Reading

Created
Tue, 03/11/2020 - 18:14

For a Backdrop CMS site I'm currently working on, I needed to create a node programatically (i.e. via some PHP code, as opposed to the UI). Generally when I need to do something in Backdrop, I'll search for similar solutions in Drupal 7 and then migrate them over (Backdrop still has some catching up to do in the 'online help and tutorials' department; hence this blog post).

So I went looking for how to create nodes programatically in Drupal 7, and there were plently of results. The answer is basically to create an object or array of values (your 'node'), then run it through node_save(). Unfortunately each answer had a different idea about exactly what values you should initially assign to your 'node'. Wanting a more bullet-proof solution, I kept looking and finally saw a suggestion someone made to check out the Devel Generate module. It creates nodes programatically, so it has the code to do just this. Since that module already exists in Backdrop, I had a look.

Devel Generate creates nodes by:

Created
Sat, 31/10/2020 - 18:30

All too revealing of how the system works ... how the talented former chief of the FT, capitalism’s house journal, was in thrall to ‘movers and shakers’

Even a brilliant newspaper editor can undersell a good story on the front page. At the start of Lionel Barber’s account of the world from his perspective as editor of the Financial Times between 2005 and 2020, there is an extensive list of dramatis personae, almost all of them male. (“One day,” he writes later, “I will deal with the alpha male problem, but not today.”) The players are broken down into their categories: politics, business and finance, royalty, journalism and diplomacy. The heart sinks – if journalism sits so easily in such a cast list, how can it do its job of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable?

Created
Fri, 02/10/2020 - 05:29

In the endless cycle of tinkering with this website I have once again changed things around. I had a go at modifying a bash script (BLASH) to parse my markdown files into the html files you’re now looking at. Very quickly the loops and structures became ungainly. No doubt …

Created
Tue, 29/09/2020 - 05:26
BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson today announced a plan to completely eliminate the provincial sales tax (currently 7%) for 1 year, and then cut it by 4 points (or 57%) after that. Conservatives are prone to make expensive tax cut promises during elections, a tendency which contradicts their other touch-stone of perpetually promising to get tough on deficits and debt. [...]
Created
Fri, 18/09/2020 - 15:18
Any Australian who has paid even cursory attention to this country’s poisonous politics over climate change these past two decades will be familiar with this long and sorry story, but to see it all laid out in sequence, in every depressing detail, is breath-taking. In ‘The Carbon Club’ (Allen& Unwin), […]
Created
Thu, 10/09/2020 - 23:18

Suggesting Britain could sign the withdrawal agreement with its fingers crossed makes perfect sense for a government of liars

Everybody knows Boris Johnson can lie for England. To his supporters, it was one of his best assets. They believed he could bamboozle the European Union into giving him the only Brexit deal that is really acceptable – one that gives Britain all the advantages of being in the EU without any of the botheration of being a member. The problem is that congenital mendacity isn’t just for foreigners. If you lie for England, you will also lie to England.

This week, these two streams of fabrication finally became one. In openly admitting that it signed the withdrawal agreement with the EU in bad faith, Johnson’s Vote Leave government also implicitly confessed that it lied wholesale to the electorate in December’s general election. The cross-contamination of domestic politics by the deceit that is Brexit’s DNA is now complete.

Created
Thu, 03/09/2020 - 18:38
US-born former TV journalist and news producer Gerald Stone in his biography of Sydney advertising man John Singleton describes Singleton’s seemingly unlikely friendship with the Reverend Bill Crews: ‘John hates to admit it but in a funny way, he is quite religious,’ Crews smiles. ‘He reminds me a lot of King David. We’re told David […]
Created
Mon, 31/08/2020 - 15:51
The long lost classic Fury from the Deep is set to return with a three disc Blu-ray release containing all new animation set to the original audio track. The set will contain the surviving clips from the original 1968 production as well as full colour and black and white versions of the animated story. Three of the original cast members, Frazer Hines, June Murphy and Brian Cullingford, revisit the filming locations with production assistant Michael Briant, assistant floor manager Margot Hayhoe and helicopter pilot Mike Smith in a special feature about the making of the show. There are also archive… Continue reading
Created
Mon, 31/08/2020 - 15:49
While the short-lived tenure of Christopher Eccleston’s much loved Ninth Doctor has been revisited in comics, audios and even on the small screen through cameos in The Name of the Doctor and The Day of the Doctor, the man himself has thus far resisted the invitation to return to the role. Until now! “After 15 years it will be exciting to revisit the Ninth Doctor’s world, bringing back to life a character I love playing,” Eccleston commented as the news broke that Big Finish would be releasing twelve full-cast audio adventures across four audio box-sets. The first box-set is due to be… Continue reading