Welcome to my site. Here you will find some info about me, the things I do and a listing of upcoming (and past) presentations and lectures. While I initially expected most of my posts to be about Open Source/Free Software (hence the name), these days it's mostly rants and ramblings about running.

Slash code to drupal conversion, finally done!

Posted February 4th, 2008 by eric

[[updated feb 17 to include info on redirecting old slashcode urls to the new drupal urls]]

Started as part of a workshop I did at the 3rd NYC Drupal Camp on converting to/from drupal, I have finally finished converting the Autonomedia/Interactivist Info Exchange site from slash to drupal. It will relaunch soon at http://info.interactivist.net

While it might have been somewhat more "correct" for me to have written a php script that bootstrapped drupal and then just grab the data and pass it through drupal's user and node api's, I was stubbornly determined to convert the site by only writing sql queries between the databases.

Part of my reasoning for doing this sql only was that converting thousands of nodes and users via the drupal api can take forever, where direct database manipulation is fast.

While I will write this up better later and post it to drupal.org, I wanted to get it up before I got distracted onto other tasks.

so, without further delay: here are the step by step notes I took as I went through the process.
[much thanks to Blake Carver of LIS News http://www.lisnews.org/ for the motivation to finish and the queries that populate the node and node revisions tables]

A small rant about Google Analytics and Privacy Statements

Posted February 1st, 2008 by eric

This week I once again had the debate with a site's legal team about how using google analytics violates the privacy of a site's users.

This is not a huge issue for many sites, but if your site has a privacy statement, you are legally bound to adhere to it -- and many privacy statements are explicitly violated by the use of google analytics.

another example of godaddy's less than ethical actions

Posted November 30th, 2007 by eric

I got an email this morning from a staff member of GoDaddy. He used the contact form of the Groups.drupal.org website to send me a question.

Why is that a problem? well...

a: the question he asked me did not seem appropriate use of the contact feature of the drupal groups site, it should have been posted on the primary drupal site as a public post. The contact feature of groups.drupal is not intended for spamlike generic email.

A new name?

Posted October 24th, 2007 by eric

I'm noticing that many blogs have names that are not their url and at the same time I've grown tired of this site being called eric.openflows. I want a cool blogarific name for this site. Although this site is not really (or not only) a blog. hmmmm

I've got few ideas at this point.

Should I make an overt comment on nyc politics, such as the new rules that make gatherings of 51 people or bicycles illegal. 51 bicycles? the 51st cyclist?

maybe something more free software oriented?

or maybe just "Learning on the Job"?

post some ideas if you have them, please. thanks. bye.

Parade Without a Permit!

Posted September 28th, 2007 by eric

http://nyprotest.flactivist.org/?p=9635
***9/29, SAT: PARADE WITHOUT A PERMIT***

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH @ 7PM
WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK @ THE FOUNTAIN

In 2006, multiple courts ruled the City’s assembly rules unconstitutional, and City Council was charged with fixing them. Instead of conducting public hearings and placing the matter into the hands of City Council, Speaker Quinn abdicated her responsibilities and allowed the NYPD to write these rules behind closed doors.

In February 2007, she rubberstamped the new rules into effect. Suddenly, it became illegal for 50 or more people to gather and process through New York City -- unless they request and are given prior permission from the police.

I've been a political activist since I was young, so I spent a dozen or more years being told that someday I would "grow up" and leave these silly politics behind and also being reminded that no matter how bad it was here we were more free than those living under Communism.

One of the things I was told over and over again that made us free was our right to protest. The right to public assembly was always referred to when people wanted to remind me why I should shut up and be happy I was not living under a more repressive State.

Well folks, that right no longer exists for us in New York City. The police, with an after-the-fact rubber-stamp by our elected officials, have decided to "re-interpret" the law. In the opinion of the NYPD the Constitution does not provide for legal assembly and protest if the State does not approve your protest (which to me seems counter to the very concept of protest -- protests don't get permits, concerts get permits).

Any public gathering of 50 people or more is now a crime here in NYC! This saturday people are getting together to raise their voices about it.