Last December, before a soul crushing winter had fully descended on Boston, Sitecore sponsored a posh Meetup at Stoddards pub. While mixing it up, I ended up talking to Rick Cabral about making some t-shirts for the user group. While at the Sitecore Symposium the previous fall, I noticed a few other groups had made their own shirts and I thought it was really cool and as it turns out, I may know a guy who makes t-shirts. So knowing I could supply the backend, I asked Rick what kind of design he thought would be good. I didn't really expect it but his eyes widened and he started talking about how he always envisioned this soviet-era propaganda with the slogan "Join the Sitecore". I almost died laughing because I could totally see it. I didn't need any other explanation and let's be honest, with the goatee, he looks kinda like Vladimir Lenin and would perfectly fit the caricature. And just so you know, as Rick continues to insist, he didn't come up with the idea of immortalizing himself, I did.
Shortly after the meetup I contacted my old, old friend Jay at Antidesigns to produce the design. Working with his team, we went back and forth for few rounds, working from some cruddy source images I pulled off the intarwebs but the image wasn't good enough. It was just too grainy and he wasn't projecting the right message. Here's a few of the early designs:
I've just released the first episode of Catching Exceptions featuring Nick Wesselman. Enjoy!
It's been a while since I've updated the Caching Manager, which is a module on the Sitecore Marketplace, so during a recent upgrade it was about that time. I'm using the design from Sitecore 8. It's backwards compatible through Sitecore 6 (SIM makes this possible) so there's no excuse for not getting it. Unless, you're on 5? Was caching on 5? I honestly don't remember or probably never knew.
When you enter a battlefield, be it land, mind or disk, be aware (wink):
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
-Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
That's not to say you should have no plan though. Quite the contrary:
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."
-Sun Tzu
I always knew Sitecore provided Dictionary support for a long time but I also knew there were, shall we say, scalability problems. Like, let's say, general user access (it was located under the system node) and the inability to create individual dictionaries for individual sites. Because of that, I, and apparently others, have been inanely custom rolling dictionaries. That is, until I came upon Scott Mulligan's article highlighting the latest changes in Sitecore 6.6 (yesss, it's been a while, I know [sighs, rolls eyes]) that convinced me to finally stop reinventing the wheel and adopt the Sitecore provided solution.
There are resources out there to help get started like John Wests' seemingly canonical post. There's also a super handy article by "sitecorecode" (I couldn't find the author's actual name but I guess you know who you are). And my long time friend M3, as he's known colloquially, breaks it down like a legend.
Not a very long time ago,
in a repository not particularly far away....
It is a period of automation and obsolescence.
Sitecore developers committing
code, day and night, globally.
Spiraling like the arms of a galaxy
sharing tasks, techniques and trade-craft.
During the past few months
I've been developing my
ultimate tool, the TestStar
A sitecore module with enough
power to test an entire platform.
In pursuit of stability whose breadth
and depth I've not yet known.
To restore freedom for productivity to all.
Why: adverb; for what reason or purpose.
It may come as a surprise to some of you that I'm not an Automata. Surprise! I'm a human being. Unlike a robot or even a cyborg, I can't instantaneously learn Kung-Fu by downloading it. It takes time to accumulate knowledge and experience. I have to read, try and sometimes fail before I learn about something but eventually with persistence, I get there.
I'm quite literally, so furiously, thinking of ways to explain the funky stuff inside my brain. I couldn't explain! You might understand though. In fact, I'd wager you will.
I'm now watching mountains drift beneath the wing of my plane (sunglasses on). I'm leaving Las Vegas richer not poorer. You could say, I've just had quite an amazing Sitecore Experience (wink).
I've more recently released a video recap of the presentation I gave to the New England Sitecore User Group.
You've unlocked a door with a key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of clouds. A dimension of sites. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into, the Sitecore zone. (shocking music)