Archive for the 'cc' Category

02-04-2009

Drupal 6 Theming Cheat Sheet

Thumbnail of Drupal 6 Theming Cheat Sheet

Now that Drupal 6 has been out for almost a year, I finally got around to updating my Drupal Theme Developer’s Cheat Sheet accordingly. Since it borrows from the Drupal Handbooks and API documentation, it’s available under the same Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

Please contact me if you’re interested in translating the cheat sheet into another language and would like a copy of the Microsoft Word document used to create it. Also, let me know if you have any corrections or additions that you would like to see included in future revisions.

Posted by Matt in Drupal, cc, learning, tech | 9 Comments »

01-12-2007

Optaros Report Catalogs Open Source Software Options

I just ran across a report on open source software via the Creative Commons blog. The report, prepared by a company called Optaros, includes a fairly comprehensive catalog and evaluation of over 250 open source projects. For anyone needing to evaluate or compare open source software options, the report is a great starting point.

There are many guides and catalogs for open source business software online and doubtless there are things to quibble with about Optaros’ take, but having a fairly comprehensive catalog in a nice looking 45 page PDF may come in handy at IT departments worldwide. Handier still, the CC license allows customization so long as credit is given to Optaros.

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Posted by Matt in business, cc, tech | No Comments »

07-11-2006

Creative Commons Music on CCHits

CCHits is a digg-like site where users can find and rate Creative Commons music from a variety of artists and genres. The hits section has some especially good songs. Some of my favorites include:

Posted by Matt in cc, music | No Comments »

06-11-2006

Custom Sketches for Only $1

I can’t remember where I first stumbled across Sketch-It, but I’m very glad I did. For just $1 you can have a custom sketch created by one of several artists. You can submit an idea, such as “ugly tie” or “baby shower.” Or you can submit a photo you’d like to see rendered as a sketch. The resulting sketches are released under a Creative Commons license.

I recently submitted a photo of my dog and I’m very impressed by the results, especially for just $1. In looking over some of the other submissions, the results can vary quite a bit, but if you’re disappointed with a sketch, you can simply pay another dollar and resubmit your request. Or you can contact individual artists who contribute to the site to find out about custom work.

Daisy photo

Daisy sketch from Sketch-It

Posted by Matt in cc, creativity, photography | No Comments »

03-31-2006

DIY Creativity Poster


Click for a larger version.

Michael Michalko has written some great books on creativity. His book Thinkertoys contains a chapter on a technique called Brutethink, where random words are used to generate ideas by forcing you to associate the words with the problem at hand. Thinkertoys includes a three page list of words (pp. 169-171) intended to be used in generating ideas.

When I read the book a while back, I thought the word list might be handy to have to refer to, so I OCRed it and converted it to text. It came to mind when I ran across tagged photos on Flickr. It was fun to plug in the various words to explore interesting photography.

After seeing Mike Matas’ post about creating a Life Poster, I decided to create a poster to use for a visual spin on “Brutethink” problem solving. Since Flickr has a great stock of photos licensed under the Creative Commons, there was a lot of source material to pull from.

I searched Flickr for photos tagged with some of the terms from Michalko’s Thinkertoys list and compiled them into a single poster-sized image. Not all the photos will necessarily evoke the words that got me to them, but I think the end product will still prove useful for generating ideas. There are also a couple of words duplicated, in cases where I couldn’t decide between photos I liked.

I used my favorite freeware image viewer, Irfanview, to crop the photos and create the contact sheet to make into a poster. The process was very similar to the one using XnView.

The beauty of Creative Commons is that I can make the poster available for download from Flickr under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To access the full sized version, click on the “All Sizes” button towards the top of the page. Many thanks to all the photographers who made their work available via Creative Commons.

After some price comparison searching, I decided to go with P-e-photo to print the resulting poster. With shipping, a 30″x40″ poster comes to a little under $30. I’ll update this post to include a photo of the final product, once the poster arrives in the mail.

If $30 is too much for you, an 18″x24″ print would be significantly cheaper and wouldn’t require cropping. Also, the resulting montage makes for an interesting—though busy—desktop background.

Keep in mind, the same idea can be applied using a variety of random stimuli. Some other sources to seed ideas include:

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Posted by Matt in cc, creativity, general, photography | 2 Comments »

06-11-2005

New and Improved Google Cheat Sheet

Not too long ago, I suggested to Nancy, over at the Google Guide, that her page on Using Search Operators would make for an even better cheat sheet than Google’s own. Since her site is under a Creative Commons license, I even started making one myself, but I never got around to finishing it.

Nancy ran with the idea and the result is the Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet). I now have it printed and posted on my bulletin board.

Anyone interested in learning how to better use Google should check out the Google Guide. It’s an excellent resource for both novice and advanced users.

Posted by Matt in cc, creativity, tech | No Comments »