Notes
2009 in Review
Once again, in lieu of a Christmas card, I'm summarizing the more notable parts of 2009 for all interested parties. In short, it was a great year. See below.
January
- Rang in new year at choirmate's home. My 'dead pool' pick1 was close, but no cigar.
- Hosted annual wintertime mulled wine party at home.
- Began final semester at Humphrey Institute wondering what lies in wait for me post-graduation.
February
- National Lutheran Choir tour through Mitchell, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
-
Steve Jobs. ↩
Dressing better
So I've been trying to dress better. Never having had a job that required me to wear a suit/tie every day (and still not quite having such) most of my suits have languished in the closet. A few weeks ago, I thought it would be a good idea to step it up a notch. Pull out those suits. Iron a shirt or two. I may be comparatively overdressed, but It makes me feel great.
Plus, I get to tell the story about my $25 Hart Schaffner Marx.
Back to Drupal
OK. So my experiment with Jekyll was short-lived. It is a cool lightweight CMS, but I found that I was tinkering more than I wanted to get things done--things that would be trivial with a full Drupal installation.
So...back to Drupal. Some links might having been broken in the round-trip. Buyer beware.
Elm Quintet
Beginning this September, I have been a part of a small vocal ensemble called the Elm Quintet. As it happens, we have our first gig coming up in a couple weeks. We’re collaborating with an early music group led by Phil Rukavina (lute). Lots of great early music on the program!
Jekyll
I migrated this site from Drupal to Jekyll today. Given that this site is updated only infrequently, I thought it might be a good idea to use a publishing system that doesn’t need quite as much ongoing attention as Drupal. I managed to port the Neewee theme in use on the previous site to Jekyll. Will give more details when I have the opportunity.
Horizons
I started a new job at Horizons a month ago and am doing a fair bit of blogging at http://minnesota.communityblogs.us – mostly about rural development, leadership, civic engagement, and capacity building. Check it out.
Site redesign
I redesigned this site today using the excellent Neewee Drupal theme as a starting point. I modified it slightly to be a proper sub-theme of Blueprint. I think it looks pretty sharp--nice and clean without being visually boring.
Commencement Address
It was a great honor and pleasure to have been selected by my peers to deliver the student address at the Humphrey Institute commencement ceremony on Sunday. I used the opportunity to mash together much of what I've written about at pubTalk over the last few months.
Integrating Google Calendar into Pubtalkblog.org
For those that may have attended my lunchtime session at the MCN Tech Conference last Friday, here is a very brief description of how we integrate Google Calendar feeds into our blog at http://www.pubtalkblog.org:
For the calendar page and sidebar block at Pubtalkblog.org, we are using this code:
http://james.cridland.net/code/google-calendar.html
This snippet of code requires that you also download Simplepie, an RSS library:
http://simplepie.org/downloads/
You can tweak the cridland.net code in the top section to customize the front-end HTML display.
Minnesota Council of Nonprofits / MAP for Nonprofits Tech Conference
I was invited to give a brief 10-minute lunchtime presentation on Google Calendar at the tech conference sponsored by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and MAP for Nonprofits. I'm introducing people to Google Calendar and helping them understand the social benefits of publishing event listings in an open, portable format like iCal.
Though you won't get the whole picture of the presentation, take a look at the slides below for a rough overview and some helpful weblinks for further information.