Drupal not planet

I haven't written nearly as much on this site in the last year or two in part because I "blog" less and in part because I'm just doing it in more specialized places. I realized that by writing about all sorts of different things on knaddison.com I was creating 1 site with no focus when instead I could create 12 sites each with singular focus. The latter form is, of course, more useful to readers.

Here's an introduction for one site Nikki and I have been working on that we really enjoy: Ice Cream Denver.

Denver Ice Cream Review & Photo blog

Nikki loves Ice Cream. I don't mind it ;) And especially with our little daughter we were looking for a new project that would be a fun weekend errand. We started the site in September of 2010 and immediately posted a bunch of store locations. Shortly after we started posting photos of the various shops.

A few of my favorites:

Chalk Board Menus

Chalk board menus are common in the restaurant industry and definitely deliver a cutesy feeling at ice cream shops. For liks south it's painted on and cutesy, but not so practical (in spite of their hundreds of flavors). At sweet action it seems purely practical: they are often adding and removing items from their menu. Menus are a popular item on the site, so popular I created a listing page.

This past weekend I spent a bit of time helping a good friend set up a new site: Silly Ditties For Kiddies.

Sara Gallegos - Teacher, Musician, Entreprenuer

Sara and I worked together almost 10 years ago. While the jobs have long ended, our friendship has remained. She decided to leave the technology consulting field and become a teacher. She also started playing music again (having played flute in high school) and incorporated singing and music into her classroom. She created her own songs to help teach the various concepts in the classroom and it seemed to really help her students learn the concepts.

Silly Ditties for Kiddies - CDs available now

After a few years of using these songs in the classroom and building a big group of well polished songs, Sara sat down with some professional musicians (and friends who aspire to be professional musicians) and recorded the best songs she has for her students. She is now selling them on her website.

About The E-Commerce System: Ubercart and Drupal

Sara and I spent a few hours working together on a weekend morning and built the whole site. We used Ubercart which is built on the Open Source platform Drupal which is the system I use for work. It was really fun to build a simple site like this for a friend when I spend most of my time working on big sites for people far away (not that those aren't fun too...but...variety is nice).

I was just cleaning out my computer and found this little Limerick:

Greg's Unifnished Drupal Limerick

There once was a CMS named Drupal
With code, the developers were frugal
It's only 2megs
Taxonomy means tags
I like to play the bugle

I think I wrote this 2 years ago.

As you can see, the last line is pretty weak. I think the basic flaw is that I ended the first line with Drupal and then had to try to rhyme something close to it which is kind of hard.

We're just a few days away from DrupalCamp Colorado 2008 and things are becoming more and more tangible by the minute. Just now I got a package in the mail at the new offices.

The stickers just happen to be 2"x4" which is exactly the right size to emblazon them on the back of your iPhone. Ever since lijit gave it to me my phone has rocked a lijit sticker:

but now...at least for the next week...it's a DrupalCamp phone:

About quarter of the calls I get are organizing the camp so it seems only fitting.

If you're not convinced by these stickers that this will be a rocking weekend, here are the sessions.

Also, my best to the sticker's designer Don Hajicek and to the other logo designer amytremper.

Recently the folks from the Democract Convention Committee were looking to hire a Web/Drupal savvy person in the Denver area. They posted to Craigslist, I added it to Groups.Drupal.org but what else can you do?

There are several good places in Denver to find tech-savvy employees (likewise, if you are looking for work, pay attention to these places that advertise jobs):

• Craigslist Denver Web Jobs is of course the 800 pound gorilla, massive listings and traffic, and free. Always a good place to post your ad.
• RMIUG (Rocky Mountain Internet User Group has probably the best email based job board via the rmiug-jobs Yahoo Group. Be sure to read the FAQ before posting.
• Groups.Drupal.org's job postings get a really targeted (Denver + Drupal) audience of folks.
• Colorado Startups Job Board which is pretty thinly trafficked, but I have hope for this one.
• Denver Webdesign Meetup Group has a message board that is pretty job friendly
• Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup Group has a job announcements section at the beginning of the meetings.

And if emailing and posting on all of these fail, you might want to actually go to one or two of the meetings and get to know folks and mention your needs. That seems to work even better than just posting emails.

Did I miss any? What do you use?

I just want to compare two job posts.

Hiring the Wrong Way

The first, from craigslist will disappear in a few weeks, so I've copied the best parts here:

<

blockquote>
PHP/MySQL
Drupal development, theming, writing and/or modifying modules
ZenCart module development & theming
JavaScript
Flash
...snip...

...snip...If you are interested in contract work, you must be able to provide days and times you will be available. Ours is a fast paced, multi-tasking environment. If you cannot handle moving from task to task as needed, this may not be the best environment for you.

All candidates must take and pass a test to verify their skills.

Please email with the following information:
1) Resume
2) Samples of your work
3) If interested in permanent full time employment, date when can you start