Dashboard’s widgets really aren’t helping me. Between the live video feed from the beach on Maui, to this:
Having this kind of info just an F12 away isn’t going to help. Especially as we head toward SAD season around here… Le sigh.
Read MoreWhen I switched from Drupal to WordPress as the software that runs my blog, one of the things I missed was tag autocompletion while writing posts. Drupal has a great freetext tag field, including an AJAX utility that automatically checks with the server for tags that match what you’ve started to type in the tags field.
And now, WordPress has that too! With the Simple Tags plugin. It has some other features, too (but I haven’t tried them yet) but the tag autocompletion is killer. Why isn’t that included in a stock WP install?
Read MoreI’ve been trying to figure out how to build an effective directory of blogs hosted by a WPMU service. There’s the list-all mu-plugin widget, and it has a handy dandy list_all_wpmu_blogs() method. I’ve created a page template for my theme, and added this code to dump the list of public blogs:
","","updated"); ?>
Create a new Page, call it something creative like “Directory” and select the template that contains the above code. That works, technically, but doesn’t produce the most effective directory once the service grows to more than a dozen or so blogs.
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Following Paul’s post about the Blog Readability Test, I pumped in my own URL just for kicks. Here’s the result:
I take that as a compliment, and it’s probably pretty easily explained by the algorithm. I tend to write short, active-tense sentences with not many long words. The readability test doesn’t take the actual content into account, just the lengths of words, sentences and paragraphs. And, if there are any elementary school kids reading this blog, I apologize for the potty mouth in the last post. Actually, the blog is probably filtered in your school, so no worries…
Read MoreI just set up a copy of WordPress Multiuser, running at calgaryblogs.net. It’s an open and free blogging service. I won’t be running ads, or charging for individuals to use it. My only goal is to get more people publishing content online, and if yet another blogging service will help, then so be it.
It’s configured to serve subdomains, meaning you can easily set up a blog at “mygreatblog.calgaryblogs.net” and treat it like it’s your own server.
Read MoreI’ve been an on-again, off-again bicycle commuter for almost 2 decades. For the last couple of years, I’ve been riding my bike almost exclusively (as long as weather allows) from my house to work at the University. It’s not a long ride - between 12-14 km, depending on my route - and much of it can be done off of streets, or on quiet residential streets. At the beginning of the riding season, I estimated that i might ride 2000km, or if I got lucky, maybe 2500km, before the end of the season. I’m about to cross the 2900km mark, and might be able to hit 3000km if the weather holds out. The bike ride is probably the calmest, most meditative time I get in a day. On days when I can’t ride, I miss it, both physically and mentally.
Read MoreNorthern Voice 2008 is now on the calendar - February 22-23, 2008 in Vancouver, at the UBC Main Campus at the palatial Forestry Sciences Building. This is the 4th annual event, and I’ve had the extreme pleasure to have attended each of the previous 3 years. It is my one must attend event for the year - if the only conference travel I get approved is for NV08, I’ll consider the year a success. I just filled in the official “Travel Approval Request” form, and should know if the U of C will sponsor my way in the next couple of weeks. If they pass, I’ll find another way. I’m going.
Read MoreI’ve been using the WP-Cache 2 plugin for some time, as it offers pretty effective file-based caching of WordPress pages to help reduce the load on the database server and reduce page generation time. But the plugin has kind of languished without any real updates for months(?) or years(?).
Donncha O Caoimh, the WordPress guru who’s name I’ll never be able to pronounce, released an updated and refined caching plugin called WP-Super-Cache, based on the great start offered by WP-Cache 2.
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Evan and I spent the day at the Glenbow Museum, checking out the exhibits and hanging out in the discovery/crafts centres. We were at the museum for a record 5 hours - not a bad way to spend a Saturday.
We started at the top (4th floor) and worked our way down. I hadn’t seen the physical Mavericks exhibit, although I did construct the website for it. It was pretty darned cool to see the exhibits in the flesh. The Glenbow did a helluva job putting the Mavericks floor together.
Read MoreI’ve been using my “nifty fifty” (aka “plastic fantastic”) Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens almost exclusively since I got it a couple months ago. It was cheap, at $100, and it’s been a blast to use. The wide aperture means I can take shots without needing the flash, with a strong bokeh (blurred background with foreground in sharp focus). It really hit me just how awesome this lens is, when I dragged the camera out trick-or-treating with Evan last night. Lots of other parents brought cameras - it’s a natural thing to do. Many even had DSLRs with fancy schmancy lenses. But they ALL were firing the flash. Completely blowing away the spooky halloween ambiance, replacing it with brightly lit subjects with harsh shadows. Ick.
Read MoreToday is a memorable day. It’s the day that CAREO, the learning object repository we built at The University of Calgary, is being officially decommissioned. Unplugged, mothballed, and put into storage. It’s been a wild rollercoaster ride for these 6 years, but that ship has sailed. Back in 2001, when CAREO was first created, there was a need for a concrete prototype of a repository. Other available software didn’t quite do what we had in mind, and it was relatively easy to just go ahead and build some software to test out some ideas.
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