I have written elsewhere on how and why I convered to Drupal. I still can't remember exactly how I stumbled on it though.A few days back, I noticed that Drupal user page says that I have been a member for two years already ...

As the author of the Drupal adsense module, I often get queries on how to display ads in unusual ways.

Normally ads can be done using one of two ways:

Block Ads

if the ads are in blocks, then you just add  PHP blocks with the call to the adsense_display() function call. Ads in blocks can be restricted to certain pages, for example, you do not want them to display in node/*/edit and node/add/* pages because the Javascript based WYSIWYG editor you use is messed up by Google's Adsense code.

One of Drupal's features is that it allows database prefixes, so people can host more than one site in a single database, or share the database with other application programs.

As a site grows, people find the need to separate those sites into their own databases, making the prefix unnecessary.

To do that, the following steps are needed:

Backup the existing database

In order to start this process, you have to perform a dump of the database. This is needed for two purposes, one is to have a backup of all your data, and the second is to be able to copy it to the other database, which may be on another host altogether.

Sometime back, I posted an article about a scam email that I got. Basically, it was from someone who offered to buy something from me. It turns out that they offer to send more money than the item is worth, provided you wire the difference back to them. The cashier cheque turns out to be forged, and you lose money in the deal. This time, it is from someone who wants to buy Land Rover Turbochargers in Uganda! I don't own nor sell Land Rover, nor any other 4x4 vehicle. However, my brother Omar has had successive Land Rovers and uses them for desert safaris in Egypt, for example, hare hunting or Rayyan Valley. As a matter of fact, he called me yesterday from Siwa where he was offroading with some friends.

I ran across two Canadian educational web site, closely related.CASCA Education has nice background articles on Astronomy, specially in Canadian history, as well as modern famous Canadian astronomers. SpaceNow focuses on Space and has articles ranging from the Space Elevator to Human Mars Exploration.

Oil has been the main source of fuel for machinery in the 20th century. We can argue that it is one of the pillars of contemporary human civilization, powering everything from cars, factories, airplanes, to war tanks, house heating and barbeques. In short, we take it for granted.

Years ago, I recall reading a Scientific American article, The End of Cheap Oil, in March 1998 by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere. In that article, the authors predicted a sharp rise in prices due to many factors, the most important of which is producing countries overestimating their reserves to get long term credit from banks. They predict that the shortage is not 50 years away, but rather as near as 10 years away (approx. 2010 or so).

Here is another Drupal PHP snippet that provides a nicely formatted list of nodes in a category by Year and month/day. This is suitable for company press releases, back issues of articles, ...etc.

Here is a simple Drupal PHP snippet that would provide a block with "recent updates".

A while back, Dr. Saadeddin Ibrahim, a political and social activist in Egypt, wrote a New York Times article on May 23, 2005, titled: Islam can vote, if we let it. In it, he raises several valid points about democracy in Egypt and other parts of the Arab region eventually bringing Islamic factions to power. In general, he says that this should not be feared, as it is not the disaster that some in the West think it is.

He draws parallels between how Islamist parties in Turkey have proven to be moderate, and the possibility of similar parties in Egypt turning out to be the same.

Geneive Abdo is a long time journalist and academic who has worked and studied Egypt's political and social changes for 20 years. She has a telling article in the Washington Post titled: Is the US ready for Egyptian democracy?In the article she rebukes the Bush administration for always casting failues as success, whether in the mess that is post invasion Iraq, or hailing the recent flawed re-election of Mubarak, while ignoring the real opposition there: the elephant in the room, the Islamic minded Muslim Brotherhood.