Hey All!

Sorry for our lack of blogging. Jon and I have both been doing lots of Drupal theming on various projects. We promise to blog more when we get some time (like when we finish moving this site over to Drupal 7 :o)

In the mean time, I’ve been tweaking out since I haven’t done anything creative for a few months and have been failing miserably at keeping an updated personal site. Sidenote: Another problem with the personal site is that I have a tendency to completely ditch my previous design and create a new one every few weeks or design something so unusable that I am completely filled with glee, while my users (friends?) just rip me a new one about proper design. It’s my own site! I do what I want! Oh no, I’ve becoming sidetracked.

Back to post. I present to you, the new and improved, mostly readable, probably unusable in anything older then IE7, philipscheffer.com.

Visit PhilipScheffer.com Now!

Riot Riot is back in “The Valley” and missing the awesome sites, sounds and smells of San Francisco. Our final day was spent catching up on work for our clients, replying to new people we met at DrupalCon and sightseeing.

DrupalCon was great for RiotRiot. We learned new things, met new people, and came away wanting to contribute more to the community (more on that in another post). The rain stayed in its clouds (like its supposed to) for almost all of our trip and last but not least, the food was awesome.

Food highlights from San Francisco:

• Cha Cha Cha – Great sangria!
• Gott’s Roadside Eatery – Awesome hamburgers and the best garlic fries.
• Pazzia Caffe and Tattoria – Delicious bruschetta (The owner gave us an order for free while we waited for friends!)
• Thirsty Bear Brewary – Delcious beer. Ok food.
• Specialty Cafe – Long lines = good (most of the time)
• House of Nanking – The calamari is just awesome. This was the 2nd time I went there since February. It was less busy and you could tell in the quality of the food.
• Rotten City Pizza – Last delicious food stop in E’ville. Man it was so good.

Thirsty Bear

House of Nanking

Rotten City Pizza

ps. Dont use Yelp.

So, to toot our own horn, Jon and I are riding the BART from Emeryville to downtown San Francisco every day for DrupalCon. In doing so, we save an estimated 8.0 pounds of CO2 emissions per passenger, per ride (from MacAuthor to Montgomery St. stations.)Some light pencil work later: we will have omitted 96 pounds of CO2 emissions from going into the environment by the end of the Con. Are we now going around enjoying the smell of our own farts? YES. But I think the real issue is, why did San Francisco ever think it would be a good idea to put carpet floors and cloth seats in a commuter train?

Jon and I (Phil) are in San Francisco attending Drupalcon 2010. This is our first conference as Riot Riot, and it is very exciting. We arrived on a beautiful Sunday and were able to get some site seeing in (bridges, cliffs, naked hippies, etc.) We had dinner with some fellow Drupal developers and themers at Cha Cha Cha in the mission district. They have great tapas and sangria [Cha3.com].

We are guests of gracious host, Chelsea Mclaughlan [chelseastandsalone.com] and are ready for this exciting week! Check back later for more Drupalcon/SF updates!

Ever work in sync with another co-worker on a particular program or file? If that’s so i’m sure you know some of the problems that can be run into. There is the potential chance of file over-writing or mistakenly deleting something that you should not have. Philip and I have both encountered this before when working on projects, and trust me after spending many hours on a particular section on a site then only to be saved over by accident by your partner almost makes you want to smash your head into the wall.

This is where collaborative software comes into play, which we have been using constantly. Even more important is that we both can edit documents together if we have access to internet! This is crucial since we there are times when we are not physically next to each other. You are probably wondering what we have been using?

Panic’s CODA.

Neither of us can really tell you have valuable this program is. Obviously you need to be running OSX to use this, but trust me when i say this program is FAST, Lightweight and reliable. Barely ever has this program crashed, and the functionality works flawlessly. Of course there are parts of CODA that i feel are missing but all-in-all they get 5 stars from us at (rr).

If you are looking for some help with programming, CODA comes loaded with “books” to help programming! Most other programs do not supply help with code other than word/function suggestions. This becomes very helpful for new and experience programmers!

Another tool… that has to be another key part in over-the-internet collaborative design would be iChat or Skype! This allows audio chat while coding through the same document! That ensures that nothing is missed or confused! It would almost be like working side by side even though we might be thousands of miles apart.

The last tool… would probably be the use of google’s services weither it be DOCS or their email system. Its a free service, and quality so why not use whats available? Well there you have it, a little break down of Riot Riot’s design and development tools.

Huzzah!

I am currently taking a break from my home office in Los Angeles to travel around the state of California. Monday, I drove up 395 with my friend Chelsea, and am now in Tahoe until the weekend, when I am heading to San Francisco. I am taking some time to work on new designs and tidy up Riot Riot. Meanwhile, Jonathan is holding down shop in a slushy Massachusetts! Happy winter!

Highlights so far:

• Alabama Hills
• Mt. Whitney (tallest in contiguous U.S.A.)
• Mono Lake
• Mammoth
• Lake Tahoe!!!

ps. Sorry for the poor photography. Like all Scheffers, when there is a destination ahead, pictures must be taken whilst moving towards said destination.

Flickr in the past couple years has really turned into a great service. PHP too has been a vital item to internet development! Now lets make them play nice together to grab some of your recent images in your flikr account!

1. The first step to get this working is to create a Flickr account.

2. Once your account is created, get a API. You can do that by clicking this link: Create a Flickr API. It should be a 32 character (number and letter) random combination. This will be YOUR API so keep that somewhere easy to get to.

3. At this point open your favorite development program (for me, CODA or Espresso) and FTP client. Create the file: flickr.class.php and apply the following code:

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   <?php class flickr {   function flickr($username,$api_key) { $this->username = $username; $this->api_key = $api_key; $this->user_id = ''; $this->response = array(); $this->timeout = 5; }   function getUserId() { $url = 'http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?api_key=' . urlencode($this->api_key) . '&method=flickr.urls.lookupUser&url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/' . urlencode($this->username) . '/'; $return = $this->fetch($url); return $return->user->attributes()->id; }   function getImages($count) { $url = 'http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?api_key=' . urlencode($this->api_key) . '&method=flickr.photos.search&user_id=' . $this->getUserId() . '&per_page=' . urlencode($count); return $this->fetch($url); }   function fetch($url,$post = false) { $ch = curl_init($url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Flickr'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $this->timeout); $output = curl_exec($ch); $this->response = curl_getinfo($ch); curl_close($ch); if((int)$this->response['http_code'] == 200) { return new SimpleXMLElement($output); } else { return false; } }   } ?>

   The above code will be complicating if you do not understand PHP Classes and Functions. Hopefully you do understand enough of the syntax to breakdown some of the code.

4. Next, enter into a page where you would want to display your photos! This is some example code, make sure your “flickr.class.php” require is looking at the correct location. After setting that, change where it says: “username” and “your-api-key”.

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   <?php   require_once('flickr.class.php');   $flickr = new flickr('username','your-api-key'); $images = $flickr->getImages(5); if($images === false) { echo 'Flickr Feed Unavailable'; } else { foreach($images->photos->photo as $photo) { echo '<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/' . $flickr->username . '/' . $photo->attributes()->id . '"><img src="http://farm' . $photo->attributes()->farm . '.static.flickr.com/' . $photo->attributes()->server . '/' . $photo->attributes()->id . '_' . $photo->attributes()->secret . '_s.jpg" /></a> '; } } ?>

5. Save your files and then take it for a test drive!

The Pen Tool is quickly becoming my favorite Weapon of Choice. Today I doodled up a photo of myself that we might use for our “Who We Are” section. If you decide to create a neat traced image, take your time, and add as much detail as you can!

Today’s fun included:

• Adobe Illustrator
• Photo to Trace
• Pen Tool
• Wacom
• An hour

My best tip for using the Pen Tool in illustrator: When you want to escape your line to start a new one, simply hit “P.” Before I realized this, I would add an extra step by hitting “V” to select the Pointer, and then P again. Yes, this saves you from hitting only 1 key, but when you are making hundreds of unique lines…

The Canon S90 is awesome. I am not going to do a write up telling you what is great and what is not so great about the camera, as there are many more qualified reviews from people who aren’t web developers. Attached below are just a few sample pictures from my trip to the Grand Canyon in January (re-sized only).

More awesome S90 photos from Flickr Community »