Barcamp 2016 was held at The Kaneko in downtown Omaha, organized by the tech and design community, largely AIGA, Flywheel and Agape Red. My friend, Ben Stevinson, seemed to be integrally involved in the coordination of the event. It was a great time to reconnect with some people and see new people who are interested in sharing their thoughts and experiences. Plus, it reminded me of how much I love living in Omaha, especially so close to the downtown. For $15, I was able to hang out with cool, smart people who are interested in making their communities and themselves better, have breakfast and lunch, good coffee and snacks, and get a t-shirt. Plus, it reaffirms just how varied and strong is the creative community here in Omaha.
The following are my sketchy notes on the event.

Dylan Baumann (@dylanbaumann) on CSS Grids, a new specification (video)

This is like a much better version of flexbox. It is not ready for implementation yet, but is an enhancement to web design that will make laying out pages much easier and logical.
I’ll definitely keep track of this now that I know it exists, but it’s not ready for production environments yet.

Will Riley (Split Infinities) on new web technologies (video)

Riley’s list included a lot of new ideas and terms that I need to follow up on.
HTTP/2
Web Sockets
<picture> and <img srcset>  
    We use these on Drupal pages at work, but I don’t know exactly how to implement them
Shadow DOM, specifically for scoping CSS to specific elements
HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)
    Vimeo supports this
Mix Blend Modes and Filters
    Doling live image filters like instagram
Flexbox
    This one I’ve used
Type Features
    Anti-aliasing
    System Fonts
Functional CSS Design
    Tachyons
    Bass CSS
Web Sockets
Cache API for URL
React and Choo.js
Sensor APIs
    To use light, accelerometer and force touch  
Web Audio
    Developed by Firefox
Developer Operations
    Webpack
    Guip
    Codeship
    Deploy HQ
    Github reviews

Sandi K. Barr on Flux/Redux

Andrew Yolland on UX and Board Game design (@ayolland)

Bad Ideas with Beth Haubert

Beth introduced some of her bad ideas: amputated leg lamp or Fecesbook, but also challenged us to not neglect our own bad ideas.

Craig Hughes on the importance of objects

Craig is a design anthropologist who asked students who were in their first year of college if they could only take one thing with them to college, what would it be. The irreplaceable value we place on objects in which we have imbued with meaning or value through use.

Zach Leatherman on separating fact from fiction

With lots of examples from The Flat Earth Society, Zach showed how nonsense can take root and spread on the web and how people might avoid being taken in. As for convincing others? Yeah, good luck with that.
 
People I talked to:
Steve with the pi and i shirt
Ben Stevinson
Jeff Spiehs
Ben Leuders from Fruitful
Ben from Bench
Dave Burchell from Creighton
Justin Duster from UP
Zach Leatherman (who was also at Dylan Baumann’s talk about CSS Grid}

To take one view and make it look like another can be pretty trivial. 

Let's call them "old style view" and "new style view". 

In my case, most of the presentational work of both views was being done with custom text, which means that I was bringing the fields in earlier in the view, but excluding them from displaying. Then, I used the tokens created by the view of those excluded fields in a custom text field, wrapping them in tags and classes that made sense. 

<!-- vertical -->
<div class="event-item">
<div class="event-calendar-left">    
    <div class="event-calendar-box">
        <div class="box-top-month">
            [field_imported_cal_event_date_2]
        </div>
        <div class="box-bottom-day">
            [field_imported_cal_event_date_3]
        </div>
    </div><!-- END of .event-calendar-box -->
</div><!-- END of .event-calendar-left -->
    <div class="event-calendar-right">
        <div class="event-brief-desc">
        <div class="event-desc-top">
            <div class="event-name">
            [title]<br>
        </div>
        <div class="event-date">
            [field_imported_cal_event_date_1]
        </div>
        <div class="event-time">
            [field_imported_cal_event_date_4]
        </div>

        </div><!-- .event-desc-top -->
        <div class="event-desc-bottom">
            <div class="event-summary">[body]</div>
            <div class="event-more-info"><a href="[field_imported_cal_link]">More Information</a>
            </div>
        </div><!-- .event-desc-bottom -->
    </div><!-- .event-brief-desc -->
    </div><!-- .event-calendar-right -->
</div><!-- .event-item -->

We have all had that missing semicolon moment, when the entire app comes screeching to a halt because you hit return instead of semicolon and then return. The same thing happened today with “canvas”, which I spelled “convas” (not a word, apparently, and most certainly not one that Google Maps Drupal Plugin could use, when it was looking for canvas to be spelled correctly).

This led to an error with was really not right: “null is not an object.” Thanks, Javascript.

I swear I ran a diff on the PHP code I wrote and that of the exercise file but because of tabs and an extra return or two could not find the problem.

Instead, I grabbed the HTML output of my bad code from the browser and put it in TextWrangler. Then, I took the PHP from the Lynda.com exercise files and replaced my module PHP. Saved and lo! and behold, a map showed up. I grabbed the HTML output of that, compared the two front windows in TextWrangler and there it was: “convas” where “canvas” should be. (Update: later in the day, I had a very similar thing happen with a colon in place of a semicolon.)

“Where does he get all those wonderful toys?”

This is, of course, the best line in the 1989 Batman, said by Jack Nicholson’s Joker to his henchman. This is also what I’m wondering as I hear Jon Peck say that we need to use Drupal’s hook_block_info function. I can’t help but wonder how he knows that, because I know that I don’t know it, and I’m assuming he had to learn it. Did he do so by reviewing all of Drupal’s hook functions? That sounds crazy. Did he build a lot of sites and learn little bits of this stuff along the way? (Update: at the end of the tutorial he talks about how he spent time going through Drupal’s API, so I guess that’s not so crazy.)

Well, here’s a page about Drupal’s hooks, which I suppose is helpful, given that it was the top search result. It also contains links in the comments to the most used hooks, which is another bonus.

Links

• Drupal coding standards

• Coder module - for testing custom modules

• Drupal API

• Drupal 7 Custom Module Development with Jon Peck (Lynda.com)

PHP Scope Resolution Operator (::) or Paamayim Nekudotayim

What I Learned

• The name of ::
• What other people call -> and =>

What I Knew

• PHP (somewhat)
• Drupal (somewhat)

As I was going through the tutorial, I couldn’t help but wonder why PHP uses the “->” to describe methods or properties of objects. In the process of looking around, I learned more about the Scope Resolution Operator or Paamayim Nekudotayim, which is used to describe the methods of classes, not objects. I had wondered why one was used sometimes and not the other.

Perhaps I don’t know the answer, but I know now that I’m not alone in wondering about these operators:

Links

• PHP operators: double and single arrow
• Scope Resolution Operator in the PHP manual

What I learned today

• Copying files one directory up and removing them
• Drush site-install

What I knew

• Setting up sites with Dreamhost (domain, hosting, database hostname and creation)
• Drush (somewhat)
• Drupal

My steps

1. Register domain (with Dreamhost)
2. Host domain (with Dreamhost)
3. Create hostname (with Dreamhost)
4. Create database (with Dreamhost)
   1. Username
   2. Password
   3. Database name
5. SSH to home directory
6. Drush dl
7. Copy files from drupal to the home directory (
8. Remove the drupal subfolder
9. drush site-install –db-url=mysql://{username}:{password}@{hostname}{database}
10. Login with credentials on the new site

Links

How can I copy the contents of a folder to another folder in a different directory using terminal?
site-install - Specifically the “Install using the specified DB params.”