BRETT-REID.COM

I’ve been playing with Drupal recently and I’ve put together some links to help anyone interested in learning.

Drupal learning curve.

• Drupal Learning Curve
• The basics and terminology
• The beginners cookbook
• A free chapter on Theming from “Pro Drupal Development” book
• Drupal Documentation on Theming
• Drupal Forum - Theming
• Quite a few interesting screencasts (with weird voice)
• A couple of very good screencasts
• 45 Kickass Screencasts
• Drupal Dojo - quite a few screencasts

Zend Framework is still my preferred custom framework but Drupal has impressed me with the way it’s put together. It’s very scalable and powerful - you can put together a full community site in about 30 minutes without writing any PHP. That’s rapid development. The community is active and there are a ton of modules. I am sure I will learn new things about it as I go along but for now I recommend checking it out!

Active Ice has been a part of my life for the past 4.5 years. Mike, George and I (equal partners) started Active Ice with the intention of creating a web studio which focussed on quality - in both design and development. Over the years we created some very cool sites and some not so cool (client influenced) but in the whole it was a great experience. I learnt a lot about what to do and what not to do in business and the importance of having the same goal. George left Active Ice in May last year and in October last year I made the decision to leave too. My reasons were plentiful and I won’t bore you with all of them but working 4.5 years non-stop nights and through weekends takes it’s toll.

I had various interviews including ones at Prezence, Sythasite and Stonewall+ but the opportunity to help grow/nurture the development department at Stonewall+ caught my eye - specifically the line “where your role will be to pioneer STONEWALL’s open-source technology”.

We did something different/exciting for New Years this year and went up Table Mountain with some friends - Warren, Damien, Vaughn, Elise (my new project manager) and co. Warren had organized it on Facebook and we arrived with our packed cooler bags at the Lower Cable Car at 6ish - Vaughn and Damien having done queue duty until then. We got our tickets and made our way to the cable car, bit scary to see those older cars (red/white one, wooden one) that some of us had been up in as kids