Kristjan Jansen Interaction designer and social activist. Contact: kika at trip.ee

It's time to get back to Brazilian music vaults, straight from São Paulo Cidade Universitária. This time explore some rare fusion grooves, jazz, soul and funk. We do not landlock ourselves to Brazil only, we also check out what brazilians recorded while living in outside home: France and Italy. And vice versa, let's hear some heavily Brazil-influenced tunes as far as Japan and Peru.

Though the show is in Estonian, but I try to talk as little as possible so you can enjoy the music ;)

Kristjan Janseni Brasiilia muusikasaade 8 (46 MB MP3)

Here's the tracklist:

1. Antonio Adolfo “Caminhada” – Viralata, 1979
2. Elis Regina “Mundo Deserto” – Ela, 1971
3. Cassiano “O Vale” – Apresentamos Nosso Cassiano,1973
4. Dom Salvador E Abolição “Evo” – Som, Sangue E Raça, 1971
5. Rolando & Luiz Antonio “Nacional Kid (Ou Brasileiro)” – Meu Coração É Um Pandeiro Ou…, 1976
6. Ezy & Isaac “Take off!” – Soul Rock, 1974
7. Matsuoka & Wesing “Pão de Açúcar” – Fiesta Fiesta, 1979
8. Bossa 70 “Birimbao” – Bossa 70, 1970
9. Quarteto Novo “Misturada” – Quarteto Novo, 1970
10. Grupo Pentagrama “Pingo De Cor” – Grupo Pentagrama, 1976
11. João Donato “A Rã” – A Bad Donato, 1970
12. Marcos Valle & Azymuth “Jingle Cruzeiro” – Brazil By Music: Fly Cruzeiro, 1972
13. Marcos Valle “O Cafonia” – Garra, 1970
14. João Donato “Lunar Tune” – A Bad Donato, 1970
15. Jardes “Grilos da Vida” – ?, ?

And here's the highly recommended Brazilian music mixtape Discos Originais by San Antonio I mention in the show.

I am breathless: considering Estonian astonishingly slow Drupal pickup rate, a first big-name site has launched: Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Was it the Drupalgate affair making diplomats finally move faster?

Edit: the conversion was made in-house, with Canadian company Liefa Communications doing design as Photoshop comps.

The title may suggest a bit medieval setting, but do not get wrong about it: in true e-Estonia fashion, every decent wooden shack around Estonia has a WiFi access and a projector to run meetings.

In one rainy Friday, 12 July, first ever Estonian Drupal convention gathered in a forest hideout near capital Tallinn. In addition in lengthy debates on Drupal latest developments and sharing best practices (Artisteer was mentioned, the usual Views and CCK gospel shared), we also talked about infrastructure of Drupal Estonia: g.d.o. group vs regional domain drupal.org (usual debate in every country's community?), releasing a proper Estonian translation (we are almost there) and founding a nonprofit organization to support Drupal Estonia activities. There was even a talk about EU funds to support regional translations of Drupal.

Meet the mighty pioneers of Drupal in Estonia – the detailed links with names and links can be found here.

When I was asked to talk about user experience in DrupalCamp Finland in Helsinki University, I first came up with the long-winded presentation title ever: “Drupal UI challenges: Creating better user experience for Drupal 7 and beyond” – to cover my back obviously – since I did not had much of an idea what to talk about.

I tried to narrow it down to two things: introducing D7UX to Finnish Drupal community and talking about my recent pet peeve: re-usable interaction patterns and user interface components.

You can download the presentation here (2 MB)

Some credits: The font is free Rabiohead. Dude and angel pictures are from Flickr and picture of Chucky is well…from the hell of course!

Recently I was called to help a very special initiative in Estonia: a grassroot non-commerical project My Estonia, a 1-day country-wide brainstorming session designed to provide all citizens to gather around issues that matter to them – from local neighborhood to larger-scale concerns.

I volunteered to help them in data visualization: to take geodata about “My Estonia” brainstorming locations (all 500 of them), split them by county and deliver freely printable maps to usein event headquarters and also distribute them in local newspapers. Since the whole thing had to be without restrictive license, I couldn't use usual “Google Map + KML on top of it” route. So, what to do then? I only had half day to come up with solution.

I turned to Mapping Kit, Drupal's plug-in suite what I noticed in DrupalCon DC presentation – and I was blown away. Although a bit complex at start (especially because of cryptic terminology of geoinformation systems) I was quickly up and running, creating maps, embedding marker layers and querying mapping servers. All I needed was there, and more.

I addition to great backend I was also blessed by very helpful individuals: Andres Kütt and his team to provide a KML with source data (view in Google Maps) and allowing to split it up by county using URL parameters.

Next step was to embed the data to the open source map: OpenStreetMap source map and OpenLayers map rendering – both supported out of the box by Mapping Kit – were both natural fit. I attached each county to separate marker layer so the client could hand-pick the any data combination he needs.

There was still more to tweak: the markers. KML source had a minimal markup and no styling whatsoever. I tried several Google's default markers but they tend all to be too complex and unsuitable for print. I finally decided to create my own simple marker (available here: marker_ball_white_32×32.png).

Now, my map was looking something like this (county layers were accessible under “+” sign):

But something was still missing: the county borders to give a clearer overview what locations belong to what region. I checked out Estonian Land Board, as they are running some geoweb public services. I tried to query their Web Map Server for county borders using Drupal's Mapping Kit and use it as WMS layer in my map. Querying part worked like a charm, but unfortunately the border data was not in the presentable format: filled polygons instead of lines, data scattered across several layers etc.

At that time I was almost running out of time so I gave a call to Land Board where Raivo Alla provided me a helful tips to fix the problem and rendered me a decent KML file with the county borders. The 5MB KML file was unfortunately too big for Google Maps and OpenLayers to crunch (Google Earth made it) so I had to cancel the effort to add county borders to my map. But nevertheless big thanks to Land Board (I am working with them to make the border file simpler and publicly available in their website).

The bottom line is this: if something makes you from zero to “homegrown geoweb expert” in half a day, it must be one hell of a tool. Also, I am glad I live in Estonia where organization structures are not too hierarchic, it's easy to avoid bureaucracy and get the public data you need fast. Thanks to all!

Second video take on content type editing is embedded below: this time focusing more on workflow-oriented fields such as status and author.

Slides can be found in Flickr.

These are exiting days for Drupal. Behind D7UX, a cryptic name meaning “Drupal 7 User Experience” hide bunch of talented professionals who really want to take the notoriously complex piece of code to a next level. Their headquarters: http://d7ux.org

So, it's time to join in. Here's my first contribution, a 10-min video embedded below what tries to explain how content type editing should work in new UI framework.

The slides I am using in the presentation can be checked out in Flickr.

Some background reading: my Drupal UI challenges article, especially “Views + Panels + CCK UI” section and also wireframe by Lullabot what explains the complexities around mapping content editing and viewing UIs.

Phew, despite the lack of proper rehearsals and last-minute new members in the band, Mosaiik's first live turned out a nice, cosy and groovy event.

In addition to the usual line-up we managed to get to the stage the guitarist extraordinaire Tõnis Leemets, from Treee and WGT.

In true Mosaiik style we played almost exclusively Eastern block retro instruments: Orpheus bass, Jolana guitar and Faemi-1M analogue synth. For Rhodes and Hammond sound we used Nord Electro, 12-string, and drums were more of a modern fare. And berimbau straight outta Brazil!

We played 4 songs, first one from the demo CD, “Vanilla Cafe” and then on three new pieces. There was a hope for proper live recording, but all we got was super lo-fi photocamera storage: poor microphones of the IS-S3 just were'nt able to cope with volume levels and resulted with pretty bad digital clipping.

But still, here's the snippet from our last song with working title “Batido de Abacaxi” aka “Pineapple Coctail”.

There are more clips though over here but be warned about the sound quality.

Finally, thanks for everybody: Our friends, rampade.org team, the headliner band ÖÄK and of course the super-warm audience!

A day before our first gig, Mosaiik got together in a almost-abondoned Soviet schoolhouse and tried to come up with the repertoire. Here we play our “radio single” Vanilla Cafe. (Hidden video bonus: Can you spot the flying drumstick?)

The lineup: on drums Madis Zilmer from Phlox, Erki Jansen on bass, Paavo Eensalu on keyboards, Mari-Liis Girassol on berimbau and Kristjan Jansen on 12-string guitar.

The golden silence of Mosaiik is over: first time ever we try to get to the stage and play live. Mosaiik is asked by rampade.org guys to play at their club, Juuksur (map here) in October 24, 2008. Entrance fee is mere 75 EEK, the DJs start at 20:00, we gonna be playing around 21:00, the main headliner, the living legend of Estonian underground, ÖÄK, gets on stage around 22:00. Expect lot of mad action from Soviet analog synth monsters!