Four Drupal tools that solve 90 percent of your sitebuilding challenges

There are two ways to solve problems when building a website. One is to find a specific tool for each problem. The other is to find and thoroughly understand how to use just a few very powerful, very general tools.

When building a site using Drupal, you can go either route ("there's a module for that").

I prefer the second option, because it lets you invent instead of just employ solutions, so here is a list of four tools that can solve 90 percent of your problems.

A mixed review for a no-name Chinese Android tablet

For some time I've been convinced they're coming: tablets and netbooks in the $100 range.

Not quite. But I finally got tired of waiting and ordered a $150 Android tablet direct from Guangdong: the iMito iM7. At 7 inches, it's exactly half the size of an iPad and, coincidentally, almost exactly the size of a 15-year-old Apple Newton MessagePad (pictured here).

A tale of an unsuccessful suicide attempt

It was the summer of 1969. I was in Lawrence, Kansas, scratching chigger bytes, watching Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon, and attending journalism classes at the University of Kansas.

I was a high school kid attending a summer program along with a bunch of other high school kids. I was learning to write headlines and run a radio show. My roommate was studying fourth-dimensional math, something about turning a tennis ball inside out without harming it. Other kids were studying the trombone or, judging from observed behavior, card-playing.

Beware, journalists: Apple is not your friend

Decades ago I read a business book by Robert Ringer called "Winning Through Intimidation." Ringer is a political kook (he's gotten much worse over the years) and more than a bit paranoid, but he sounded a warning that should be the first rule of commerce for every consumer and every businessperson: Everybody else at the table is out to take your chips.

Postjudice about Fox "News"

A commenter accuses me of "political prejudice" against Fox "News." I think a better word is postjudice. My scorn is not free. Fox has earned it.

And repeatedly so. Here's a clip in which Jon Stewart shows yet another case of Fox spreading a lie, in this case by editing a video of President Obama to suggest he was saying something completely different from what he actually said.