Module development and code questions

The date form element defaults to today. I want the user to have to enter a date (Date Of Birth). The easiest way (which I don't like) is to check if the date is today or yesterday and set an error if it is.

I would prefer if the drop downs were blank by default and the user would need to select a date. Any suggestions on a Drupal way to do this?

FYI: I am using the profile module and I have added a date field to the registration page in the admin interface. I indicated that the field is required, but that doesn't really do anything in the case of the date.

All,

I've been trying to come up with a way to explain this in a coherent manner...have found the way so here it is:

Simple Facts:

1) I created a new module (tsearch) that replaces the drupal search module for performance reasons (replaced with PostgreSQL TSearch2).

2) I have another module that handles images that are uploaded. It resizes them and displays them via something like so:

I'm running Ubuntu and have the most recent updates available. Since the last Ubuntu update (I don't believe that Gedit was updated at all), Gedit 2.14.4 has been inserting lines at the end of my files (and as we all know, this reeks havoc in Drupal's code!) Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know a solution? I couldn't find anything listed in Gedit's bug forum.

I'm trying to make a small block snippet using html or php to post to the search form but searching only certain nodes.

I don't really think it's necessary to create a custom module for this, it seems like all I need to do is throw in some hidden vars in the form html.

Here's what I have so far and it's not working exactly:

Hi, it seems logical to me that, if a story (node) belongs to a child term (category), it should also belong to its parent term (category), too.

For example, if I've written a post in the "Food & Drink" vocabulary (category?) that is categorised in the "Scotch" term, it should, by implication, also live in the "Whisky" term" - it's relevant to its parent...

- Food & Drink
--- Whisky
----- Scotch
---------- Single Malt
---------- Double Malt

Is there anything out there that can accomplish this?

I'm working on an intranet site that will become a DBA portal. Part of what I'm looking for is the ability to create reports based on a secondary data source. I've looked at the multiple databases info and I'm comfortable with that part. As an approach, I was thinking of creating a reporting module that would grab the info it needed from either a database or XML file (1 per report) and display formatted data to the user. The menu of reports would come from querying the database (or pre-loading the list of XML files in a directory).