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Post Photos/Images to Your Drupal Site from the iPad

Now that I have effectively replaced my laptop with an iPad, I need an easy/quick way to post a photo or two from my iPad to my blog. I use Photogene as a simple Photoshop replacement on the iPad (it actually works pretty well, for being limited to 256 MB of RAM and a 1024x768 display).

I originally tried using an FTP program to transfer the file to my website, into a drop box folder I created, but FTPWrite, one of the very few FTP apps for the iPad, doesn't support uploading from my photo library. Not wanting to pay for any more weak FTP editors until Coda or something equivalent is released for the iPad, I decided to go about this task in a rather unorthodox way. Here's how I post photos to my Drupal site from my iPad:

Prerequisites

On your iPad:

Should I Sleep or Shut Down my Mac?

This topic is oft debated in many Mac forums, and does not really have a concrete answer; a lot depends on what you do with your Mac, and what Mac you use. Before deciding whether to shut down or sleep your Mac, you should know (a) what happens in each process, and (b) the pros and cons to both practices.

Sleeping

Many computer users (myself included) almost NEVER shut down their computers. There are many positive benefits to this (especially if you're a Mac user). When a Mac goes to sleep, almost every component inside the computer is turned off; what is not turned off is set in a 'low-power mode'. The contents of the RAM and Video RAM are saved, the network ports might still get a little power, and a few other subsystems stay on, but pretty much everything else is off.

Secure Your Files: Create an Encrypted Disk on Which to Store Private Files

Secure Disk ImageThe popularity of 'cloud file management' software such as Dropbox and SugarSync has made me re-evaluate my security practices for files on my computers; in the past, I have not put any of my private files (for instance, files with sensitive passwords, or scans of important legal documents) on my shared folders (Dropbox, iDisk, etc.), but I finally came up with an ideal solution to storing and syncing these files. It's like using FileVault, but without the extra overhead of securing every file in your home directory.

Building a Theme for Drupal 7

After having built out many themes for Drupal 6 (and a couple for Drupal 5), I'm going to start from scratch on a couple designs and build a theme in Drupal 7, which will be released sometime in 2010. I'll take you along my journey in this article.

Please note, this article is a work in progress, and I'll be updating it as I go. Hopefully, within a couple weeks, I'll have the article complete, and a nice new theme to release on Drupal.org (maybe), only for Drupal 7.

To get things kicked off, here are a few articles that have good background information on Drupal 7 theming:

Signal to Noise

... or, Liturgical Music: Finding Hymnody to Enlighten the Mind and Lift the Soul

Having been a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Saint Louis—an Archdiocese with great diversity in liturgical music, priestly ministry, and culture—I have had a great variety of liturgical experiences. Also, being a young adult with twenty-four years of musical listening habits under my belt, I've listened to a wide variety of genres, most especially alternative, classical, and pop music (with a bit of country music thrown in on the side). My most consistent favorite is soundtrack music (which can incorporate many of these styles in a single album).

Priestie Boyz - Lost in Ecstasy

A project on which I am proud to have worked is the recording and mastering of an album (pictured above) for a Seminarian rock band—I helped with everything besides the musical talent. (You can buy the album, Lost in Ecstasy, by the Priestie Boyz, on CDBaby or iTunes). I also had the privilege to work in radio engineering for five radio stations over the course of five years—two pop stations, one soft rock, and two AM/talk radio stations.

These experiences recently came to my mind simultaneously as I attended a youth-oriented Mass, at which many liturgical hymns (published in OCP) were sung with the accompaniment of two guitars, a drum set, and some percussion instruments.

In my analytical mind, I was using my mind's waveform analyzer (didn't know I had one of those until now!) to 'see' the music. What I saw made me think quite a bit about the different genres of music, and different purposes of music—especially liturgical music. In particular, I thought about the efficacy of different styles of music in worship, and how fitting (or unfitting) are different styles, especially for different audiences.

How to Get Free or Cheaper WiFi Access at AT&T and Boingo Hotspots

WiFi LogoI was recently in Chicago, lamenting the fact that, to use the Boingo WiFi at the airport for a mere half hour, I'd need to pay $6.95; rather than pay this outrageous amount (since I already have an iPhone with Internet access, and the WiFi would be a convenience, I looked to Google for some help.

It is well documented that you can simply change your browser's "User-Agent" to use the 'Mobile Safari - iPhone' profile, and trick certain hotspot locations into giving you free access (this will work for any AT&T Wireless location, such as Starbucks, as long as you also have a valid iPhone number).

Get Cheaper Access on Boingo

To get an almost half-off discount on Boingo WiFi hotspots, you simply need to do three things:

Communicating on the Go - A Guide to Traveling and Staying in Touch

In late 2009, I spent about two and a half weeks in Rome, Italy, which is far removed from my hometown of St. Louis, MO. Italy, France, Asia, etc. – all these countries are outside of AT&T's nationwide coverage plans, and since I wasn't going to be traveling for many weeks, I decided to not sign up for AT&T's extremely expensive worldwide plans, but rather did the following, which allowed me to stay in touch with friends and family worldwide, with different tradeoffs for each:

Designing a Good Website

This article will help you to learn some fundamental principles in web design and to design your own nice-looking, functional website

Over the past eight years (ever since I've owned a Macintosh), I've designed many different websites. I've dabbled in different web programming languages and done many, many technical tasks (some of which I don't remember how to do). But does this make me a good web designer? Not necessarily. I've learned through experience and research only so much about web design. It's more of an art than a science really; but it takes a lot more than an artist's mind to design a functional and eye-catching website.

God and Empiricism

What follows below is a paper I wrote for my 'Philosophy of God' class -Jeff

Commit it to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
-David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Sect. XII, Part III), concerning any volume of divinity or metaphysics

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