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Introducing... the LOLSaints Podcast!

Well, in the wee hours of the morning, I decided to sit down and test out the recording abilities of my iPhone 3G, using the built-in voice memo program and my trusty ol' voice (which is, thankfully, working okay).

What resulted is the first-ever brand-spanking-new super-cool and fantabulous LOLSaints Podcast (embedded in today's saintly posting)! The podcast is integrated right into the normal LOLSaints postings, so you can either play 'em just below the saint of the day (if you're one of those types who can't stand to click through the post and read a story!), or you can subscribe to the LOLSaints Podcast (click the link for the feed) via iTunes or whatever software you choose!

LOLSaints Podcast Logo

Fireworks at Fair St. Louis - High Def with the D90!

Earlier this evening, my family and I attended the fireworks display at Fair St. Louis (downtown St. Louis), and viewed them from the third floor balcony at KMOX (which just so happens to be the first building after the Arch grounds, affording a beautiful view!).

Here's an embed of the video from YouTube:

The video was shot in HD on my trusty ol' Nikon D90, and turned out pretty well; I didn't do any kind of manual exposure, and the fireworks were pretty much properly exposed (which surprised me). It was shot at the wide end of my favorite walkaround lens, the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5.

Full Site Buildout: Part 4 - Releasing a Theme on d.o!

Part 4 of a series: Building out a full Drupal site in a weekend.

Well, after having a successful launch day, ironing out a few small bugs in the CSS of the layout, and patting myself on the back, I decided to push the initial release of the 'Airy Blue' theme created for Open Source Catholic out to Drupal's Theme repository. It turns out working with CVS isn't the hell-on-earth I thought it would be, but it's still a heckuva lot to expect from a guy who logs less than an hour a day in a command-line interface!

I applied for a CVS account, then read through the plentitude of CVS documentation for themers on drupal.org, making a few notes here and there. After having my CVS account approved, I finally had some time to fire up Terminal, and go through the process of first 'checking in' to CVS, then uploading my theme directory, and finally 'committing' and 'tagging' it for release on my project page.

>> It's a lot easier to zip up the files and link to them, let me tell 'ya! <<

Anyways, enough about that process (if you ever need help, jump into the #drupal IRC channel and see if webchick's around. If she is, she'll help you in no time!); here's the description of Drupal's newest contrib theme, Airy Blue:

Full Site Buildout: Part 3 - Going Live...

Part 3 of a series: Building out a full Drupal site in a weekend.

Now that my feet are firmly on the ground (and hopefully will stay that way for a time), I have a little time to write about the final stages of the Open Source Catholic website development... even though it's tagged as in 'beta.'

Open Source Catholic Screenshot

On the plane flight home, I was mostly finished creating the theme for the site. I hadn't opened it up in IE 6/7/8 yet, but I knew the main three or four bugs that would crop up, and prepared for them. I decided to write some postings (two articles, two blog posts, and a website review) for the website, as it's never a good idea to try to build momentum for a website on which nothing exists!

Open Source Catholic - New Website

Open Source Catholic - Screenshot

Over the next few days/weeks, I'll be devoting a little time to Open Source Catholic, a new website for Catholic techies, web developers, communications personnel, and others involved in promoting the Catholic faith via new technologies. Expect more news on this front if I ever have time... for now, check out the website, see how it was made (series still in progress over on Midwestern Mac), and contribute!

From the website:

Full Site Buildout: Part 2 - Theme Development

Part 2 of a series: Building out a full Drupal site in a weekend.

Well, one plane flight down, and a conference to go, I have the main structure of the theme set up (locally; haven't pushed it out to opensourcecatholic.com yet). I decided to go with Zen 2.x's -dev releases, for the simple fact that it's new and the way the Zen project is moving. There are a few rough areas in the documentation, mostly in the 'Readme' file for installing a subtheme, but I got through everything okay.

This theme, I hope, will make its way onto the fine Drupal.org theme repository; getting a CVS account, I'm sure, will be fun ;-)