Blog

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

I've been noticing these messages lately on some of my Drupal 6 sites. These popped up any time I saved any content.

warning: strtotime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for 'CDT/-5.0/DST' instead in /var/www/polycotassociates.com/modules/node/node.module on line 814.

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

I recently found a very cool service called Wuala which is a cloud backup/sync solution.  I think it is really cool because it gives you 5GB free storage initially and all files are fully encrypted on your computer before they go to the cloud.  I've been testing it for a while and I think I'm going to give it a try at some of my clients too.  It allows you to share a folder with someone dynamically.  Very cool!  Check it out.www.wuala.com

 

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

Check out what I just got from Microsoft.  Looks like it is finally time to start moving folks off Windows XP.  Good thing we can still get Windows 7 as I haven't deployed any Windows 8.  I do hear good things about it though.  I may bite the bullet and get Windows 8 on a new laptop soon though.

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

When making a copy of a drupal 7 site, I often need to disable outgoing emails.  I found a useful module called maillog that does the job well.  It also logs all emails so you can easily see what the site is sending out.  You can find it at http://drupal.org/project/maillog

After enabling the module, you can configure it at admin/config/development/maillog

You can disable all email by unclicking the checkbox : Allow the e-mails to be sent.

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

Well I've started using Windows 8.  My old laptop is creaking along and about to give up the ghost.  I've been using Windows 7 64-bit edition on it and it has been steady as a rock for quite some time now.  My desktop on the other hand is an MSI based AMD machine with Windows 7 32-bit on it.  It has been running fairly well but stutters a whole bunch.  8 Gigs of RAM doesn't seem to help this beast a bit.  I got a new hard drive (Seagate 1 Terrabyte 6 GB/second SATA) to see if that would help with the stuttering but it didn't.  So after transferring everyth

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

Sometimes you need to get a heading to display inline eg

Name: Fred Bloggs

You can achieve this with either display: inline or float:left; on the class for the label.

told you it was quick.

 

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

Panels tabs are (like so many things in Drupal) pretty easy once you know the exact steps.  Using Drupal 7.20, Panels version 7.x-3.3, Ctools 7.x-1.2.  you can make a page that has horizontal tabs along the top.  It doesn't require any additional modules.

 

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

On Drupal 7 sites I always spend time in the content view.  That is the one at admin/content.  I usually install the views bulk operation module so I get these cool new views that I can easily tweak.  What a pleasure!  Recently I was on a site that had the administration views module installed.  This replaces the default views for content and comment (and more.)  Unfortunately the link for editing the view that is

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

I just got off the phone a couple of hours ago in disbelief.  I was called by a Case Manager from HP and told that HP does not support printing labels on their printers.  I purchased an HP OfficeJet 4500 printer from Office Depot and delivered it to a client.  They had a great deal of frustration trying to print on labels and I was able to replicate their problem easily.  The label sheets seem to just slide around inside the printer and never print correctly.  They don't line up.  I called HP to try to get them to replace the printer wi

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen.  This video clip shows designers who have invented a new road surface with embedded solar panels, leds etc which can collect and store energy, have communications conduits to connect homes and offices, can detect a pedestrian in the roadway and notify oncoming traffic and lots more.  The road surface is glass!  What a way to use glass.

check it out at http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

There is this super cool add-on that lets you create apps for your desktop. It is called Webrunner (from Salsita Software) It is a replacement for an app I loved dearly called Prism.  I use it with a gubb.net app for my to-do list, a google calendar app, a google docs app.  I even tried a gmail app but I prefer Thunderbird.  Check out how to do it at http://lifehacker.com/5823857/webrunner-turns-webapps-into-desktop-apps

By Selwyn Polit, 25 August, 2021

Well I installed the finally released Drupal 7 last night.  It sure looks very slick and modern.  I'm glad it is finally rClick to view larger versioneleased but it does feel a little like having another child.  I had a tough time trying to understand the new way of doing taxonomy.  In Drupal 6, you