Will’s Similiblog

I added an “about this site” page - created as a static page (from the Admin menu, Create content; Page); giving this an address “about” in the URL path settings field.

To link to this, I created a link in the primary links menu - administer > site building > menus; primary links, linking to the path “about”.  In the default Drigg theme, these primary links show up in the upper right hand corner of the page header.  I’ve also linked in this menu to our school’s course management platform (a Moodle installation).

The Category links - which show up just below the header logo in the default Drigg theme, as well as in the Categories block (upper right-hand sidecolumn by default), are pulled from a Drupal “vocabulary” (taxonomy) - configure these at administer > content management > categories, creating category terms in the “Category” vocabulary.

I’m using the default Drigg theme, which comes with the distribution.

The header logo resides in
/sites/all/themes/drigg_theme/img/, as header_logo.gif
I replaced this with a transparent .gif logo 100pixels in height.

The “Created by “(user) text, for each submission to the site, resides in the file node.drigg.tpl.php, in
/sites/all/themes/drigg_theme/
at line 59 -
I changed this text to “Submitted by ”

At Administer > Site Building > Themes, under the Configure tab,
I checked the Search Box (requires that the Search module is first activated), User pictures for posts, and User pictures for comments (these require that Picture Support is first Enabled, near the bottom of Administer > User Management > User settings);
and checked Display Post Information for Scoop nodes.

Other than these simple changes, I left the theme alone.

I think I’ve finally come to some resolution re the issue of featuritis in my social learning platform - and decided to go the route of individual linked sites for specific functions.

For user-contributed news with social rating & commenting (Digg-like), I’ve played extensively with Pligg, Drigg/Drupal, and a custom platform hacked together in Drupal.  Drigg has evolved handsomely over the past several months, and the most recent releases are behaving very nicely, with the feature-sets that I need.  My current site, launching into production this week, adds a few bells & whistles to the basic Drigg/Drupal distribution.  I’ll document those here.

Editing (submission, voting, commenting) is restricted to authenticated users from a closed community, but you can view the site, at http://drigg.ncnm.edu.

I started with the standard Drigg/Drupal installation from
http://www.drigg-code.org/pages/download_and_install
- using the “express” installation, which bundles the Drigg-specific modules with a Drupal installation, and pre-configured database.  Just today I updated to the 9/25/08 release (NICE work on this, Tony!).  Setup is well-documented & went on without a hitch.

I’ll follow with some posts re my customizations & additions to the basic installation.

… but the stock crankset (FSA/RPM 30/39/52T) on my Bacchetta has seemed geared a bit high for me.  I rarely get up on the 52t chainring, & even then only on the low range on the cassette or when screaming down a long downhill faster than I really should be going at my age.  My top gear would put me over 40mph at a 120rpm cadence, which I just don’t need (& likely couldn’t manage anyhow!).  I’m usually riding mid-range on the 39t chainring.

So I swapped it out for a new crankset - picked up a wonderfully inexpensive Sugino XD300 110/74mm 46-36-26T crankset with 165 mm cranks.  Went for the cheaper XD300 with steel chainrings, rather than the all-alloy XD600.

Just what the doctor ordered.  I’m now all over the middle chainring on most of my riding, up on the 46t on the long flats & downhills, and that granny gear that I didn’t really think I needed - with a gain ratio of only 1.5 - is one of those things that you really don’t think you need until you realize that you want it.

Am still using the stock pedals.  Entertaining the notion of clipless (Speedplay frogs?), but with most of my riding being Portland Oregon commuting, am feeling a little spleeny about riding clipped in.  I hear folks talk about your feet not staying on the pedals due to gravity, with a high bottom-bracket, but this is just not an issue for me.  On a budget, the crankset feels like it was the best gain for the buck at this point.

I love my Bacchetta Giro 20.
There’s this thing with the B-Link in the stem, tho.  This very handily allows the stem to hinge forward, which is nice, except that it allows the stem to hinge way foward - so when lifting/maneuvering the bike by the handlebars into the garage, or into a bike rack, it’ll suddenly hinge all the way forward, the bike flips upside-down like a huge chrome-moly limp fish, & I’ll trip over the place where the bottom-bracket would be if Picasso hadn’t been the one to design this wonderful piece of machinery.

So -
I picked up a few inches of 1/16″ cable from the hardware store, & smushed on sleeves with vice-grips & hammer, fastening this to the top bolts in the bottom & top blocks of the B-Link assembly:

I had to make a few to get the length just right - the loops tend to stretch a bit, and as there’s a lot of leverage in the stem, the swages need to be smashed pretty thoroughly to prevent the cable ends from pulling through.

This now gives me a good range of forward swing in the stem, but prevents hinging forward past the point of stable maneuverability.

Sweet.

for users of our NCNM Drigg installation, a short (08:18) video tutorial re basic navigation of the site:

 

 drigg tutorial 2 - navigation [00:08:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

a brief video tutorial (10:19) re setting up an instance of the Scheduler module in Moodle (intended for my fellow faculty at NCNM)

 

 scheduler setup Moodle [00:10:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve set up an installation of Drigg to go into trial production for my school (the National College of Natural Medicine), for social contribution/ranking/discussion of health-related news w/in our learning community.  Editing will be restricted to our community, but contributed material is world-readable.

Below, is a brief (5:36) video tutorial re use of the system:

 

 NCNM Drigg tutorial [00:05:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

——

If you’re setting up a similar site, and wish to use the excellent javascript “Submit to Drigg” bookmarklet - the code for this, found in the Drigg forums, is:

<a href=”javascript:q=(document.location.href);t=(document.title);s=(document.getSelection());void(open(’http://YOURSITE.COM/node/add/drigg?url=’+escape(q)+’&title=’+escape(t)+’&body=’+escape(s),”,”));”>Submit to Drigg</a>

- be sure that the page this is placed on, has “full HTML” as input format (ask me how long it took me to figure out why it wasn’t working …)

a screencast, illustrating geotagging in Aperture using the Maperture plugin, upload to a Gallery2 installation using Ubermind’s Gallery Export plugin for Aperture, and display using the Gallery2 Map module:

 

 Podcast Video [00:07:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A screencast illustrating the Gallery2 Map module, permitting geotagging of photos uploaded to Gallery2 albums, and integration with GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth.

 

 gallery2mapmoduledemo [00:10:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

See my Gallery2 installation with the Map module at work, at http://gallery.similibus.org.