I’ve upgraded my blog because there just isn’t any way to make sure that my JavaScript Animated Collapsing Categories Widget will work the way I intended to make it work. Well, by and large, things are great. I love the faster posting, better GUI editor, autosave, and lots more. . .
But the darned Link Categories are killing me. I was under the impression that the plugin I made worked, and certainly, it does not crash. Nevertheless, there are a few vexing issues that have cropped up with the new Category regimen.
Here’s the deal: if you install WP2.1 fresh, as I did with my wife’s blog, it will create a “Blogroll” Category for you. All Link Categories you create after that will have the “Blogroll” Category as their parent.
However, if you *upgrade* from WP2.0+, it does not create this “Blogroll” Category. It *does* create the sub-categories, but they all appear as children of the “Uncategorized” Category. At least, it does not create the top level Category if you, like me, do not have anything in your top-level “Blogroll” and have everything in sub-categories.
I discovered this problem when I noticed that Blogroll categories were showing up in my list. I’d tied the conditional that checks for Blogroll Categories to the cat_ID that is used in a cleanly-installed WP, which was dumb, but then I realized that no condition that relies on a “Blogroll” Category will work. This makes life very difficult for me in terms of my plugin.
The only other option I can think of is to check to see if a given Category includes any links. There is a “link_count” column in the database which could be used. However, if a person chooses to create a Category but not put anything in it right away, that person won’t see the Category. I suppose that this is not the most world-shattering problem I’ve ever run into, but certainly it’s a potential pitfall for those using my plugin.
The thing is this: I still consider this a design flaw. Regardless of whether or not there are any items in the Blogroll proper, in order to make a rational relationship between Links and Categories, this Category must exist. Also, to make the Link Categories children of the Uncategorized Category defeats the whole purpose of the new switch.
WordPress 2.1 Gotchas » Technology, Blogging and New Media
After my upgrade, my blogroll is all screwy.
I mentioned in my 10 Things article that there were semantic reasons for the combination (at least on the back end) of categories and what was formerly knows as “Links”. You’ll notice that Links is now called Bookmarks and is actually a category to itself among the Category listing.
Since my upgrade, it seems blogroll items appear in multiple categories.
There is a bug in 2.1 that is not serious in terms of security but can do strange things with blogroll links. Namely, upgrading from a 2.0.x blog can result in some blogroll items being added to other categories. This can be manually fixed and no data is lost, but it is an annoyance. [Trac 3418]
Technorati Tags: WordPress, 2.1, Categories, Blogroll
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February 26, 2007, 9:28 am Thoughts on the BTR Show This Weekend
OK, so I’ve completed what is, for all intents and purposes, the first official broadcast of The Flight of the Dragonfly. How do I think it went?
Well, I had seven listeners during the show. Considering the fact that I’ve done about 0 advertising, that’s not too bad, actually. RochesterTurning.com arguably did more (thanks, guys!) There were some technical glitches on BTR’s end (for some reason, I could not call into my phone number for five critical minutes of the show!), but they got worked out and the show started.
Strange, but I felt a bit more self-conscious than I did on the previous flight. Perhaps its like they say about parachuting: it’s that second jump that’s really scary. Also, I had a guest, Jon Greenbaum, which added a bit of pressure, even though he and I have known each other for a fairly long time. Still, I got most (but not quite all) of my segments in where I wanted them to be.
The truth is, I’m still juggling my tools quite a bit. I suppose this is normal. I downloaded an “Egg Timer” application to keep track of the time, but forgot to turn it on until far enough into the show that it wasn’t worth the effort. One irritating bit for me is that Skype will automatically disconnect you if it doesn’t hear you talking, which means that I basically had to call the show right at the start time. I’m looking into ways around that, maybe I’ll do a bit of experimenting tonight.
Things to improve on the next flight:
All that, and I have miles of coding to do! Plus, I’ve got articles that need writing. Damnation! I need a partner in this.
Flight of the DragonFly, The Next Flight || BlogTalkRadio.com
Interviewing Jon Greenbaum of Metro Justice
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February 21, 2007, 1:52 pm Bloggers and Campaigns: a Muzzle for Us All
I’ve been half-heartedly watching - and quietly thinking about - the whole John Edwards/Bloggers brew-ha-ha for a while now. Since I don’t personally have any desire to be a campaign blogger or proximity thereof, at first, I didn’t feel as though I had anything to add to the debate, particularly.
Still, something about this whole deal bugged me. Reading the post linked to below, it dawned on me what that was:
BlogTalkRadio » Blog Archive » Do Bloggers Belong on Campaigns?
Amanda leaving Pandagon to blog for Edwards is a bit like the late Molly Ivins giving up writing her column to do press for Hillary — a big waste! Amanda writes pointed, opinionated, viciously satirical and clearly controversial commentary. Anyone with any familiarity with her writing would know that she would need to be defanged if not muzzled entirely in the role of campaign blogger.My worry was that she would kind of fade away into the kind of boring “the candidate was at (insert boring early state event here) and his message of blah blah blah really resonated with the fine voters of Des Moines/Manchester/Las Vegas/Charleston” stuff that campaign bloggers have to write and Pandagon would limp along without her.
Instead she became the story and a lightening rod for criticism and outright thuggery from the right wing. The progressive blogosphere circled the wagons and everyone came out looking bad.
What worries me about this is the trickle-down effect it has on political blogging and free speech.
There are a lot of bloggers out there impressed with the blogosphere’s ability to “have an impact.” There are more and more politicians out there impressed with the blogosphere’s ability to “get the message out.” To some extent, these worlds are - and always have been - mutually exclusive.
The “difference” that blogs have made has largely been owing to the freedom with which we are able to speak. Politicians are kept quiet by political concerns; journalists are largely cowed by the corporate entities that own them, by political correctness and by an superabundant desire to remain “objective,” whatever that means. Bloggers are free to look into little stories and find the big ones, and we’re free to ignore the big stories in search of the little ones. And we can say whatever we like in the meanwhile.
But as the two bloggers on the Edwards campaign found out, jumping ship and moving into the actual political world means changing everything you do online and hoping no one digs into what you’ve said in the past. Not only that, but disavowing any relationships (or blogroll affiliations) with unseemly blogs that dare to speak their minds contrary to the best interest of the politician or political party for which you now work.
And that’s the real trap, because as bloggers get ambitious about their political blogging, they will fail to endorse those who just want to speak lest they be associated with the rabble; those who do what blogging actually is and what made it so powerful, that is. Bloggers who consistently carry the message (and the water) will see their Google and Technorati rankings soar while those of us who choose to speak unpleasant political truths get marginalized.
Eventually, there really isn’t much more reason to check the blogs than there was to check the politicians websites. The “blog” becomes the same old “news” section that every corporate or political website has.
It is, of course, just one more growth cycle for one more new technology in this world. In fact, it may be yet another inevitability in life that this, too, will disappear into the mainstream. I do still very much hope that those of us interested in providing an alternative can still have a voice.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, Net-Roots, Campaigning
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February 19, 2007, 4:14 pm Blogger Tip: Leveraging Bloglines Playlists
Just popping my head into the blog to jot down a quick suggestion for you bloggers out there. If you sometimes feel like you’re completely weighed down by the sheer volume of feeds you need to read (or, believe you need to read), I have a potential solution for you: checkout Bloglines and their “Playlists” option for reading your news.
With playlists, you can have a panel of the five most recent posts for each blog you put into a given playlist, which then get arranged into tiles. You can move your stuff around however you like so that the most important stuff goes on top. Best of all, you can quickly scan headlines for relevant content and just skip over stuff you don’t want to read. That’s exceptionally handy stuff, right there, if you ask me!
Here’s how I leverage Playlists to my advantage when researching a topic:
I’ll go out and get custom RSS feeds from Google News or similar news readers, then add them to my Bloglines feeds, usually in a throw-away folder called “Working,” or somesuch. Each of these is a keyword search on relevant topics for my research, but I separate the keyword searches so as not to make the results too narrow.
For example, if I’m researching Alexander Litvinenko (the Russian spy who recently died of polonium-210 exposure), I would search for “Alexander Litvinenko” on Google, Technorati, and Yahoo. Also, I search for “Boris Berezhovsky” and “polonium” on similar search engines.
Thus I have effectively, passively searched the Internet for information relevant to my subject, and I only need to check each feed for the needed content as it appears in the searches. But who wants to go through each feed every day?
Not me. However, by using the playlist option in Bloglines, I don’t need to. Rather, I add all these feeds into one playlist and scan it every so often for new information as it happens.
Cool, eh?
Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Playlists, Blogging
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February 15, 2007, 2:33 pm Exciting New Kodak Printer Line
OK, sure. I work for Kodak, now. I suppose I can perhaps be accused of being partial, but then again, if you’re from Rochester and you’re not partial to Kodak, what does that make you?
I’ve had the opportunity to check out Kodak’s new product lines for the digital market since working for the company, and I have to say, I’m quite impressed. I am equally disappointed in our local media for not doing a better job of covering technology news, which might perhaps assuage some of the cynicism about the company and focus the public’s attention on keeping them here in Rochester rather than joking about their imminent departure.
The most exiting one I’ve found thus far (and the one I plan on purchasing immediately upon getting my first paycheck) is the new EasyShare line of All-in-One printers. Perhaps with Kodak’s help, the days of getting “prison love” in the pursuit of those pricey ink cartridges will be a thing of the past:
Printers With a Thrifty Eye Toward the Cost of Replacement Ink - New York Times
Kodak has been all about color for decades, but right now they want you to think about green — as in money. The company is introducing a line of EasyShare all-in-one inkjet printers and selling replacement ink at a price that it says will cut the cost of printing supplies up to 50 percent, without compromising on quality or speed.
The secret here is that, with normal printer cartridges, the print head is built into the cartridge. That’s expensive. With the new Kodak line, the ink cartridge is just that: an ink container, nothing more. I presume that the reason previous incarnations kept the two together was largely to avoid spillage, and I further presume that Kodak has found a way around this problem. Let us hope, but I have not seen any reviews of note, yet.
But there’s more features than just a cheap cartridge (although that’s enough, as far as I’m concerned). For example, even the cheapest model in the series, the 5100, is compatible with BlueTooth. That’s a handy little option for you, eh? They also all support PTP/IP connections. That means you could potentially print out pictures directly from your BlueTooth- or PTP/IP-enabled camera, from a distance of up to 100 yards!
OK, so you may have very little reason to use these particular technologies, right now. But don’t you feel better (and just a weencie-bit more manly) knowing you have the option?
The 5300 (why do companies insist on odd-numbered models?) goes one step further by adding the option to print directly off a camera’s mem card. It offers a handy little 3-inch window for just such occasions, so you can easily crop the image before printing. Finally, the 5500 offers a feed bed and faxing capabilities, for those of you who have a need (or a perceived need. You da man) to fax files from time to time.
The camera lines are getting pretty interesting, too. Especially the Z-series, which feature extra zooming capabilities with a killer Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens. Curiously, however, the model with the highest zoom in the series has the lowest pixel resolution. Still, the prices of the Kodak cameras is comparable to my Canon camera, which along with what I hope is a still-respected name, should serve Kodak well in the months ahead.
Technorati Tags: Kodak, Camera, Printer, Technology
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February 9, 2007, 3:45 pm Handy Little Doo-Dad for FireFox
God, I just love, love, LOVE Firefox. Is there a web developer alive out there that disagrees?
While updating my Firebug extension, I noticed that one of the bug fixes for 1.0.1 was a compatibility issue with another extension, the HTML Validator.
“Pray tell,” I asked, “what could this machine be?” Well, as it turns out, its yet another breathtakingly useful tool in the arsenal of a web developer, this one validates a page based on the W3C standards without posting it to the W3C site for the results:
Html Validator for Firefox and Mozilla
HTML Validator is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing. The details of the errors are seen when looking the HTML source of the page.
Of course, this simple explanation sells the plugin somewhat short. The big thing is this: ordinarily, you would need to go to the W3C validator and put in the URL, then it spits back a bunch of errors and warnings with line numbers. All well and good, but now you have to go through your code to find out where that line occurs. . . and oh, by the way, if you’re writing PHP-generated HTML, then there isn’t a standing document where you can find that line.
Aggravating? Oh, you betcha! But with the Validator extension, just as with FireBug, you get to see the currently-laid out HTML as it happens and find exactly what is causing the error, thus saving yourself considerable time digging through your PHP include files to figure out which one’s causing the freakin’ error message!!!
Technorati Tags: FireFox, Firebug, HTML Validator, Tools, Development
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February 9, 2007, 1:15 pm Chron Jobs in WordPress 2.1
I tell ya, folks, WP2.1 just keeps getting more and more interesting every time I look into it. If only I had time, I’d upgrade. I’m still working on three projects that have to come first and just got a new gig working for Kodak, so I’m a bit booked.
Here is an interesting discussion of the new “pseudo-chron” functionality added to the latest version of WP. Yep, I can smell some new Widgety-goodness in the works, folks. I just need to find time to do it!
Timing is everything: scheduling in WordPress - Development on a Shoestring
What has been produced is a system that allows plugin developers to schedule events to occur at certain times. It does this by checking the current time against the list of scheduled tasks every time a page is loaded on the site. If the set time has passed the task (a callback function) is done.Getting the scheduling to do what it should is going to require a working knowledege of how WordPress hooks, actions & filters work.
Technorati Tags: WordPress, Chron Job, Scheduling
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