What We Learned in September

When You're Always Learning...

... you can become the fast-moving, shiny super-species of yourself. You will also become more interesting to talk with at parties. At Kalamuna we like to learn, and since it’s officially “Back to School” month around the U.S., I figured I’d query our brood to see what’s on everyone’s minds this month. Read on to find out what we learned in the past 30 days.

John Nguyen, Project Manager

Sometimes, you have to lose in order to win.

Andrew Ward, Co-founder

I learned that our solar system is moving at over half a million miles an hour around the galactic center.

Thiago de Mello Bueno, Designer

In design land, I was reminded that constraints are our friends, and when you don’t have them, establish them.
 

Derek DeRaps, Senior Architect

I learned about Flattened CNAME DNS records, aka ALIAS or ANAME records. They make it easier for us to use root/apex (i.e., non-www) domains for our sites, although they still sorta break the internet.

Andrew Mallis, Co-founder

I learned that this year marks the end of my extended childhood.

Emanuel Geucean, Drupal Architect

Don’t go shopping on an empty stomach.

Josh Walker, Front-end Developer

I learned that sometimes Grunt is hard. And today I learned that yesterday I was wrong about what I learned.

Katy Pool, Jr. Developer

Yesterday I learned you should never let anyone put custom php fields in views because you never know what weird problems it will cause. Also, it's just bad practice.

Ken Lo, Office Manager

I learned from a podcast that the drinking water at the white house probably killed 2-3 Presidents because it used to come from an area near raw sewage. I also learned that travel insurance does not automatically come with your AmEx card.

Rob Loach, Sr. Developer

I learned that the new RetroArch webplayer brings Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and more, to the browser, all through the power of Emscripten and asm.js JavaScript.

John Ouellet, Sr. Developer + Support Manager

It is better to make time and help someone else then to focus on my own stuff. It can come back to help me later on.

AmyJune Hineline, Developer Intern

While writing a module, you can change the title of a web form using drupal_set_title. I am telling you that because web form is its own beast and setting the title for them is different from, let's say, setting the title on a node page.

Justin Rhodes, Project Manager

I learned that photos referenced by Drupal on a server need to change paths if the pictures migrate to a new servers.

Crispin Bailey, UX Lead

I learned (again) that it’s not worth rushing to do something because it rarely yields good results, and you can end up hurting yourself. Case in point, I was rushing to close a window the other day because my neighbour’s lawnmower noise was driving me nuts, and I tripped on the couch leg and stubbed my toe really badly. The same theory applies to designing and building websites.

Shannon O'Malley, Sr. Communications Strategist

The Law of Conservation of Mass, "matter is neither created nor destroyed," applies to everything, and not just "matter."