Monthly Archives: August 2007

Church and Psychology

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A “friend of mine”:http://jtf02.wordpress.com has started blogging. In his “first entry”:http://jtf02.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/church-and-psychology/, he shares his thoughts on the Church and psychology and the current tension between the two.

bq. For years the Church has tended to deny that psychological problems really exist. Some have openly stated that psychological problems do not exist, only sin exists and that what some would call psychological is actually sin. Others would claim that sin does exist but that psychological problems also exist apart from sin and at times with sin.

Go give a read, and better still, leave a comment and add to the discussion.

Wet Paper Sack

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Can you “write your way out of a wet paper sack”:http://www.poewar.com/writing-your-way-out-of-a-wet-paper-sack/? It’s really a very important skill to have. (Source: “serotoninrain”:http://serotoninrain.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/a-joke-only-a-writer-could-love/)

wp_tag_cloud() – WordPress 2.3

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Small Potato covered one of the new tag functions that will be appearing in WordPress 2.3 – <?php the_tags(); ?>. I was pleased to find, though, that the WordPress development team had included the new tag cloud function, as well, since I currently use UTW’s tag cloud as an enhanced site index.

The documentation on <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?> is currently incomplete, so I had to do some digging into the core code to find out how to adjust the parameters. <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?> takes a string of parameters that adjust how your tag cloud displays. For example, <?php wp_tag_cloud('number=20&order=desc'); ?> will display a tag cloud of your top 20 tags and sort them in descending order.

Here are the various settings:

* smallest – Adjusts the size of the smallest tags in the cloud. Default is ’8′.
* largest – Adjusts the size of the biggest tags in the cloud. Default is ’22′.
* unit – Sets the unit type for font size (i.e. point or em). Default is ‘pt’.
* number – How many tags will display in the cloud. Default is ’45′.
* format – ‘Flat’ displays an inline cloud with each term separated by whitespace. ‘List’ generates an unordered list. ‘Array’ lets you define an array of tags. Default is ‘flat’.
* orderby – Sort the cloud by ‘name’ or ‘count’. Default is ‘name’.
* order – Sort the cloud in ascending or descending order. Default is ‘ASC’.

The new native taxonomy isn’t as powerful as UTW was, but I’m sure it won’t be too long before there will be a host of new plugins to change that.

WordPress 2.3 Beta 2 releases on Monday. I’ll write about any new changes somewhere around then.

WordPress 2.3 Beta 1 Test

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I’ve been toying around with the WordPress 2.3 Beta 1 most of the day today. I basically copied this site’s files and database to another location, uploaded the 2.3 files, and ran the upgrade script. Then I spent the next several hours mucking about with the new system. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far:

* The only plugin that ‘broke’ upon re-activation was the Custom Write Panel. And even then, I’m not sure it actually broke. It generates a ‘Plugin could not be activated’ fatal error, yet it clearly showed as active in the list and seems to function just fine when I go to it to write up a new entry. I have a feeling it has to do with the new tag field in the write screen that the Custom Write Panel plugin will obviously not be able to account for properly.
* The UTW tagging conversion process works pretty well. I have a massive database, though, and the tag importer counted just shy of 1200 tags that I’ve used in the past and nearly 4000 tag-to-post relationships. Writing the UTW tags to the new WordPress taxonomy system took awhile, I think in part due to the size of the database as well as to the somewhat sluggish nature of my computer. The conversion appears to have gone off without a hitch, though, and I’ve retired the UTW plugin on the beta test site in favor of the native taxonomy system.
* The categories-to-tags conversion process failed tragically, however. It’s been generating duplicate entry database errors, thus failing to convert category names to tags. Of course, it did, for some reason, single out my Commentary category to convert properly, thus removing every entry from that category (and every other category), effectively removing them from my blog – unless they happened to also be filed under another category, in which case they got to stay. I had similar problems with converting categories to tags with UTW, as well, so it could be something problematic with the whole system. It matters little to me, in the long-run, since I prefer to keep my categories separate from my tags, but since I’m helping to beta-test the software, I wanted to see how badly I could break things.
* The new tagging system has two new functions – <?php the_tags(); ?> and <?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?>. The first takes three parameters and is most useful for displaying your tags at the end of entries. The latter takes a string of options and is most useful for displaying a tag cloud of your specifications in the sidebar, on a page (say, as a site index), or in a post, if you prefer. I’ll talk more about the tag cloud function in the following entry.
* The plugins page in the dashboard also now displays when plugins have new versions (according to the wordpress.org plugins database). It’s a slick little addition that I’m very pleased to see.

By and large I’m happy with the new changes to the WordPress core. I’m eager now to see what sort of new plugins will come out of the new tagging taxonomy.

Halo 3 and Forge

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Just before we received the news that “Halo 3 has gone Gold”:http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12737, we were treated to a delectable little video demonstrating the awesomeness that is the Forge customization module in Halo 3. For every custom game fan, this is a dream come true. Forge is quite literally a drag-and-drop utility for customizing multiplayer maps. If something doesn’t quite meet your satisfaction, Forge will let you change things until everything is just right. Or it will simply let you monkey around with the settings to create new, interesting, or just plain wacky gametypes. And once you’re done messing with the settings and you’ve created just the right environment for some crazy, insane carnage, you can save your modified map out to Xbox Live and share it with all your friends. Bungie will then be able to pick out their favorites and incorporate them into matchmaking. Halo 3 is going to change the face of the way we play video games on Live.

(Source: “Xbox 360 Fanboy”:http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/08/28/video-halo-3-forge-demonstration/”)

Safari

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I think I finally tracked down the memory leak in Firefox. I’m still waiting to see if anything goes completely haywire, and I do need to double-check it on my PC at home to be sure, but I think the problem may have been the Firebug addon. While it _is_ a very useful tool for web development, when it’s looking at every single one of your tabs to check for errors and such, it does have a way of making Firefox very, very big. It’s a much better policy to just disable the entire thing and then enable on a site-by-site basis, and then for only as long as it takes to troubleshoot any code you’re working on.

In the meantime before I figured this out, I popped open Safari for Windows again this morning. I really, really like that browser. In a lot of ways, it makes most websites look a lot better. Safari seems to render websites with a cleaner, sharper look overall. Plus, the browser just fired right up and responded instantly to every command I gave it. It seems to be pretty lightweight, much the way Firefox was in its earlier days. The only trouble with Safari is that it doesn’t have the addon and plugin support yet that Firefox does, which still makes Safari my second choice for a browser. If it ever gets the kind of open source addon support that Firefox has, it will certainly give Firefox a run for its money.

I did run a brief Google search this morning for websites that have plugins for Safari. I didn’t really find much, aside from Safari’s version of Adblock and a couple of developer tools. I’m kind of hoping that more plugins will open up, but I don’t even know if Safari’s API is open. It’d certainly be good if it was, but Apple might be playing things close to the vest.

If anyone knows anything about good plugins and addons for Safari, do please let me know. I think there’s a lot of potential for Safari yet, and probably most of it is still untapped as yet. I’d like to see that change.

A Look at WordPress 2.3

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“Small Potato”:http://www.wpdesigner.com/ has written up a “preliminary review”:http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/08/28/wordpress-23-beta-1-review-and-checklist/ of WordPress 2.3 Beta 1, and I must say that the new features being introduced into this version are positively yummy. I think I’m going to really like having tags native to the WordPress core. I “was worried”:http://shamuswrites.com/2007/04/19/tagging-fears-in-wp-23/ about the need for a tag importer for those of us who use tagging plugins, so I’m pleased to see that the WordPress development team will be including an importer for UTW and are currently testing importers for a couple of other popular tagging plugins, as well. It was also nice to get a closer look at the new template tag for tags – <?php the_tags('', '', ''); ?>.

The default blogroll has also been the source of much contention lately, in light of the debate over what constitutes sponsored links and what doesn’t. “Matt’s”:http://photomatt.com integrity has also been called into question over a number of issues lately, so it’s nice to see the development team taking the suggestions of the WordPress community seriously by replacing the legacy default blogroll links with others that point at WordPress development and documentation links.

I haven’t had a chance to install and test out the WordPress 2.3 Beta 1 yet, but I’m already liking what I’m hearing from those who have. I can’t wait to take a look at a full feature list for the next version of WordPress. I expect that some of my current plugins may break with 2.3, but I think the trade-off for new native features will be well worth the extra trouble.

Sorry, I’m Not Exactly BioShocked

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I’m not a fan of the zombie sub-genre of horror/sci-fi/post-apocalyptic fiction, as I’m “mentioned before”:http://shamuswrites.com/2007/06/06/zombies/. I don’t really see what’s so interesting about mindless undead whose only goal is to suck the brains out of their living victims. I’m also not thrilled by the idea that the only way to defend oneself against such creatures is to beat them into little bloody bits with blunt objects.

That said, I’m not overly thrilled with the new _BioShock_ title for Xbox 360. I played through the demo a couple of evenings ago, and at first I was thrilled to discover a game with an intriguing steampunk-style storyline. I mean, what’s not to love about an entire sub-oceanic city built during the World War II era? Of course, it didn’t take long to discover that this pseudo-steampunk game has a far darker side than I like. Something has gone terribly wrong in a very Dr. Moreauian kind of way. The inhabitants of this aquatic city – Rapture – have apparently been the subjects of experimental genetic experiments, and now most, if not all, of them are now monsters that more closely resemble zombies than humans.

My first clue that I was going to hate this game was the creature that attacked the pod I rode into Rapture on. My second clue was when I picked up my first weapon – a pipe wrench. I had immediate flashbacks to the _Prey_ demo, and sure enough, the first battles against the enraged citizens of Rapture were every bit as bloody and distasteful. Of course, I acquired a pistol a little further on that I never quite got the hang of using (it took me three or four shots to lay out just one of the zombie-like genetically-altered creatures of Rapture).

A number of reviews I’ve read rave about _BioShock_, and one even ran a comparison of the game against Halo 3. Ultimately, though, I decided that _BioShock_ is zombies meets steampunk meets science fiction. It’s that first part that turns me off to it and ultimately ends up being the reason why I won’t be buying the game.

Blog Content Accessibility

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I have something against blogs that make it difficult to read them remotely. I’m a big fan of RSS feeds. They’re the things that allow busy folks to keep track of the latest and greatest happenings on the Web with much greater ease. So there are a couple of things that kind of bug me:

* Blogs that don’t have RSS or that have them but put them in difficult-to-locate spots. There are _some_ blogs (like those found on MySpace, for instance) – not a lot of them – that simply don’t publish RSS feeds. I make it a habit to avoid these like the plague, no matter how quality the content is on these blogs. It’s just a bit too difficult and time-consuming to visit these on a regular basis to see if there are updates. There are others, though, that publish RSS feeds but place them in such a way as to make it extremely difficult to subscribe to them. Windows Live, for example, puts the feeds for their blogs in a place where browsers like Firefox can’t even auto-detect them. I guess that it shouldn’t be any real surprise that Microsoft makes you jump through unnecessary hoops in order to use their particular brand of blog service.

* People that use the <!--more--> tag on almost every entry. There are some people who propose that publishing the full content of your blog entries to your feed will reduce the amount of traffic to your blog. They suggest that the best way to get people to come to your blog is to give them a taste and then finish luring them in with the promise of more. I’m not one of those people. In my opinion, excerpting every single entry to your feed is only a little better than having no feed at all because it still forces readers to click through in order to finish reading. I usually avoid blogs that only put excerpts in their feeds (there is one “notable exception”:http://hawtymcbloggy.wordpress.com on my blogroll) for this very reason. I use the <!--more--> tag sparingly, usually just to hide spoiler information from those that don’t want to see it. Maybe using excerpts really does work well for most people. Personally, I prefer to post full content and write what I hope are quality entries that will encourage people to come to my site to comment.

Of course, these are just my personal opinions on these two items. As the saying goes, your own mileage on these may vary a bit on these, and I would be very interested in hearing about your experiences in these areas. That is, after all, what comments are all about.

Halo 3 Hype

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DeeJ and L Askan tag-team to bring us more drool-worthy bits from the upcoming Halo 3. It’s almost a sensory overload with all the promotions and advertisements and previews out there right now with this game. Mountain Dew is even in on the action with their Limited Edition Game Fuel drink with Halo 3 labeling.

Like DeeJ, I am, for the most part, in a self-imposed Halo 3 blackout until the 25th. I know enough about what’s going to be in the game to be positively hungry for this game – Spartan laser, flamethrower, two or three new types of grenades, special items, gorgeous maps, beautiful gameplay, online co-op, Forge, Saved Films, and so much more. I’ve little desire to find out much more, though, for fear of ruining the story, but I know I can’t wait to play.

Bungie has done something with the Halo franchise that I love to see in video games – they’ve built a beautiful and fun video game that also has a solid and intriguing storyline. We have characters that we actually care about in the forum of Master Chief, Cortana, and even Sergeant Johnson. Halo 2 ended in a cliffhanger that had gamers all around the world throwing their controllers across the room in frustration (but not me – I loved it), and Halo 3 promises to wrap up the current story arc and answer all (or at least most) of our lingering questions. As I’ve said before, I can’t wait.

But like I said, it’s actually pretty hard now to avoid all the information coming out everywhere about Halo 3 – pirated scans from magazines, Bungie-released previews, IMAX-powered gameplay previews, and more. Heck, there’s even a new Halo 3 Xbox 360 and a Halo 3 wireless headset that will available before too long. A number of websites are also giving away various Xbox 360 and Halo 3 packages as part of the gear-up for Halo 3′s release. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a marketing campaign this ambitious – but it sure is a heckuvalot of fun to watch.

Sorry, I think my geek is showing again. Carry on.