In case you were wondering what work has been keeping me busy lately, allow me to proudly point you to...

The new and delightful website of the Centre for Social Innovation!

This site is a proud production of Communicopia, my friends and colleagues in Vancouver, BC. Built with Drupal and turned around on an impressive timeline, this site kept me very busy for a while (I was the project manager), but I'm delighted with the final product.

This particular project was also very close to my heart, as I have been working out of the Centre (or CSI as we affectionately call it) for six months – both working at a desk on my various projects, and teaching yoga classes to a group of enthusiastic tenants/students. I cannot say about about the people, the space, and the atmosphere. It is not even slightly an exaggeration to say that this place, in large part, *made* my Toronto experience. I am forever grateful to have landed in such a warm, fun, beautiful community and space. Check out the members to get a sense of who's in there!

I have bunches of appreciation to offer to both the amazing team at Communicopia, and the dedicated staff at CSI. Hats off to your professionalism, your integrity, and your ability to turn around a terrific product while still having a good time. Cheers to that!

Last night I found myself out for dinner with three lovable Drupal geeks (and the lovely wife of a Drupal geek). The food was decent, the chatter was fun, and our waitress was charming and funny.

After we had paid the bill, though, it became apparent that the Drupal conversation was far from over. And as much as I can handle a little geekery, I had a problem that was making me very uncomfortable. I had a stalled knitting project in my bag.

See, I'm making these mittens where you do the thumb last. So when you get to where the thumb will eventually go, you mark those stitches with a little length of "waste yarn". Then you continue knitting merrily, finish the body of the mitten, and then go back and remove the waste yarn to make your thumb.

So there I was, smack at the part where I needed waste yarn to continue, and I had nothing. I knew that I would be able to sit there happily for as long as they wanted to geek... but only if I was working on my mittens. Without that little bit of waste yarn though, I was going to have to leave. Soon. I was getting cranky and itchy, I swear to god.

Thankfully, the charming waitress came to my rescue with a ball of string and a pair of scissors. I think she thought I was a bit weird (well, it's true) but I managed to mark my thumb stitches, and then was free to knit away. The Drupal chatter continued around me for almost another hour, and I sat there, blissfully allowing it to wash over me, snickering to myself at times, and grateful to have such a wonderfully engaging and portable hobby.

"You should take up knitting," I said across the table to the lovely Drupal wife. "Yeah, maybe I should," she conceded. She must really love that man. ;)

I wonder if it's time for a new look for this site?

I also wonder whether it's time to upgrade to 4.7... or even 5.0 (gasp!)?

I wonder whether that would be a fun holiday project... hacking around on a different template and seeing what I could come up with? It's been a while since I've engaged in any such legitimate geekiness. Hmmm...

On the other hand, if I get sucked into that, it will take away a significant amount of time from my mobius wrap knitting. And that would be a shame, because check out the gorgeous kit that walkah got me for Christmas! Oh, the choices.

A-har mateys!

If you're reading this on September 19th (which, incidentally, is my half-birthday), you might notice that my whole website has been auto-magically translated into pirate talk.

How, you might wonder? And why?

I actually have a great story about last year's Talk Like a Pirate Day, when I was preparing for Web of Change (which starts on Wednesday!) and needed biographies from everyone, and hadn't had one from Kris yet. And so went to Bryght.com looking for it... and found all the bios in pirate-speak... and thought it was just Bryght trying to be all hip and cool and write their bios like they were too cool for school. I didn't actually figure out what had happened until months later... and by then I knew that yes, the Bryght Boys really are that kind of cool, but no, for 364 days a year their bios are in normal English. Ha.

So anyway. Have a spin through the archives! Things are sure to be entertaining. :)

green poi lotus
Originally uploaded by playpoi.

My friend Nick is basically the best poi artist on the planet – in my humble estimation at least. (What is poi, you ask? Look no further.)

He's also a fledgling Drupal God, as evidenced by his recently launched site - http://www.playpoi.com.

I'm blogging about it because I'm super-proud of him. He seriously built this site from the ground up, spending hours learning Drupal, and figuring out for himself how to build the community site he envisioned.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to spin fire around (or LED lights, which, as evidenced by this photo, can be pretty darn beautiful), Nick is your man, whether via his new DVD, or (even better) in person.

And last but not least, don't forget to check out his photo galleries on Flickr. You can get there by clicking on that beautiful photo to the side. That'll inspire ya...

An old friend emailed me today to tell me that she enjoys reading my blog, but doesn't understand most of it. It made me smile, and got me thinking a bit. Thanks for the feedback, Deb. :)

It's true that a lot of my recent posts have been fairly geekery-focused. I don't want to discourage non-geek readers, but I guess the truth of the matter is that I spend a lot of time working with and thinking about web-related stuff lately, and that's what I'm inclined to post about. It probably also means that my parents aren't reading this regularly. (Though if I'm wrong, leave a comment, eh Mum/Dad?)

I'm soaking up a lot of new information rather quickly these days. Richard just said to me, in response to my comment that I feel like my on-ramp into geekdom has been fast and steep, that "hanging out at the Bryght office is like drinking from the firehose." True. It also leads to writing posts that normal people can't make any sense of. But I have to say that I've been enjoying learning to speak geek... I just need to remember to bring it on back to the real world!

So I installed the Scheduler Module on my Drupal blogs, but I've been having some technical difficulties so far. Thanks to the helpful Drupal community, however, I think I've got my solution. Here's hoping. :)

Testing testing one two three...