Happy Pixels

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. [1/4]
• I am going to run a triathlon. I'm currently considering the Stadt-Triathlon München[signed up] 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.

Here are my slides from the presentation: 10 Reasons why you should use Features for your Drupal project as well as the video that was posted to archive.org.

My new business cards from moo.com got here in the mail. The nice thing about moo.com is the possibility to make each card unique (they also have a public API) and the great quality of their product. I used the header image overlay from my custom colorable theme to generate different color variations, and then cut that up to get three variations from the wavy gradient.

The Drupal community is a very diverse one. So when the idea came up to make a viral video to promote the DrupalDevDays and invite Dries Buytaert (founder of the Drupal project), we didn't have a shortage of talent in the local community.

It's been about two years since I registered happypixels.net. What started as a simple blog has now become the web presence for my business as an independent Drupal consultant, and the website needed to be updated to reflect that change. Besides registering happypixels.com, I have also been reworking the design and decided to launch the new theme before continuing with other changes.

As a member of the organizing team, I am happy to invite you to the Drupal Dev Days (aka DrupalCamp Germany 2010), which will take place on May 8th and 9th in Munich. We already announced the event on many German-speaking channels, but I would like to invite those of you who might be coming from further away.

Upgrading Drupal websites from one major version to the next is painful. Most people solve the problem by sticking with the old version, and I've seen a lot of people give up after trying for many days. I've myself done a good amount of (successful) upgrades from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 in the past year and decided to share my experience and hopefully help some people get through with it.

No, I'm not talking about trees as a data structure, I'm talking about branches where you can actually hang stuff. Apparently people liked the coat-hanger tree in the hallway of our apartment, and those who couldn't see it in person asked for pictures. It took more time to decide how to make it than to actually do it, but we had a lot of fun doing both.

I'm back in the office after a wonderful week-end in Vienna. DrupalCamp Vienna and the surrounding activities were great to meet new faces, catch up with friends and build new relationships.