for other uses for sure.

Flag
Flag lets users “flag” content as anything the developer desires (examples: flag as bookmark, active, on/off, to-do, etc.). I like the views functionality that comes with Flag, showing lists of flagged items. New Space Foundation content is getting flagged when content is saved as “Needs Review” for an open workflow (using Rules to apply the flag on save), with a view of content that needs review made available to content editors.

Migrate
Migrate was discussed by [Karren] in her D6 to D7 migration session as one of the four ways in conjunction with Migrate Extras module (below) to help migrate a Drupal 6 website to a Drupal 7 site, The Migrate module provides a framework for people to migrate not only Drupal websites to another major version, but also other CMS websites in general. One highlight of this module is the “rollback” ability if you migrate something and need a way to undo the damage.

Migrate Extras
Migrate Extras module gives the Migrate module more mmph. It extends support for additional modules such as CCK. Notes: Migrate + Migrate Extras doesn’t cover everything if migrating from D6 to D7. Views 2 does not have a migrate path (you’ll need to recreate your views). User profiles and Content Profile also don’t have a migration path (I see fun database fun ahead for me personally, ouch!). For more information, check out [Karren's] session titled [Drupal 6 -> 7] at drupallize.me.

Open Atrium
Open Atrium is an entire Drupal distribution produced by [Phase II] that focusses on being deployed as an Intranet. It’s cool. I’ve been using it personally to keep track of things. I also LOVE the website design put into this project and project website.

Panels
Panels allows for the creation of custom layouts using a drag and drop interface for multiple purposes, even more when used with other related modules. This is one of those modules I’ve been avoiding because two years ago it added a lot of complication to my minimalistic desires. Now that time has passed, I’m planning on giving Panels a second chance on a personal fun website and taking it to the office if I like it.

Panels Everywhere
Panels Everywhere replaces Drupal’s default blocks system with advanced panels features. I’m not sure how this works yet but from what I heard it makes block-like administration more fluid the the often clunky feeling blocks page (imaging dragging blocks around after you have 30+ blocks! – lots of scrolling).

PressFlow
This is an entire replacement for Drupal Core 6. It’s optimized for performance, completely API compatible and with its history of staying up to date at almost the same rate as Drupal 6, I want to give it a try… of course now we’re moving to Drupal 7 soon so I’m curious how PressFlow will evolve.

Profile Migrate
This module migrates core profile fields to nodes for use with the Content Profile module.

Schema
Schema is great for comparing the website database with the declared database schema that modules declare when they are installed. It will point out issues, really handy when migrating a site or troubleshooting the database. At a higher level, Schema extends Drupal’s Schema API,

Services
Menioned by several presenters and developers at Do it with Drupal, Services module offers a solution to integrate external websites and applications (like mobile apps and Flash) via REST, JSON, SOAP, etc.,. Since mobile apps where a huge focus this year (thank you Lullabot), Personally, this module gave me some great inspiration. One major disconnect is that Services doesn’t work with Views, and since most of my content on the website that I want in an app are carefully structured with Views I can’t use it for most of my current content. Views Datasource is better for that (below, anonymous users only). However, Services excels greatly at handling user authentication and handling user requests making this module a must-have in my near future. For example usage and code, check out the very fun www.pantsquare.me

Upgrade Status
Handy when migrating a website from one major version to the next (Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 for example), Upgrade Status helps a person follow upgrade steps and checks the availability for the next major Drupal release.

Variable Cleanup
Variable Cleanup specials in de-bloating the variable table. Lose the fat! At the time of writing, this module is still in dev. Remember to make backups first.

Views Bulk Operations (VBO)
VBO is a powerful module that allows operations (actions to be taken) on content in rows of a view. One basic example might be to publish all nodes in a view showing unpublished nodes. It’s gotta be nice to create a list of stuff and make stuff happen to all that stuff (my fingers and brain are getting tired, can you tell?).

Views Datasource
Another great way to get data from a Drupal website out into the wild (or at least a mobile app featuring wild animals). Views Datasource is great for taking a view and transforming it into XML, OPML, Atom, JSON and other formats. The caveat is that it will only provide data for content available to the general public, but not good for providing a list of friends for example (can’t get a private list of friends if you can’t authenticate the user to figure out who his/her friends are).

Recommended Books

A Book Apart

Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement

After the conference I had a chance to venture out and get to know New York a little better. After jumping on a couple wrong trains (oops!), I managed to find my way to the 9/11 memorial.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to get in to the memorial itself due to limited access requiring a reservation due to all the construction. I was able to walk around and think about what happened there.

Times Square was a very alluring, bright at night destination. Talk about information overload!

I found an excellent chalk artist who replaced my twitter profile image right next to the main strip. I’ve always wanted to try it out at various craft fares and carnivals and it was a god break from the cluttered main street. The drawing was impressive!

Before flying back, I enjoyed a fine breakfast consisting of a “Brooklyn Omelet” and a huge slice of genuine New York cheesecake. YUM!

Flying to New York for Do It with Drupal was totally worth it. I’m back with a new arsenal of digital mayhem and can’t wait to deploy it!

With the Space Foundation moving to a new headquarters location in Colorado Springs, the marketing team designed and ordered fresh business cards. The new cards contain a cool new feature on the back of each card: a stylized, personalized QR Code.

Contacts who receive the card may scan it with their smart phone camera using a freely available QR scanning app (available for most new phones) to download contact info directly to their phones (vCard). They may also stay connected to the Space Foundation through social media links, and even remember what team members look like with an optional photo. It’s a new high tech way for the Space Foundation to reinforce contact with others.

What are QR Codes?

QR Codes (abbreviation for Quick Response Codes) are a ‘2D code’ scan-able by newer camera phones and dedicated barcode scanners. Being popular in Japan for several years, popularity has spread around the world and is now vastly growing in popularity in the United States.

QR codes may contain many types of information including web addresses, contact information, events, SMS messages, wi-fi networks and just plain text. The Space Foundation uses them on the business cards to launch a mobile web page with contact info and social media links. The Space Foundation marketing team is also employing QR Codes in magazine ads, print campaigns, and websites to promote the use of mobile websites.

Space Foundation Stylized/”Vanity” QR Codes

In my honest opinion QR Codes are fun yet UGLY. When I heard that the Space Foundation was going to use them on business cards, I did a lot of experimenting to see if I could bend the rules and make the code stay on-brand. Other people were trying it, so it seamed reasonable.

The result was an approved stylized or “vanity” QR Code featuring rounded edges, Space Foundation coloring, and the logo globe as registration marks for a more branded high-tech look. The code was tested successfully by several volunteers around the office who had smartphones to play with. Now the Space Foundation is using this QR style for everything that a mobile phone user can benefit from.

Automating Creation of Stylized QR Codes

Space Foundation “QR Codenator” (demo link unavailable at this time)

Designing a custom QR Code put me into potential trouble. Once the design was approved I started receiving requests to produce QR codes for multiple projects. Taking 10 minutes a piece to edit manually in Photoshop, I would go mad if producing them all the time. The solution: automate the production of QR Codes!

I found a great open source PHP library called phpqrcode (fitting name) that produced the standard black and white codes. Combining that with a customized jQuery interface, some added PHP and ImageMagick, co-workers are now able to generate QR Codes themselves on demand. I also plugged into bit.ly‘s API to shorten URLs quickly (shorter URLs make for less cluttered, cleaner looking QR Codes). Cool beans!

QR Codes are just one of the new technologies the Space Foundation is using to reach out to others and enhance relationships. Soon we’ll be launching a new website and other web and technology endeavors (slightly off topic but you MUST check out the new Space Founaiton Mars Yard).

Stay tuned for future experiments gone right.

After quite a bit of research, great Linux madness, and a couple gray hairs, I was able to install a map rendering server from scratch and start generating cool maps. The one pictured above is of my neighborhood in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Memorial Park and its lake can be seen to the bottom right.

Inspired by Development Seed‘s DC Nightvision theme, I designed an ‘SF Nightvision’ theme in blue (from Space Foundation’s color pallet). The map was generated using Mapnik and mapnik-utils such as Cascadenik (making styling more manageable to work with), and OpenStreetMap data for the roads, trails, lakes, etc.

In addition to OpenStreetMap data, contour lines were drawn using elevation data provided by the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, originating from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (STRM). Pikes Peak can be seen above with a hiking trail leading up to it (just a short hike right?), and a road on the other side.

It came from space!

OpenStreetMap data comes from a world-wide community of mapping professionals and enthusiasts using GPS data and satellite imagery to record street paths and other geological highlights. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (STRM) elevation data comes from two radars strapped to Shuttle Endeavour that orbited the earth for 11 days in February, 2000. Call me biased but without all those space technology investments my little Colorado Springs map would lack much depth.

Uses for Custom Maps

Custom maps like this can be used to add great visual impact to websites. Nothing cuts ‘blah, another Google map’ like ‘wow! where did that come from?’. Equally or more importantly the ability to generate maps using custom data allows people to further map earthquakes, snowfall, crime levels, and flasxseed (some people like to know). The sky is the limit, unless you start mapping galaxies….

Like this one! This is the first mapping endeavor I went after, thinking it would be simpler to map a fictitious galaxy for Eve Online first before a full blown Earth map.

Of course it ended up being just a couple steps away from a Colorado Springs map as I had to generate custom ‘shapefiles’, get a map server running and stay within a world boundary I didn’t understand to get a system I didn’t understand designed to render world stuff I didn’t understand to render a galaxy instead. At least I understand a lot more now regarding how it all works.

What am I generating custom maps for specifically?

I don’t know for sure yet, but every time I get the drive and passion to pursue a project like this I end up using it in real-life applications at an unexpected time, prepared. So far I’ve gained some javascript and php snippets from related experiments that I’ve applied directly to a seating chart editor for meal events (odd how that works out). It’s also been a great exercise to remind me that anything is possible.

The TTS Plugin for TinyMCE is a web based text-to-speech editor that visually formats text with pitch, rate, volume, emphasis, and breaks. It’s able to export basic SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) accepted by text-to-speech engines such as Cepstral voices, and accepted by web services like Voice Forge.

NOTE: This plugin does not generate audio or communicate directly with text-to-speech engines or services. It simply formats text in a fun visual way and exports SSML that you can figure out what to do with after it leaves the editor.

What You Can Do With Exported SSML

Here are examples of audio produced using SSML exported from the TTS plugin as seen in the image above (audio generation techniques may be shared in a future blog post):

Audio courtesy of Voice Forge. From left to right: ‘Lawrence’, ‘TopHat’ and ‘Kayla’

TTS Plugin Demo

Try out the TTS plugin here »

Download TTS Plugin for TinyMCE

While this plugin is not perfect (it gets temperamental with complex formatting and locks up on occasion), it has been released under the LGPL user license so that you can use it freely in your noncommercial and commercial projects. Heck, you can even contribute code if it brings you joy at github.

Quick Start Guide

1. Download and unzip the TinyMCE JavaScript library.
2. Download and unzip the TTS Plugin.
3. Move the ‘tts’ folder to tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/
4. Open ‘example.htm’ in the ‘tts’ folder for an example of how to configure TinyMCE and the tts plugin.

Why?

Text-to-speech is awesome.

The Future

Future updates may include added support for specifying phonetic spellings of words (e.g. You say tomato, I say…), multiple language support as seen in other TinyMCE plugins, and bug fixes.

Bring Me a Beer

Did you find it useful? I’d love to hear about how you used it in your projects. Browny points are also accepted.

My CEO dropped off a magazine before the holiday break with an article about monitoring live solar weather. What started as something interesting to read sparked a very fascinating endeavor! As I’ve enjoyed combining webcam images and other data in the past (old blog theme used Live Devner image/weather), playing with live solar imagery took the excitement out of this world.

I wrote a script to start automatically pulling in and archiving 32 live or nearly live solar images from Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), NOAA’s Space Weather Protection Center (SWPC), Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO). I also built a crude Flash interface (above) to load and play images being collected. The result: HOT.

Why monitor solar activity?

The sun is a giant violent ball of burning gas over 100 times bigger than Earth that spews out particles in all directions via solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs). When the number and speed of those particles increase out of the norm at Earth, they can cause problems with our technology in space, communications, and could even cause powergrid blackouts on the ground. Monitoring and forecasting solar storms/weather can help us prevent issues by temporarily shutting down satellites or taking other steps to prevent unnecessary damage.

As far as this blog post is concerned, the solar imagery produced by recently launched missions is absolutely stunning. Monitoring the live images of what we cannot stare at directly (don’t stare at the sun, you’ll go blind!) is fascinating. Below are some shared notes and basic info on what’s out there producing live solar imagery made available to the general public.

Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO)

Courtesy of NASA.

When I read “observatory”, I think of a dome shaped building on a mountain top containing a big telescope. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) takes observatories to the next level as it’s instead a satellite the size of a truck orbiting the Earth, containing multiple instruments.

Launched February 11, 2010, SDO hosts three suites of instruments to peer at the sun with. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) takes images of the sun at various wavelengths. The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) captures magnetograms, intensitygrams, and doplergrams. SDO is also home of the Extreme ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE), hosting a pinhole X-ray imager, and other instruments that collect a wide range of in-depth data.

Original image courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) takes very high resolution images of the sun, made available to the public in near real-time. Above is a sample at full resolution/304 wavelength.

Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

AIA uses a set of four telescopes to observe solar plasma over a wide range of temperatures. Wavelengths from left to right, top to bottom in the above image:
AIA 193, AIA 304, AIA 171, AIA 211,
AIA 131, AIA 335, AIA 094, AIA 1600,
AIA 1700, AIA 4500

Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

Composite images are also produced, combining multiple wavelengths (and HMI, far right image) for a fuller view.

Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on the SDO is a follow up to the Michelson Doppler Imager on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO, further down). HMI measures motion of the photosphere and also measures the magnetic field. HMI’s observations will help establish relationships between the sun’s internal dynamics and magnetic activity. HMI produces three unique types of solar images. From left to right above: HMI magnetogram, HMI intensitygram, HMI dopplergram

Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams.

HMI also sports a pinhole camera that takes Soft X-Ray images (above).

NOAA/NWC Space Weather Protection Center, GEOS-15 Satellite, and POES Satellites

Courtesy of NASA.

Launched March 4, 2010 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the GEOS-15 satellite (formerly named GEOS-P), is one of a constellation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GEOS) orbiting the Earth. GEOS satellite imagery is used to monitor storm development, estimate rainfall, snowfall accumulations and snow coverage. The satellites also monitor the movement of sea and lake ice, along with detecting ice fields among several other tasks.

Courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

GEOS-15 in particular (along with its predecessors GEOS-13 and GEOS-14) additionally keeps an eye on solar activity and provides a Solar X-Ray Image (SXI) (above). The image is updated and made available to the public by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) / National Weather Service (NWC) Space Weather Protection Center (SWPC).

Courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) system consists of two near polar-orbiting satellites that orbit Earth over 14 times per day. POES collects data for several land, ocean, and atmospheric applications. One application shown above is the monitoring of the power flux carried by the protons and electrons from the sun that produce aurora in the atmosphere. The SWPC is able to estimate the amount of power deposited in the polar regions using POES data, and plot it on a map with an “activity level” index of 1 to 10.

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)

Courtesy of NASA.

A project of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was launched December 2, 1995. It was built to study the sun from the core, corona and the solar wind it sends out.

Courtesy of NASA.

After the launch of SDO, the frequency (cadence) of produced live images was reduced for SOHO’s Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) (top row above) and Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) (bottom row, left two) to about once or twice per day. The unique Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) (bottom row, right two) images are still being produced once every 30 minutes or so and are used to observe solar wind (and 2,000 comet sightings since December 26th, 2010!).

Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO)

Courtesy of NASA.

Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) is a set of two nearly identical satellites, one that orbits the sun a quarter orbit ahead of Earth, and one that orbits a quarter orbit behind Earth. The positioning of the satellites allow a view of what’s on the other side of the sun not visible to Earth. On an added note, the EUVI/AIA 195 Stonyhurst Heliographic on the bottom left (above) uses imagery/data from SDO to fill in the middle of the image. The black strip on the sides represent areas of the sun neither STEREO or SDO satellite can see.

What am I missing?

This was an information overload of fun, but I’m sure there’s still more live imagery out there. If you know of a good reliable source, or see some information that’s not quite right above, let me know!

Sources and Further Reading

Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

SDO is GO
http://sdoisgo.blogspot.com/

SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA)
http://aia.lmsal.com/

HMI Major Science Goals
http://hmi.stanford.edu/Description/hmi-overview/hmi-overview.html

NOAA Watch: Space Weather
http://www.noaawatch.gov/themes/space.php

NOAA Space Weather Protection Center
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

GEOS Solar X-Ray Imager
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/index.html

GOES-15 Weather Satellite Captures Its First Image of Earth
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100407_goes15.html

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov

Guide to SDO Data Analysis
https://www.lmsal.com/sdodocs/doc/…/index.html

Helioviewer
http://helioviewer.org/

SolarMonitor.org
http://www.solarmonitor.org/

NICT Space Environment Information Service
http://hirweb.nict.go.jp/

Real-time and Near-real-time Solar Image Sites
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/solar_sites.html

STEREO
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

I made a homemade Flash Christmas and New Years Day eCard for family and friends. Have fun with it here and share with your friends!

John Sterling Vinson was commissioned by Space Foundation CEO Elliot Pulham to craft the Space Foundation’s first celebratory beer titled Black Hole Porter, making its debut at the team Halloween party. The porter was sweet but not too sweet, with a light nutty taste, and dark like a black hole. I loved it, and hope to try more of John’s microbrew creations in the future.

With the new beer came an opportunity to design. I’ve always wanted to design a beer label and needed to get out and be creative for a weekend after much programming. I hung out for a few hours at a new discovery near downtown, The Coffee Exchange, smearing colors, painting clouds (found a nifty cloud brush here), blending graphics, getting spacey. It was awesome.

Designing the label was also a chance to experiment with the use of QR codes on a product and gain some mobile website experience. QR (quick response) codes are scanned using a mobile phone camera with a “QR reader” found in iPhone and Android app stores. They’re catching on very quickly in marketing print campaigns and invite mobile phone users to interact with print (or screen). At the time of writing, we’re now using QR codes on the National Space Symposium website here to quickly get website visitors connecting with their phones.

I used the beer bottle QR code to launch the “Ultimate Black Hole Challenge”, where mobile users could test the strength of their black hole wisdom and get a fun ranking in the end (thanks team for the ranking title ideas!). The quiz was developed using iui JavaScript library, making it a mobile web-app. Mobile apps are developed to run natively on whatever phone they are on (e.g. iPhone apps run on iPhones). Mobile websites load within any phone’s web browser (some doing a better job than others). Mobile web-apps are mobile websites that pretend to be mobile apps. Crazy aye? The “Ultimate Black Hole Challenge” was created to behave like an iPhone app, with screen transitions and familiar buttons seen in many apps, and it ran nicely on Android phones as well.

The end use of this beer bottle QR code was flawed. It looked nice on the bottle, but in regards to the Halloween party it wasn’t doing so well wilting on ice, touched only by a helpful bartender. It may may have been better suited for a mass produced beer distributed to casual drinkers seeking entertainment in local pubs. Of little consequence though, the beer was great and that’s what was important. The party was excellent! I also had a chance to get to know our newest graphic designer a little better, and just have fun.

Hot Tamales and Sugar Daddy approve!

Recently I had the joy and honor of joining members of the Space Foundation team on an unclassified tour of Cheyenne Mountain, sarting home of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). It’s ironic as a tour has been on my to-do list ever since I could remember. I just never thought that I would actually get to go. It was a great surprise when I learned of the trip. Isn’t it amazing how things work out like that?

I discovered Cheyenne Mountain through imaginative movies and TV growing up. The Stargate program was based there, where people traveled through wormholes to other planets far away. It was a main focus of alien attack in Independance Day. Don’t forget about the classic movie War Games. The underground installation has captivated the imagination of many, including myself.

Photo Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NORADBlast-Doors.jpg

While movies have built some grandiose visions of what’s inside the installation, I found that the Hollywood view definitely stops at the blast doors. I felt it was rather practical inside, like a well kept self-sustainable high school (with lockers even!), on springs, without windows, inside a cave.

Here’s a few interesting down-to-earth factoids about the place (Correct me if I’m off, there was a lot to take in!):

• Cheyenne Mountain is located in Colorado Springs, CO not Cheyenne, Wyoming (I was asked about this a couple times recently).
• Cheyenne Mountain Complex is an installation, not a base. Air Force installations and bases are very similar. However installations are smaller than bases and don’t have space allocated for residency. Everyone that works at Cheyenne Mountain lives off-site. Cheyenne Mountain does have amenities such as a small shoppette and cafeteria.
• Built by the Navy starting in 1961, the installation was completed in 1964 when the keys were passed to the Air Force. NORAD, a joint effort to this day between United States and Canada was operational in 1966.
• Cheyenne Mountain took 1 year to hollow out with dynamite. The excavated debris filled a ravine outside the installation, now a parking lot. All expenses were paid by the United States Government, with exception of the dynamite. Canada covered the explosives.
• NORAD’s mission is to determine if North America is under attack, and inform both the United States and Canadian presidents if that’s the case. They now monitor everything air, space, and sea around and in North America and report to military and civil authorities on potential threats.
• NORAD doesn’t launch missiles like some people think. They simply provide info (although the process of simply providing info is quite complex).
• The installation is 2,000 feet into the mountain.
• Cheyenne Mountain is not NORAD. It was NORAD’s primary facility as a tenant there until 2006 when they decided to move their main operations more fully to Peterson Air Force Base. The move removed duplicate efforts between both locations. Cheyenne Mountain now runs on stand-by, partially staffed as a backup command location. Everything is well-kept, ready for action if/when needed.

A friend asked, “Did you see the stargate?” Well no, I took the unclassified tour. However I did see a jarred specimen in the backup command center, there to scare bugs away that recently arrived through the gate. It detoured the bugs from chewing on wires and shoe laces. I also caught a glimpse of the big red button.

In truth though, this tour gave me a greater appreciation for the efforts of NORAD. I feel it’s important to have an awareness of threats, and know about attacks if they are happening (communication is key!). The tour guides were fantastic, helping me dispel myths and gain a greater understanding of the NORAD mission.

The Space Foundation spoiled me rotten with this adventurous opportunity. They tend to be great at spoiling the employees. I think I’ve had more travel, site seeing, family time, and training than in the previous 6+ years! I’m looking forward to the next adventure. National Space Symposium is coming up next. See you there!