Druplicon Mac OS X login

Swap out the Apple logo on your Mac OS X login with a Drupal Druplicon.

I followed the instructions on macosxhints.com and was able to swap my standard Apple logo on my Leopard login screen to a Druplicon. I'm sharing the GPL version of the Druplicon in the proper size and format for the replacement.

However you want to get it there, rename/replace the applelogo.tif file at

with the one attached to this node or make your own 90x90 tif file.

Submitted by deekayen on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 12:11pm

deekayen's blog | 1 attachment

Windstream redirecting failed website requests

CTC was bought by Windstream and as evidence that they've started converting the CTC network to Windstream, when I went to a down website today, I was redirected to ww23.entry-not-found.com. Since it's Windstream branded and other people have reported it, I don't think I've been rooted. I have already complained.

If you're concerned about your DNS having the same problem, for now I apt-get install bind9 and changed my DNS from my dd-wrt box (which is using Windstream DNS servers) to 127.0.0.1.

Then in /etc/hosts I set entry-not-found.com and ww23.entry-not-found.com to resolve to 127.0.0.1.

When I asked Windstream about it, they offered an opt-out alternative:

In response to your concern, Windstream recently implemented a new feature to aid the majority of our customers experiencing issues while browsing websites. When a customer types in an incorrect web address, this feature now redirects the customer to a list of possible websites they were trying to access instead of giving the generic "Page Cannot Be Displayed." Because a majority of our customers thought to believe our service had disconnected, this change was made. However, we have seen a few examples with this that is causing a small part of our customers to be unable to access specific sites. Currently, the only way to bypass this feature is to set the opt out DNS servers into your Local Area Connection. The DNS servers are as follows:

Primary DNS Server: 166.102.165.32
Secondary DNS Server: 207.91.5.32

Submitted by deekayen on Fri, 07/04/2008 - 2:43pm

deekayen's blog | 1 attachment

Predicting the performance of interpreting instruction based on Digital Propensity Index score in text and graphic formats

Practitioners have proposed that Digital Natives prefer graphics while Digital Immigrants prefer text. While Instructional Design has been extensively studied and researched, the impact of the graphical emphasis in instructional designs as it relates to digital propensity has not been widely explored. Specifically, this study examined the performance of students when presented with text-only and graphic-only instructional formats. The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between Digital Propensity Index scores of individuals and their performance when interpreting online instruction. A sample of students from the population of a large metropolitan university received the Digital Propensity Index questionnaire, which is a measure of an individual's time spent interacting with digital media. Each student was randomly assigned varying formats of a computer-based instructional unit via a public survey. The instructional unit consisted of the DPI questionnaire and six tasks related to the Central Florida commuter rail system.

Participants were asked to answer the DPI questionnaire on a website by clicking on a link in an emailed invitation. Following the DPI questionnaire, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Group One saw three instructional tasks shown in text and shuffled in random order. Each task was displayed on its own webpage. By submitting an answer to the task, the group progressed through the website to the next task. Group Two saw graphic tasks first, again, shuffled in random order. After the first three tasks, the groups swapped instructional formats to view the opposing group's initial questions. Participants were timed on how many seconds they spent reviewing each task. Each task had an assessment question to evaluate the learning outcomes of the instructional unit. Finally, the DPI score of the participant was matched with the time spent viewing each presentation format.

The findings indicate that DPI score had a statistically significant prediction of time spent navigating each type of instruction. Though the link between DPI score and time spent navigating instruction was statistically significant, the actual measurable time difference between navigating text and graphic formats was only a fraction of a second for each increment in DPI score. Limitations and potential future research related to the study are discussed as well.

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President Ham Sandwich

I was talking about Bob Barr for president 2008 and one of my coworkers made some good points about how he's just an old-school Republican in Libertarian disguise. When I asked who I could vote for instead, he asked if he could write-in Ham Sandwich. The coworker on the opposite side of me said he'd like to vote for a poodle. That inevitably led to the question, how long before Vice President Poodle ate President Ham Sandwich?

Now with apparel as a t-shirt, organic t-shirt, and stein.

Submitted by deekayen on Tue, 05/13/2008 - 4:31pm

deekayen's blog

Zend Studio for Eclipse Drupal formatter

For years I've been a paying customer of Zend, using their Zend Studio Professional. They discontinued production of their custom Java version and opted to switch to making plugins for Eclipse.

I'm just now switching from the old Zend to the new one and discovered a formatter to handle all the code spacing automatically. Naturally, since I do most of my work with Drupal, I made a custom formatter file to follow coding standards for 4.7.x to 6.x. There have been some standards changes to take effect for D7, and I'm not coding for that yet, so this should be a good file for a general audience.

In your Zend for Eclipse, go to the preferences, PHP section, Formatter and Import... the attached XML file.

Don't forget to also run your code through the coder module, which will not only check your coding style, but look for upgrades, database injections, and some other cool things.

To my knowledge, PDT 2.0 doesn't have a formatter interface like Zend Studio 6 has. However, it does have another feature I insist on, removal of trailing whitespace.

Preferences - PHP - Editor - Save Actions - Remove trailing whitespace

Submitted by deekayen on Mon, 05/05/2008 - 1:33pm

deekayen's blog | 1 attachment