Category: technology

Categories
life technology

WordPress, the OpenID Plugin, and Blogger Comments

I’m a fan of the idea of OpenID which is why I use the OpenID plugin accept OpenID authentication for comments on this site and others that I run. I am under no illusions that it serves as an anti-spam measure which is why OpenID authenticated comments undergo all the same spam filtering that any other comment receives. One of the reasons that I use the OpenID plugin is that it allows me to use my blog as an OpenID identity server so I can use my own domain to authenticate me on other sites that accept OpenID – including (especially) Blogger. When I leave comments I  like to be able to leave general comments that are authenticated by this site and have political comments authenticated by my political blog, Pursuit of Liberty (so that the comments point back to the most applicable site for the content of the comment). That worked for quite a while, but a few weeks ago I began getting an error when trying to use my OpenID’s on Blogger blogs.

I did a lot of searching but got no answers for the bug (I would leave the bug here so that others can find it, but Google changed the error code in that time to read “Your OpenID could not be verified”). Eventually I figured out that it was only happening when trying to leave comments authenticated through Pursuit of Liberty, but since the setup there is identical to the setup here that was not very helpful. Finally today I figured out the solution – I was authenticating through www.davidjmiller.org and pursuit-of-liberty.com – both are set up as www.{domain-name} and Google apparently decided to get strict on their authentication. When I leave comments from www.pursuit-of-liberty.com it worked fine. If anyone else finds this problem with Blogger and the OpenID plugin just remember to authenticate with or without the “www.” depending on how your site is set up (in other words make it match exactly).

Categories
life technology

HAM – KF7DQE

For the last couple of decades I have wanted to get a HAM radio license. I never got really serious about it, but it was always there in the back of my head waiting for “someday.”

Someday finally arrived. The stars aligned a couple of weeks ago and I decided to just go out and do it soon. I discovered that there was a test scheduled monthly in Salt Lake and I decided to study and take the exam during one of the tests this summer. I started studying from a library book – Now Your Talking – on Monday. I already knew that much of the knowledge was common sense rules about being considerate and so yesterday when I looked to see what dates the test was to be administered I discovered that the first one was that evening. Having taken some practice exams and seeing that I almost always got passing scores with the little study I had done, I decided to take the leap and take my test yesterday rather than agonizing over the material for another month. I took the test at 7:00 last night and passed on the first try (you can have three tries in one sitting). They encouraged me to take the test for the General class and I got closer to passing that than I would have expected.

Today my callsign got assigned and published in the FCC database so I am now KF7DQE – a HAM without a radio. (Of course I’ll be on the lookout for an appropriate rig.)

Categories
culture life meta pictures technology

Speed Affects Lifestyle

Preface

I was laying in my bed at 5:00 AM (when most people should be in bed) and my brain started reviewing the images of the roads I commute on. I began to think of how such a complex road system would be entirely unnecessary if we were not able to travel at the average speed of today’s normal commute. Consider this a stream of semi-consciousness about the impact that our speed of movement has on the kind of life that each of us lives.

Then

Let’s place the year 1889 as the baseline of a slower lifestyle. I choose that year because it predates the advent of the car, it is late enough that we had the ability to move faster than horse and wagon with the use of railroads, and it’s 120 years ago – a nice round number.

In 1889 most travel was done by horse or on foot. As I recall traveling 30 miles in a day was generally about as far as a person could expect to go. In the late 1870’s the Transcontinental Express was able to average about 35 miles per hour traveling across the country. That would appear to be the functional limit of traveling speed for that time.

Now

Today people regularly travel 70 miles per hour on their daily commute (outside of rush hour) only because we have created an artificial speed limit of 65 mph on our roads – without that speed limit most vehicles could easily travel at 90 mph.

For the sake of simplification let’s consider the differences that we would see if we were to limit our physical traveling of people to 5 mph (a fast walk) with a limit of 30 miles per day, as compared to today when I can comfortably make a trip of 600 miles in a long day and regularly commute 20 miles each way to work.

Comparison

In our modern situation the only real limitation on where I work (physically) is how much time I am willing to commute – I can choose to live 50 miles or more from my place of employment so long as I am willing to take the time to commute. In the slower lifestyle if we assume that I am willing and able to spend 6 hours of my day commuting in addition to the 8 hours I need to work then I could work as much as 15 miles from home.

From a community standpoint I could not reasonably interact with anyone outside a 7 mile radius on a reagular basis in the slower community whereas in the modern-speed community I could with no more effort interact with people anywhere in a 100 mile radius. If we had an even population density over that whole area that would mean that I have access to 204 times as many people on a daily basis. If we assume that there really is a limit on how many people I can know well then there I can really only know ½ of 1% of the available information about those I can interact with on a daily basis compared to the slower society

Conclusion

I am really not trying to suggest that our society has gone all downhill since some utopian point in our past, but I do like to think about the real results of what we think of as progress. As I was looking around (on the internet – there’s a new kind of speed there) I discovered an entry in Wikipedia on car culture that focuses on cars and addresses this same mindset of “what has really changed with this progress.”

What are your thoughts on the effect of rushing about in our society?

Categories
life pictures technology

What’s in a Name?

Despite the fact that I have had my twitter account for over two years I’m still pretty low on the twitter curve. Let’s put it this way after more than two years of having the account I currently have a total of 47 updates to my credit. Truthfully I ignored twitter after getting the account until recently when I decided that it might be interesting to see what’s happening in the twitterverse. It did not take very long before I noticed that I get lots of tweets directed at me from people I don’t know. I just assumed that this was another example of the dangers of having a common name. I got on twitter early enough that I was not forced to use a name like “whatdoyoucallaguywithnonicknameswhenhisnameistaken” when I created the account. I was lucky enough to get a nice simple “davidmiller.”

I have long known that there are many David Millers around (such as the Mayor of Toronto – yet one more reason I should go visit there) and I assumed that I was getting tweets from people who assumed that “davidmiller” on twitter belonged to a David Miller that they knew. Finally today I noticed that more than half of the tweets directed at me from people who obviously don’t know me contained links from blip.fm – I know nothing about the site except that from the content of the tweets it is obviously oriented around listening to music. I finally got curious and asked the people who recently sent me blip related tweets why they were sending them. The answer I got was:

holyshadow@davidmiller cause they have integrated twitter and blip, and since you have the same nick, you receive the blips on twitter. that answers?

So now I know why I may be the only person on twitter who has blocked more people than he follows (blocking people means that I don’t get informed every time they send a tweet my way) – due the the mashup nature of so many social networking services I am getting random tweets because some other David Miller has the same username on blip.fm as I have on twitter.com – I wonder if I can just block tweets that contain a url from blip?

Categories
technology

Official vs Unofficial

Ever since I became aware of Mormons Made Simple I have been considering whether I should share the site with others. It is intended to be a resource for those who are not familiar with the LDS church to understand the church as an organization and as a culture. My conflict was not that it is a poor or misleading site – it isn’t as far as I can see – but rather that it is not an official site from the church and I prefer to point people to the official sources of things – especially since the church has an official site specifically for those who are not members of the church.

In and of itself my initial question does not seem widely important, but it led me to another more general question which I thought about for some time. Is it a good thing for members of the church to create their own resources when the church has already provided resources for the same specific purpose? My conclusion was that we have been commanded to “do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:27) I could not predict how much righteousness might come to pass from Mormons Made Simple, but it seems a good thing for people to be doing of their own free will.

My question for other people is, would you be more likely to recommend the official site, or the unofficial site to people? Are there times when one might be better than the other?

Categories
life Local pictures politics State technology

Voting Record

Voting Record will allow recording of votes cast for display and reference purposes. Elected officials can record and display their votes and citizens can track and display the votes of an elected official they follow.

Latest Version: 2.0 (March 16, 2009)

Display templates are introduced here giving you total flexibility in deciding what to display. There is one set of template settings for recent votes and another for search results. Each template is made up of a header, a footer, and an item template. Template tags are used to display the variables specific to each recorded vote such as the vote cast or the vote description. There is also a setting for what to display when no votes are returned in the recent votes and another setting for when no votes are returned in a search.

Votes are entered on a dashboard widget:

Vote Record Dashboard Widget

A vote management page is available from the posts menu:

Manage Recorded Votes

Recent votes are shown by adding <?php recent_votes(); ?> in your theme templates. You can show a search votes form by using the shortcode [ SEARCH-VOTES ] on a page or post. Options for Voting Record include:

  • The option to specify a primary voter (if most or all of the votes being tracked are from one person).
  • The option to specify header text/code for the recent vote list.
  • How many recent votes to show – limited by number of votes or number of days.
  • What to show before a list of recent votes and what to show before a list of search results.
  • What to display at the end of a list of recent votes and what to display at the end of a list of search results.
  • The format for displaying your recent votes or search results lists, including which pieces of information to show.
  • What to display when no recent votes are returned or when a search comes up empty.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Voting Record page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later).

Categories
life meta pictures technology

Kiva

For those who wish to help others but who have limited means to do so Kiva provides an opportunity to give a little (as little as $25) and help people around the world who have business plans to lift themselves up economically. Loans from individuals get pooled as necessary to fund people. I have been very impressed with this system that allows people to help others by using small means to make great things happen.

I was very happy to take the opportunity to take the code written by Connor Boyack and turn it into the Kiva plugin for WordPress so that people can raise the visibility of Kiva by displaying loans in the fundraising stage with a link to donate.

version 1.1 (2/10/2009)
More options over which loans to show

Latest Version 1.2 (2/27/2009)
You can now use a text widget with the shortcode SHOW-KIVA (enclosed in square brackets – []) to display the Kiva plugin in a widgetized sidebar.

Options include:

  • Number of posts to show.
  • Display format for loan list – Image only displays the image for each loan linked to the donation page, Both displays the image and text information, Text only displays name(linked to the donation page), business, country, and fundraising level/goal for the loan.
  • Gender – you can restrict to only show loans for men or loans for women.
  • Region – you can show loans only in one of 7 geographic regions.
  • Sector – you can only show certain types of loans such as retail or agriculture.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Kiva page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later). Place the call show_kiva(); anywhere in your page templates or use [ SHOW-KIVA] in a text widget.

Categories
meta technology

OpenID Enabled

I have been using OpenID for quite a while to comment on various blogs at Blogger. I never really considered it necessary to use here since I don’t require registration of any kind here – totally anonymous comments are fine becauseof great spam protection. On the other hand, people often want to leave some information and if they have an OpenID they might as well be able to use it. Because of that I finally installed the plugin called OpenID which not only allows people to use their OpenID to leave comments, but also allows me to use my own site as my OpenID – no more third-party site. (It would also allow people to make user accounts here with their OpenID’s if I allowed outsiders to register accounts on my site.)

I don’t expect that this will have any major effect on anyone, but if anyone finds OpenID useful because of this then I am ahppy to have shared. For myself, I like the fact that I have full control over my online ID and that I only have to remember my own domain name at many other sites.

Categories
culture life meta technology

It Takes a Village

Most people have heard the proverb “it takes a village to raise  a child,” especially since it was made more famous by the book “authored” by Hillary Clinton when she as the First Lady. (Personally I doubt that she “actually wrote the book” as she claims. She probably commissioned it, helped edit it for content, approved it, and wrote the acknowledgment section.) Of course, Mrs. Clinton meant that society was very important in raising a child – which is true on the surface – but the real value in the proverb is not what it means about child-rearing as what it means about society. What I take it to mean for society is that we must build societies that are large enough to provide the support necessary to raise a child to adulthood and intimate enough that each child is more than a statistic in the process. That’s the main problem with the government approach – government solutions must reduce everyone to no more than a statistic. A village, in other words, consists of those outside the immediate family who are familiar and trusted by each other (both children and adults) and who have an interest in the successful raising of the children in the village.

A perfect example of the village approach occurred last night. We went to see a performance of Annie being put on by Bountiful High. Soon after we arrived we ran into my cousins, JP and Marie Feinauer. The kids were well behaved for the first song, but then their ages began to catch up with them. Isaac started running up and down the aisle. He wasn’t very noisy, but with the light coming from the open doors at the back he cast a long (and distracting) shadow. Mariah was pretty good, except that she had to keep switching laps. Alyssa could not seem to stop herself from changing seats, bouncing, and talking (without her whisper voice). Savannah was perfectly behaved. Considering how late it was (late for young children) we decided that we needed to leave at intermission, but that was really not fair to Savannah who was enjoying the show and acting appropriately. This is where JP and Marie, members of our village, come into our story. At intermission I asked if the Feinauer’s would be willing to drive Savannah home at the end of the show. They agreed.

Because they were there, and were trusted by both us and Savannah, we were able to take the three home who were not acting appropriate to the setting while allowing Savannah to stay. Not only was this fair for all of the children, but being able to make that distinction showed in a very tangible way what behavior was appropriate at a public performance. I honestly expect that at the next public performance we attend Alyssa will act appropriately (and possibly even Mariah) because of the lesson from last night – made possible because of some help from our village.

Categories
life technology

Males and Power Tools

Working next to a major construction site I have been interested to see the reactions of myself and others working in my area. Despite the fact that we are all professionals in careers of our choosing we are also very interested in the work being done by the construction workers – who are in careers completely different from our own.

Usually when a loud sound draws many of us to the windows to see what just fell (the food court last week and much of a parking terrace today) the men tend to stay near the windows longer and often there is at least one person making comments about how exciting it would be to operate one of the large construction vehicles that are destroying buildings and sifting debris. We seem to watch a wrecking ball or a backhoe with the same interest that a three year old watches a cordless drill in action.

Speaking only for myself, it is not the destruction that makes it look interesting it is the skill of being able to manipulate heavy machinary to accomplish sometimes delicate work.