Dani Nordin's blog

On Tuesday, December 18, 2012, I lost my father, Eric John Nordin, to a two-year-long battle with lung cancer. Dad spent his life trying to turn his passion into a career. Sometimes, he was successful (for example, turning a passion for motorcycles into a 15-year career as a bike mechanic); other times, not so much (like his side business selling public domain software at the local flea market).

It occurred to me while caring for our delightful newborn, Charlotte, that I haven't actually announced here that she is, well, here. Charlotte Isabel was born on August 27th at 7:48pm, and turned two months old on Saturday. She is beautiful, healthy, and extremely vocal about what she does and doesn't like—much like her mama. Her father and I are exhausted, but couldn't be happier.

I'm working on a few more work-related posts, but many of those may have to wait until I have a bit more energy for thinky thoughts.

As those who know me (or follow me on various social networks may have heard already), I’m expecting my first child in August. Any day now, in fact. Which means that, for the first time in my life, I’ve had to deal with the idea of going on maternity leave, and being away from my work for the next few months. 

At the most recent Design for Drupal Camp, I ran into someone who had attended a previous session I'd given at 2010's Camp about letting user experience guide Drupal workflow. In that session, I had discussed ways of quickly uncovering your target audience, and I mentioned the idea of starting with the people you don't want to attract, and building out your personas towards the people you do want to attract. My new friend was intrigued by the idea, and asked me to speak to the subject in a blog post. 

The last couple of days as I get ready for my website relaunch and prepare the final production text for Drupal for Designers (which is currently getting ready for publication!), I've found myself in an interesting set of conversations over one of my recommendations in Drupal Development Tricks for Designers: mainly, that if you have to adjust settings.php in order to increase the memory limit for Drupal (a not uncommon occurrence), you must remember to set the permissions for that file back to 444 once you're done.

Rifling through my research files, I came across this great interview with Jason Pamental on working with web type in Drupal 7. Hope you enjoy!

Dani: Talk to me about web type. How do you find that web type plays into this whole Design for Drupal thing?

It's me! On the Drupaleasy Podcast! Talking smack about Drupal for Designers, the Swanky Denver Hyatt, UX, and working with startups. Listen to it now.

Several weeks ago, the Harvard School of Public Health came out with a study that suggested the more red meat you eat, the more likely you are to die younger. The anti-CAFO lobby has, OF COURSE, jumped on this, claiming that there’s no control for CAFO vs. Grass-Fed meat, therefore the study must be bull.

Recently, I was interviewed by Grace Dobush, editor at HOW Interactive, about my love for Coda and excitement for Coda 2. For those who aren't aware of Coda (and are interested in web design tools), Coda is hands-down the best coding software I've ever used, created by the good folks at Panic.