Monthly Archives: July 2007

Bit by the Coding Bug

9 Replies

I’m getting my inner geek on – again. I spent the majority of my day today trying to figure out how to crosspost from WordPress to MySpace. I’d found a “hack that looked like it had potential”:http://noumenon.roderickrussell.com/wordpress-to-myspace-auto-crossposting that I messed with for quite a while, but so far I’ve had no success in getting it to run, despite having following the directions to the letter and checked everything over fifthlicate (and then some). I’m still waiting for a reply back on my comment to see if the hack’s author has any idea what’s blocking my attempts.

Ultimately, I gave up on that and started trying to find a way to put a light-weight Twitter badge on to my MySpace profile. I don’t like any of the badges that Twitter produces, so I looked around for other options. But of course, MySpace being the notoriously unfriendly environment that it is, there are no good solutions that are both functional and attractive on the page. So, I’ve given up on that option for the time being, as well.

In the meantime, I plan to learn a little more about the ins-and-outs of PHP coding tomorrow. I’ve got the MyDashboard plugin installed on this blog, but it doesn’t display quite as much information in the dashboard from some of my other behind-the-scenes plugins as I’m used to. So, my intent is to learn out to create a few gadgets that will tap into these plugins and put this information closer to my fingertips. If all goes well, I may even plan to create gadgets for a few other things that I’ve always wanted on the dashboard and never been able to find plugins for.

On that note, I’ve got a few of the plugin pages from the WordPress codex up in my browser. I really would like to get more involved with the development end of WordPress, but it is my sketchy knowledge of PHP that limits how much I can do. Since I have at least a two or three more weeks of down-time while I heal up from surgery, I hope to make some use of that time to learn a little more about how to write plugins for WordPress. I’ve come up with ideas in the past for things I’d love my WordPress installation to be able to do, things that, thus far, no one else has created plugins for. So, I hope to learn and add a few things to the WordPress community myself.

I’ve got other things to work on, as well. I still have plans to create a customized WordPress theme. I’d started work on a minimal theme last week, but that’s been on hiatus due to surgery last week. But now that I’m beginning to feel better and gain some more mobility again, I hope to get back to this project, as well, and try to finish it up. The skeleton I’d managed to build last week will probably undergo an overhaul, though, as I’ve changed my mind about some things in my mind about where I want to go with it. Heck, if I get _really_ ambitious, I might even tailor a new bbPress theme to go with it.

Some New WordPress Plugins

4 Replies

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I wanted to point out a handful of new plugins I’ve started using recently.

  • Better Comments Manager is another of those plugins that’s been added to my list of essentials for any WordPress installation. It adds a tab to your dashboard that allows you to view your comments with a host of new options. You can edit, delete, or unapprove comments and easily mark comments as spam, if necessary. You can also post a new or threaded reply right from the dashboard with an AJAX-powered interface. A single mouse-click will also filter comments to display only the comments for a given thread. It’s a powerful new comment interface that should be a must-have for any WordPress user.
  • WordPress.com users are familiar with the Dashbar that appears on their site whenever they’re logged in that gives them instant access to most of their primary functions in an instant. The Dashbar plugin now gives this same toolbar functionality to self-hosted WordPress installations. It provides access to the dashboard, write panel, and editing ability for the last five entries from your site’s front page.
  • There’s been some buzz recently about the new wordpress.com application that’s been added to Facebook. Well, the FacePress plugin updates your Facebook news and mini feeds every time you post a new entry to your self-hosted WordPress installation. It’s a pretty slick little plugin and makes it that much easier to integrate Facebook and WordPress.
  • MyDashboard provides a cleaned-up dashboard interface that lets you pick and choose what elements you see when you log into your admin panel. There’s no documentation yet on how to create custom gadgets to add to this plugin, but as soon as there is, I’ll be looking to further customize this slick little plugin.
  • The Custom Write Panel provides the power through the use of toggle buttons and custom fields to create a series of customized write panels. It lets you remove some of the clutter and adds the ability to post specialized news items.

These are a great group of plugins. I urge you to give them a try and beef up your WordPress experience.

Facebook versus MySpace

2 Replies

I’ve been running Facebook and MySpace side-by-side for a couple of weeks now. I’d created a MySpace profile primarily because it was the only method available for me to get back into contact with some of my friends from high school who I haven’t spoken to in ten years. Of course, long-time readers of this blog know how I feel about MySpace, but I was willing to deal with the evils of the social networking site if it meant being able to ‘talk’ to some people I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Then, of course, WordPress announces the fact that they’ve added a wordpress.com application to Facebook. So, being the WP fanboy that I am, I immediately set up a profile there, as well – and found three times as many of my friends already there than there were on Facebook. Lunacy. And to make things even better, I found a plugin this morning that will also allow self-hosted instances of WordPress (from the wordpress.org site) to post up a news item in both the news and mini feeds everytime you add a new entry. Better and better.

I’ve “diatribed on the evils of MySpace before”:http://shamuswrites.com/2006/12/15/myspace-is-evil/, and nothing has demonstrated to me just how badly designed the place is than trying to surf various profiles there on my laptop. A friend of mine gave me his old laptop a while back, and since I’ve been on my back for the last five weeks, I’ve been using it quite a lot for all my web surfing. This laptop is not what I would call a powerhouse – I usually have to reboot once or twice a day just to recover enough RAM to continue working. I don’t usually have too many problems, though, at least not until I surf over into MySpace. Suddenly, all my RAM is gone, my browser locks up for lengthy periods of time, and I can’t close the MySpace tabs I have open so that I can even reboot the laptop and attempt to rectify my mistake.

Facebook, on the other hand, has been extremely simple and light-weight to use. It has yet to cause to my laptop any issues or headaches. And the beauty of Facebook is that it seems to be infinitely more customizable than MySpace – and with less demand on your computer’s resources. Granted, most of the applications in Facebook I have no use for, but I do like the way I can make it merge so seamlessly with all of my WordPress installations. Facebook is also the thing that has gotten me using my “wordpress.com”:http://stitzelj.wordpress.com account that I’d set up originally just for the API key for Akismet. Did I mention that I’m a WordPress fanboy?

So, yes, all this to say that I believe Facebook to be a far superior social networking system to MySpace. It’s built better, it runs better, and it just plain works better. I’ll likely be keeping my MySpace account, since I find it highly unlikely that everyone I have contact with there can be persuaded over to Facebook, but Facebook will continue to be my primary resource to maintaining quick and easy contact with people I know.

Of course, then again, there is always email.

Drawing

3 Replies

One of the things I was working on before all my back problems was teaching myself how to draw comic-style cartoons. I’d been carrying my sketchbook and pencils with me, as well as the book I was working my way through step-by-step. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to draw when lying on one’s back for an indefinite amount of time, so I haven’t done much drawing or sketching in the last month.

Now that my surgery is behind me and I’m starting on the road to recovery, my mind has gone back to my drawing. I’m still not quite to the point where I feel like I could sit down with my sketchbook and pencils and draw for a while, but I do feel better than I have in several weeks and so I’ve rediscovered my interest in some of my hobbies. I’m looking forward to getting back to some of them and even producing some more “Not Quite Right” strips with characters that are somewhat more interesting than stick figures.

Harry Potter Discussion

2 Replies

If anyone’s interested, I’ve “set up a board on my discussion forum”:http://forum.shamuswrites.com/forum/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows specifically for talking about the last book in the Harry Potter series. I’d love to banter it around a bit with others who have it and compare notes. I know most people really liked the book and the way it ended, but I also know of a few who didn’t. So, please feel free to head over there and start a new discussion thread or add to the conversation starters I’ve already put in place there. I’d love to chat some Harry Potter with you.

Heroes Cast Resurrected?

Leave a reply

“Word’s out today”:http://www.heroestheseries.com/heroes-season-2-cast-promo-pictures-possible-spoilers/ that a couple of the characters from _Heroes_ last season may not, in fact, actually be dead. It’s doubtful that this will be enough to bring me back to watch Season 2 – I still think the writing near the end of the first season was pretty lousy. But it is interesting that Kring has provided an ‘out’ for these characters. I’ll probably sit back and listen to reviews. If they end up being positive enough, maybe I’ll catch up.

250 Words

3 Replies

Jason Evans is running another of his quarterly “writing contests”:http://clarityofnight.blogspot.com/2007/07/halo-short-fiction-contest.html this week, which ends up being bad timing for me since I’m going in for back surgery tomorrow. It’s unlikely I’m going to feel up to much of anything but resting between now and the deadline, but everyone else should definitely go check it out and participate. His contests are always a lot of fun, and he puts up some pretty decent prizes for the top five places. Go, write, and enjoy.