Category: technology

Categories
meta technology

Classic Posts

I have been wanting to implement a “greatest hits” section in my sidebar ever since I read the lessons for would-be bloggers. Yesterday I discovered the classic posts plugin from Chris vs Chris which displays posts which you have designated as “classic.” That sounded like the kind of thing I wanted, except that I was looking for a sidebar list. I added a function to their plugin which returns a list of posts rather than the posts themselves. I also discovered that their plugin does not successfully handle selecting and deselecting posts as being “classic” if you are on anything except the default list of posts – in other words it only works on the last 15 posts. (I went into the database so that I cold manually select some older posts)

I have no particular desire to own this plugin so if Chris and Chris want to adopt my modification into their official plugin they are welcome to it. If they do I will link to their version of the file, but until then here is my version: Classic Posts plugin with List Option.

UPDATE: I found the error on the plugin (I had to add two characters to the code) and I have the working version up now (same link as before).

UPDATE 2: Chris has added my modification and the bug fix so I will include a link to the official version.

Categories
technology

Twitter

It seems that I can’t help but hear about Twitter. I’ve been hearing about it for a while from a number of people who’s technology opinions I respect. Again today I read more from Alan about Twitter. Twitter is one of those things I have not picked up but eventually I have to ask myself “why not?” Thankfully Alan’s post pointed me to an analysis of Twitter that explained why I have not touched it yet. Besides talking about what Twitter is (which I knew, and it’s fine even though I have not touched it) there is a comparison of what it’s like. It is compared to instant messaging, which is also fine, but I don’t use it much – it does not suit me as well as other tools. (By the way, someone ought to make a Web 2.0 version of Twitter, they could call it Warblr – I can’t believe the audacity of people who would leave all the vowels intact 😉 )

After reading the analysis I thought I should see if Twitter does have some use for me, even if it never consumes me. I decided that it might suit for the many articles that I come across which are worthy of a blog post but which I often never get back to posting about. I created a Twitter profile an then thought about what I was doing. I remembered del.icio.us which is for bookmarking pages like I was thinking. When I first heard about del.icio.us my thoughts were much like Twitter – fine, but it does not suit my patterns. Now my patterns have changed enough that it might be a good fit. I created an account and I am starting to mark pages that I might want to post about later. When I get time I will get that list displayed in my sidebar in case anyone out there cares to read the things that I’d like to post about but never do.

Categories
technology

Inherently Unequal

My whole family is getting over being sick (here’s a story about that) and as I reflected on the experience I was thinking how nice it would have been to have the kinds of beds they had 150 years ago (pre-industrial age) where you would clean a mattress after someone threw up on it by emptying it, washing the cover, and then filling it with fresh stuffing. The old, soiled filler could be discarded or burned. Now we have mattresses that are “permanent” so when my daughter wakes up from her nap throwing up we have to clean all the covers and try to clean the mattress and then live with the fact that it’s never going to be entirely clean.

When we moved from temporary mattress filling to permanent mattresses we did not keep all the beneficial traits of the old mattresses. Perhaps someone should market a disposable sick-bed. Hospital beds have vinyl coverings so they can be wiped, disinfected, and covered with new sheets. Crib mattresses (at least the ones we have) are the same, but regular mattresses have lost that trait from the mattresses that our great-great-grandparents used to have.

I’m not suggesting that we should go back to those mattresses – though I was tempted to when the thought first struck me. I think we have many products to help mitigate that difference. However, the thought struck me that there is no such thing as a flawless upgrade when we start using new technology like that. There is always some characteristic that we might overlook which has its benefits. It’s something to think about as we rush onward with new technologies and find that it is easy to see their strengths. Sometimes we have to take a step back and see if we might have missed some strengths from the old technology.

Categories
meta technology

Post by Email

I finally have the Post-by-Email working in WordPress. There is one catch – the body of the post only shows up if the message is sent in plain text. No “rich formatting” or other high-and-mighty “My email client is better than what was available 15 years ago” shenanigans.

Add this to the fact that I have to go edit the post later if I want it anywhere but the default category, or if I want to add tags or anything else besides text, and you can be sure that I will only use email as a place to compose posts that are still in the formative stages. I will also be looking at other plugins with more versatility in this department.

Enough griping, it’s still a new feature for me so this may be a small step, but it’s a forward step.

Update: There is another catch – extra line breaks show up when posting this way – definitely not for regular use.

Categories
pictures technology

Snooping Around

While reading through my feeds today I learned from Kim Cavanaugh’s Brain Frieze about the official Library of Congress blog. I went over to have a look and got curious about what software they had running the blog. Maybe it was something about the familiar format of the postmetadata section that got me looking. I looked at the bottom of the page to see if there was a footer stating that it was powered by WordPress. I was not surprised to find no such mention – it’s easy to take that out. I then looked at the page code and found that the meta tag named generator was also gone – another place that WordPress identifies itself unless you change it – but I did find that the code looked very familiar again. I quickly spotted a reference to the “wp-content” folder – it is a WordPress blog running the Library of Congress blog. Here’s proof:Library of Congress Blog code
Screenshot of the code to the Library of Congress blog

By way of comparison, here is a screenshot of the code from my WordPress blog:My WordPress blog code

For anyone who might still be skeptical (or who might care) I later found a more obvious reference to WordPress in their blog code:Library of Congress Blog code with WordPress comments

Categories
life technology

Technology and Gardening

So I could be posting about national news items, but instead I spent my spare time today working on a gardening wiki. Laura wanted to keep notes on the plants that we have planted with some of the more vital statistics such as when to prune them and how well they thrive for us. I decided that a TiddlyWiki was a very good format to keep such notes because these wikis are very portable, the entire site is in a single file, and they allow you to cross reference notes and link between notes so that it becomes a very versatile note-taking system. I have actually started using TiddlyWikis for a variety of note-taking projects at home and at work.

After I got started on the project I thought it would be fun to put it on my website so that I could access it and update it from anywhere. To do that I used MiniTiddlyServer (MTS) which allows makes a server environment for TiddlyWikis. Normally they are displayable on the web but not they can’t be updated online without some help. I think that MTS is the best tool to give that help that I have seen. Admittedly I work with Sean Hess, who created MTS, but even if I didn’t know him I would consider this to be a fine piece of work. The first version of MTS that I used was only 9 files zipped up to less than 100Kb. The version I am using now is much bigger (over 500Kb – still very small) and much more powerful.

This opens up a world of future possibilities. For the present, anyone can see what I am planting in my gardens (flower and vegetable). Later I may choose to allow others to contribute to the wiki by invitation. Eventually I could choose to open parts of it up for general comment and contribution. MTS can do that kind of thing, the question is, “will I want to try it?” The answer is, “time will tell.”

Categories
technology

Spam Watch – Refinance Loans

Three days ago I got a great idea from my spam email folder – wouldn’t it be funny to report the vast sums of money I have been approved for to “refinance” my house. I have since saved those refinance spam messages so that I could post the total. I thought it might also be fun to post all the lottery money I am apparently winning in random drawings. Instead I have decided that I will post any interesting information from my spam box when the fancy strikes me.

In the last 3 days I have been approved for $12,428,000 in refinance loans. The beauty of it all is that the largest of these loans is under $500,000. That’s starting to make my credit limit look puny.

Categories
technology

Online Genealogy

I stumbled upon a site called Geni today that was supposed to be a tool for online genealogy collaboration. What I found was not exactly what I had expected. It seems to be more heavily focused on the living generations and making connections. If I had been trying to describe its function with no knowledge of what they say they are trying to do I would have compared it to friendster, myspace, or facebook – a way of making connections online with people, in this case with those to whom you are related.

I had always seen genealogy as more interested in finding and connecting with generations past. Obviously this can lead to making connections with other relatives further from your immediate family. I found Geni through a post by Paul Allen who is actually working on an online genealogy collaboration site called FamilyLink. Based on what I could see I thought that FamilyLink might be more what I would have expected.

I am curious to know what other people think of Geni. Is it what you imagine when you think of genealogy, or could it be used for genealogical purposes? Does it look like something you would want to use? I am, as yet, undecided.

Categories
culture technology

Mixing Fax and Email

There was a time when I thought that fax machines were obsolete. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that they could be obsolete, but for some reason they aren’t (the same is true of pagers). Rather than arguing that they should be obsolete, I would argue that there should be a way for people to send a fax to an email address.

I am not talking about efax.com or any of the other services that you can sign up with (often for free) to have faxes delivered to your email. Those still require that you have a fax number. Someone sends a fax to your fax number (which is maintained by efax) and they route the fax to your email address. They can even convert the fax into a different file format, like PDF or TIF which can be read by software that your probably already have.

I m talking about a system, perhaps a device that could be connected to the fax machine, that could be used to send a fax directly to an email address rather than a phone number. This allows those that have legitimate uses for faxes to continue using them and have access to the many people who do not have a fax machine. While we’re at it, perhaps we should create some kind of software that can send any printable file as a fax – oh wait, we already have that in the form of fax software programs.

On a side note – this is another example of how technology leaps ahead of us and we have to scramble to keep up with what is available. This scrambling is what leads to mistakes like DRM and obsolete laws like traditional copyright and DMCA.

Categories
meta technology

Plugin Bug Fix

I was so excited by the plugin “Blogger RSS Import” that I failed to notice that it got all the dates wrong on comments (they were all set to midnight of the day I did the import). Thankfully, and very professionally, I got an email from the developer (sent to everyone who commented on the plugin between the applicable dates) that the error existed and had been fixed in the new version. I now have the correct dates on my comments, which is good because all the conversations looked wierd with the comments for each post in random order.