TWIFcomp

The RileyCon site upgrade is poking along.  Upgrading from version 4.73 to 5.16 of drupal didn't break too much, and with some cosmetic retheming (they changed the way that floats are cleared, for instance), everything worked OK and looked like the old site. The next step, from 5.16 to 6.10, was a major leap however.

Lights flashed and alarms bleated as I ran the upgrade script.  The most concerning complaints were about the site database. I had done only minor database tweaking in the last revision, but I got a lot of errors complaining about the CCK and Views-related tables. I had selected these modules as the core of the site when I first started, as it seemed evident at the time that these two modules would only become more popular and were likely destined for core integration down the road. 

That assumptions was correct, but in bringing CCK and views closer and closer to core, the code and database structure have undergone some potent hackage. Long story short, rebuilding CCK and views requires a few "reboots", i.e., add module, run update script, etc.  Additionally, since views went from Views1 to Views2, the views database entries need to be coverted "manually".  Actually, the conversion script ran well without much intervention on my part and at the end of the day pretty much everything pulled through in first-class shape in terms of data and relationships.

Not so for format, however. The first thing I noticed after upgrade was that my theme was gone. Disappeared. Not even on the theme list.  Digging into the file system, I could see that the directory was still there, though. Comparing to other themes, I saw that my theme was missing an "info" file. I copied one from another theme and adjusted the parts that made sense to me in order to customize it -- although I had no idea what I was doing.

At least now it showed up in the list of theme.  When I selected it, the site looked like it had been hit with an ugly stick.  A lot of the formatting was lost.  At that point, I read the manual.  The theming system, while still recognizable from previous versions, has also been majorly overhauled for the better.

To get my feet wet with the new theming system, and to make even more work for myself, I decided to scrap the old design entirely and start over.  I have to admit to having used some tables for layout in the previous version, but my goal for the new design is to fully separate structure and content.  

The new design is based on the Zen theme which has a nice top-to-bottom layout, very convenient containers and is an all around nice theme to develop on top of. While I am happy to complicate my life needlessly in most respect, writing a site theme entirely from scratch is not on my to-do list.

While I am making that concession to practicality, I've found a new toy to take up even more of my time: blender.  To make some of the graphics for the RileyCon site, as well as for the next RileyCon itself, I decided to use a 3d drawing program. In the past, I the remote past, I had worked in PovRay/Moray (for RileyCon 6's Flying Chickenships), 3DSmax, and Maya Unlimited (The PANTS space station, more chicken ships, etc.).  In switching to the Mac, though, my old copy of Maya didn't carry over, so it was time to give blender another try.

A few years back, I had tried Blender under linux (RH9 at the time), and it seemed overwhelmingly complex, poorly laid out, and buggy. Coming back to it on the Mac, though, it seems much more logical. Perhaps becaused I've used other 3d tools, it even seems very sleek and efficient. 

Perhaps most importantly, there is a lot of community support for Blender, much more so that the other applications (maybe there is more support for those high-end, high-cost applications amongst graphic professionals, but I'm not in that circle and never will be).  Online tutorials and references are very complete and at the end of the first day of playing with Blender, I'm making some not-too-bad looking objects.

Oh yeah, it will still be a while before I'm actually making stuff that will appear on the RC website, but learning blender seems worthwhile.  Besides....it's still ten months until the next RileyCon...