LostCarPark's Journal

Originally published at James's GUFF Trip. Please leave any comments there.

It was raining this morning, but cleared up into a very pleasant spring day, so rather than take the buys into the city centre, I decided to walk. It took about an hour, which was fine because apart from a long walk through Bangkok airport, I've not got any exercise since leaving ireland.

I'm now half way through the Te Papa museum, which is am awesome place to visit. There's a fantastic collection of items depicting New Zealand history, both Maori and european.

More later - I've still got a lot of the museum to get through before it closes at six.

Originally published at James's GUFF Trip. Please leave any comments there.

Bangkok airport is huge and modern and all looks very shiny. However, it is quite possibly connected into an alternate reality, with a vast concourse seeming to stretch to infinity. I walked for what ssemed like miles and came to the baggage collection and immigration areas. I didn't need either of these so I walked back and went through the security check for connecting flights.

The first half of the flight was fine, with a good selection of movies and TV shows (I watched How to Train Your Dragon, which was silly, but good fun. Hoping to get some sleep on the second half.

I think changing my socks would be a good idea.

Next stop Sydney!

Originally published at James's GUFF Trip. Please leave any comments there.

Mad last minute packing, but think I have everything, and hopefully just within the weight limit.

One thing that isn't coming is camilla the lizard. She makes a lovely shoulder pad, but I think the Australian authorities would fail to see the funny side of finding her I'm my luggage.

Just in time for my Australian trip I've picked up my lovely new phone.

I had been hoping to get a HTC Desire, but there are none to be had, from any of the networks. However, the Samsung Galaxy S haas just been released here, and reports suggest it's even better. So far I'm inclined to agree.

The screen is the nicest I've seen on any phone - very bright and sharp. I'm still getting used to the quirks of its version of Android, but it's Android.

My one gripe is the usb port is slightly different to all my other mini usb cables, which is an annoyance.

I will miss the real keyboard of the G1. However it comes with swype installed, which is excellent.

I'm looking forward to taking it to Australia.

It's been a while since I've posted anything under this topic, but I've been busy. I guess part of the reason for this is that I've reached the point where there's not a lot to say about GUFF in general terms, and it's getting into the specifics of my trip. It's also hard to comment on the plans I'm making when it could all turn pear shaped when the trip actually starts. However, I feel for that very reason, now is a good time to talk about my intentions. Then I can see how they compare to what actually happens.

Part 8 - Planning

More or less the first thing I did after finding out I was the GUFF delegate was to check out the visa situation, since if there was likely to be any problem getting into the country. Fortunately, providing you're an EU citizen, it's pretty straightforward these days. For Australia, you must apply for a "eVisitor" online. This is free, and is normally granted in about 24 hours. For New Zealand it's even easier, as EU citizens can travel for holidays without a visa.

The next thing was to check I could get the time off work. There were raised eyebrows at me taking my entire year's holidays in a single block, but in the end it was no problem. I wanted to go to Au Contraire before Aussiecon, so a week an New Zealand followed by 3 weeks in Australia seemed a logical breakdown.

I also started talking to as many previous fan fund winners as I could, and got lots of helpful advice. Ang, Sue Ann and James Bacon in particular have been hugely helpful. I also got a number of offers of places to stay during the trip, which was also fantastic.

I felt it would be a good idea to get my main flights booked as soon as I could, so I at least had the main part of the trip nailed down. I looked at lots of options from various airlines. I did toy with the idea of trying to do a round the world trip, but that didn't seem to be practical, and these days it's best not to travel through the US unless necessary, as I really don't want to end up on the wrong side of Homeland Security.

There were some fairly cheap options for flights to Australia, but the tricky part seemed to be the New Zealand leg. In the end, the best deal seemed to be to book with Quantas as a multi-stop trip. While they were a little more expensive for an Australia only journey, they were a lot cheaper than any combination of flights I managed to find. It should also mean that if anything goes wrong with my flight connection, it's the Airline's fault and they have to look after me.

The next step was planning what to do when I get there. I'll go into my plans for the conventions later. For now I'll talk about what I'm doing around them.

Norman Cates, a former DUFF delegate, was very generous in offering to put me up when I arrive in Wellington. Hopefully I'll get to meet some of New Zealand fans in the run up to Au Contraire,

I would have liked to go to lots of places in Australia. Sydney is the obvious choice, though only really for touristy reasons. However, I was advised that the biggest fan community outside Melbourne was Perth, so a stop-over there seemed a must. I also felt it would be nice to catch up with old friends Damien and Juliette as their 2005 trip was one of the things that sparked my interest in GUFF. After that there really wasn't time for any more stop-offs.

Sue Ann suggest I come to the monthly meeting of MUGS, the Melbourne LEGO Users Group, so keen to forge more links between LEGO and SF fans, I readily agreed.

Booking internal flights in Australia was pretty easy, and reasonably cheap. I hope that JetStar are nicer than Ryanair (I think I've flown with Ryanair enough that I doubt anything will surprise me).

One thing I'm quite pleased about is that my flight on the way out is on a 747 (operated by BA - I hope they don't go on strike), while on the way back I'm on a A380 super-jumbo. I haven't been on either before, so getting to experience the two largest passenger planes on the same trip should be interesting.

I've outlined my itinerary below.

Sat 21 Aug: Arrive in Heathrow, depart for Wellington
I've a few hours in Heathrow. Anyone fancy meeting for a pint there?

Mon 23 Aug: Arrive in Wellington

Fri 27 Aug-Mon 29 Aug
Au Contraire

Tue 31 Aug: Depart Wellington, arrive in Melbourne

Thu 2 Sep-Mon 6 Sep
Aussiecon 4

Tue 7 Sep-Wed 8 Sep
Melbourne

Thu 9 Sep-Sun 12 Sep
Adelaide

Sun 12 Seo-Tue 14 Sep
Melbourne

Wed 15 Sep-Sat 18 Sep
Perth

Sun 19 Sep
Depart Melbourne

Mon 20 Sep
Arrive Dublin

I'm not the first to make this comparison, but I see building websites based on the Drupal content management system as a lot like building models with LEGO bricks.

For anyone unfamiliar with Drupal, it's an open source content management system written in PHP. It has been growing massively in popularity over the last few years, and is fast becomming the fifth member of the LAMP alliance (the original four being Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP), which I've already heard referred to as LAMPD.

Why is Drupal like LEGO? Well, out of the box, Drupal doesn't do a whole lot. It lets you create web pages and post blog entries, and allows people to post comments, and has a user management system, and a few other bits, but nothing very exciting. However, everything in Drupal is modular. It comes as a collection of about thirty modules, but only a dozen or so of the ones most central to website building are enabled by default. You add or remove modules to build the website functionality you want, a bit like clicking LEGO bricks together to make a model.

But LEGO only really comes into its own when you combine two or more sets to make a larger module, and Drupal is similar. There are now thousands of add on modules that enable new functionality. The beauty of the modular design is that modules can modify almost any aspect of the site behaviour.

Modules can do simple things like adding search terms to a page's meta tags, or they can do complex things like providing a shopping cart system, but building a Drupal site becomes more about selecting the right modules and configuring them the best way for the site, and less about writing code. Of course you can always write code if you need to, but more about that later.

I'm not saying Drupal is the only modular CMS in town - I'm sure there are many others. Joomla is probably the next most popular. However, the ones I've experimented with have always felt a little like playing with clone building bricks - a few shiny pieces that grab your attention, but the resultant model just doesn't feel as nice as a proper LEGO one.

Of course there are down sides to Drupal. The biggest is the fact that it often takes more effort to achieve the same result in a generalised system like Drupal as it does with something dedicated for a single purpose. For example, if all you want is a blog site, you could set one up in a few minutes with something like WordPress. Or for a forum site you can get a full featured forum out of the box with PHPBB. Drupal can do all this, but it does take a little more configuration to get the same result. In particular, the forum that comes with Drupal is quite basic. There are a number of add ons to add featured that PHPBB has built in.

Following the LEGO analagy, I see WordPress and PHPBB as rather like PlayMobil. Let's say you want a police car model, so you go to the toy store and buy the police car set, and the police car model pops out of the box ready to play with. It's a lovely police car, but that's all it will ever be. With LEGO, you could buy aa police car set, but chances are you could build a very nice police car from the pieces you already have.

It's the same with Drupal, you instead of installing WordPress or PHPBB, you build the same functionality from Drupal modules. It does take a little more work in the beginning, but this often reaps rewards when you need some functionality that the PlayMobil style sites don't offer.

Even with thousands of modules on offer, it's likely that you'll eventually need to do something that isn't included in an off the shelf module. There are a number of options, and like anything, opinions differ. However you may notice that tweeking a few lines of the source code in a Drupal module or even the Drupal core will solve your problem. This is a dangerous path, and like the people who attack LEGO bricks with a sharp knife when a brick doesn't fit, you risk being shunned by the community.

The problem is that security patches and new versions of both Drupal core and modules come along on a regular basis. If you modify the source, then you'll have to remember to make the same changes when a new version comes along, and that can become a real pain.

And because Drupal is designed to be modular, that sort of sloppy quick fix approach is usually unnecessary. There are a number of places you can override default behaviour in neater ways that won't interfere with the upgrate path, and won't get you branded a filthy part modder.

Of course, having built a number of large sites with Drupal, I've found a couple of specific things I'd like to do, and I'm not sure where the LEGO anagaly fits. There are a few people who mould their own custom parts, such as Big Ben Bricks and Brick Arms, but there's a high entry barrier to custom brick creation. With Drupal, anyone with a bit of coding knowledge can create their own modules.

The only problem I'm finding is that sometimes I spend so long building Drupal sites that I don't get time to build with LEGO.

Posted via LjBeetle

just heard that sci-fi author James P Hogan died yesterday, aged 69. I wasn't a huge fan of his writing, but I enjoyed his contributions to panels at various science fiction conventions. He was great for taking a side of an argument he knew he couldn't win, and arguing it to the point where you really weren't sure what to believe any more. He was also great to chat to in the bar.

That's another fine person I'll miss at cons.

And I still owe him a pint.