Happy Pixels

It has been a few months since Munich was announced as the location of the next european DrupalCon, but much of what has happened since then has been mostly invisible to the community. Many people attend DrupalCon, but few people are aware of what goes into preparing such an event, and this is what I would like to share with you in this post.

Just like I did last year, here are my resolutions for 2012. They are stated in a way that makes them testable, either I achieve them or I don't. Based on what I learned from the past year, I also decided to break larger resolutions into smaller chunks so that progress can be tracked.

It seems like another year has passed again, and just like last year, I decided to take a moment to review the past year for me.

Over the past few months I started doing music more actively again, with a couple shows and regular appearances at the various open stage nights in Munich. After a while people, started to ask where they can find me online, so I decided to use my domain florianloretan.com for music, and keep happypixels.com for my blog about web development and random personal stuff. As usual, building stuff for yourself takes forever, but I finally have something that works for me. Check it out at florianloretan.com!

Despite the title, wunderkraut has not yet branched out to hatmaking:
The "feature hats" we're talking about is our approach to minimize conflicts when using a code-drive development method for Drupal, especially when using Drupal features for storing configuration in code. This configuration is changed by developers by updating features, i.e. exporting configuration in code via the popular features module – a merge-based source code version management alone like git doesn't avoid confilcts here.

It is a well known fact that pages with many images load more slowly than simple HTML pages. Not only are image files heavier than text files, they also require additional HTTP requests.

In an attempt to solve both of these performance problems, I have created a new Drupal module: Imagilicious. Imagilicious replaces tags that reference an external image to be loaded with a 100% HTML rendering of the same image. Unlike immature technologies like the <canvas> element, Immagilicious uses tables, which guarantee compatibility even with the most outdated browsers.

Here is a sample of the output (no <img> is used, this is a table), using Wunderkraut's logo as a source image:

Wunderkraut is the name of a new company that I co-founded with three fellow developers from the Munich Drupal User Group. I've been lucky to work with them on multiple occasions, and this consolidation of our different skills came as a natural fit. My activities will still consist of doing everything to build kick-ass websites and travelling around the globe to spread the Drupal love, but I will be doing so through Wunderkraut.

The devel_generate module (part of the devel project) is a practical tool to generate test content. The resulting content can be used to test performance and functionality, but it looks very artificial: texts are long homogenous paragraphs, images look like bad modern art paintings. The good news is that we can easily alter the generated content and replace it with more realistic-looking values.

Read the rest of this article on the wunderkraut blog.

Here's a list of personal goals for 2011 in no particular order. I decided to list only objective goals, so for each point I can check it off the list once it's reached.

• I am going to take a minimum of four full weeks of vacation, meaning at least 28 days in which my e-mail will be set to auto-reply. [4/4]
• I am going to run a triathlon. I'm currently considering the Stadt-Triathlon München [canceled due to injury] or the Triathlon International Vallée de Joux

I have been inspired by various bloggers to spend some time thinking about the past year and review all the things that happened, what went well, what could be improved, and what I want to change in the future. I've already jotted down my goals for 2011, but this is for another post.

2010 was my first full calender year as a freelancer, and even if I've always had more than enough work, the year started with some cash-flow issues. After a reputable company put me in a lot of trouble by paying my work for a medium-sized project 6 months late, I definitely learned my lesson.