Nick Lewis: The Blog

Paul Grahm has published a must-read essay on What Businesses Can Learn from Open-Source. His observations are succinct, self-evident, and refreshingly open to the future that large corporations are so despretly trying not to acknowledge. Forgive me for the grandiose tone, but the rise of Open-Source is inextricably interwined with the highly disruptive rise of the network, as a new major form of social organization. It is not an exaggeration to say that the network will change the world as much as the free market.

Some proof of the bold claim I just made can be found in Iraq out of all places. In Iraq what we are really witnessing is a clash between an insurgency organized along the lines of a SPIN network (Segmented, Polycentric, Ideologically bound Network -- a very powerful and insidious foe) VS. the heirarchial US military (like Goliath, large, powerful, but very slow and clumsy) with virtually unlimited financial resources. Strangely, Microsoft is learning the exact same lessons as the US military in the realities of this emerging age of the network.

Not to toot my own horn, but everyone loves this site's top navigation menu. I've received more questions about how I did it than I can answer. As a result, I've decided to write a tutorial on it. Before beginning this tutorial, the reader should be somewhat familiar the following:

• CSS
• My earlier tutorial on generating the HTML for drupal menu

Also, be sure that you have installed PHP-Template, and a fresh copy of Box_Grey on hand.

In this tutorial, I will explain how to generate custom menus that are fully controlled from the menu administration page. (path: [www.yourdrupalsite.com]admin/menu). These menus can be enormously useful. The can be used for everything from custom user interfaces, to navigation menus. In addition, since they are hooked into Drupal's core, they can be dynamically updated.

In writing this tutorial, I've assumed that the reader already understands to some extent:

• Drupal Themes
• How to copy and paste
• The value of attempting something for the first time. 

theme_menu_tree() = your new best friend

Alright, we're going to call a php function. O, non-php programmers do not flee in horror. PHP is easy, unless you're paying me, in which case its very difficult.

Google, is best understood as a bi-polor goddess who dresses up like a dandy fancy lad fop. I've watched her for sometime, and I have a feeling I'm beginning to understand her pet peaves, her bizarre rituals, and her seemingly unpredictable behavior. If this entry strikes the reader as confusing, understand that google is by-her-nature very confusing. Forgive me for the male-ness of my viewpoint, however, there are many similarities between my experiences dating(the more materialistic women in particular...), and my experiences with courting google.

Why Google is Female