The newest development version of Drupal's Backup and Migrate module enables automatically scheduled database backups to be emailed off-site. However, due to a bug, it takes a little work to actually make this happen. The problem is, the module doesn't properly store your preferred email address. Here's how we work it...

EDIT: JULY 16, 2009: The developers fixed this issue; there is no need for this hack now!

Drupal updates are tedious--downloading individual files, uploading, manually running the update.php script... If you're administering more than one Drupal installation, it becomes tiring quickly. I've found two ways of solving these problems: the Drush utility and using Acquia's Drupal distribution.

I'm compiling some of my favorite ceramics resources. Here are two books from Amazon that are full of terrific pottery info. "Alternative kilns..." is a great look at backyard firing techniques that yield awesome results at relatively low temperatures, while "Ceramics: A potter's handbook" provides an excellent overview of all aspects of ceramic art.

I spoke with the wonderful ladies of Topeka's Association for Women in Communications about Twitter and Facebook in the job hunt, and some favorite power-tools for Twitter junkies. As promised, here are links to some of the best tools I've found for tracking trends and finding folks to follow.

Trends

www.hashtags.org - Track hashtags on Twitter

www.twitscoop.com - View a tag cloud of Twitter topics, complete with timeline graphs.

www.microplaza.com - See top stories on Twitter, filtered by your followers

www.google.com/trends - See trends for search queries

American cyclist Tyler Hamilton retired from the sport today after testing positive for banned substances... again. Hamilton says he took steroids to alleviate his symptoms of clinical depression. I remember when Hamilton got busted the first time for blood doping--essentially transfusing someone else's blood to boost his red blood cells, and thus, his oxygen carrying ability. We had a poster of Hamilton up in our garage, crossing the finish line alone, beat to hell, but victorious, I think from the Giro or a day race, like Dauphine or Liege-Bastogne-Liege... I'm not sure. Anyway, hearts broken, we took the poster down.