Mayor Daley Speaking at the UIC Forum

Mayor Daley speaking at UIC's Daley Urban Forum named after his father Richard J.

The Forum featured a number of Mayors from Arab countries. Many of them have troubles that are common to countries in the 3rd World (lack of funding, infrastructure, etc.)

Particularly moving however was the account by the Mayor of Mosul, Iraq.

He talked about the challenges the Municipal government faces there. These include setting up a "prostheses factory" to deal with all the people, including children, who've had limbs blown off due to bombs. The Mayor reported with pride that a number of Healthcare Centers had been set up despite the fact that many of Iraq's original medical workers had fled the country.

Even here, success was not complete however, since one or two of these Centers had subsequently been bombed.

Despite this hell, the Mayor was optimistic. He would have shown us pictures only they stopped him from bringing them at Baghdad Airport.

Slides from Talk on Drupal at UIC

[Adobe Flash no longer supported]

Earthquake in Chicago

Well, the bed started to wobble and I thought either I should've gotten a better bed or maybe the floor in my new place wasn't as intact as I had assumed.

And no, I did not run down to the street screaming.

Leo Klein's Top 10 Most Favorite Drupal Modules

Someone on the Drupal4Lib list asked what Drupal Modules were "most useful" for creating a library website.

Here are some of the ones I couldn't live without:

1. Content Construction Kit (CCK) - Gives you the ability to model your own data types.
2. Views - Gives you the ability to display those data types any way you want.
3. Panels - Allows you to position your data anywhere you want on the page.
4. ImageCache - Allows you to make as many copies of an image as you want at any size depending on location or anything else you specify.
5. Organic groups - Create as many groups as you want (e.g. users, staff, etc.), restrict content by group.
6. Captcha - Keeps the spam couties away.
7. Community Tags - Allows users to create and assign their own tags to content.
8. Tagadelic - Creates a Tag Cloud.
9. Clone module - The name says it all.
10. BUEditor - Simple HTML tag editor. 

Moving: Packing Up

Yes, it's that time again: I'm moving to a new apartment. Here I'm doing some prep work.

More Ugly Money from the U.S. Treasury

I really think the US Mint (coins) and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (dollar bills) have lost the art of designing money. The fine detail and overall sense of composition that used to distinguish our currency is now no more.

Case in point is the new $5 dollar bill with that big ugly purple '5'. It looks like they just got out a huge rubber stamp and banged away.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing praises this as "Safer, Smarter, More Secure". Apparently 'visually impressive' so it conveys -- who knows? -- the idea of actually being worth something is no longer a requirement.

Meanwhile someone has created a website called "Get Helvetica Off Our Money."

Formatting Catastrophe: 'UIC Announce'

I mean, they're not even trying:
http://tigger.uic.edu/announce/ [web archive]