Categories
Technology Weblogging

Some Gratuitous Weblog Software Writing

I’m starting to get a pretty good handle on what WordPress 1.3 will be offering, both from the code and forum discussions. I also found a link in the support forum for a WordPress 1.3 release wiki, which details the individual changes.

(From the wiki software used, I wonder if the WordPress documentation wiki is being moved to MediaWiki – the same wiki software used for Wikipedia. We can only hope.)

I’ve discovered some of these changes with the work I did for Doug, am doing for Steve right this moment (you can see the actual transform taking place here, as I migrate the HTML table layout to pure CSS), Tim (if he doesn’t lose his heart to Tinderbox), and might be doing for Loren (if he has a mind for this direction, now that he knows I’m not disappearing at the end of the month).

One big change, and one I adore, is pagination. With this, search results and archives are now paginated to list twenty or so entries at a time, with navigation automatially handled to go back and forth in the list. If you’ve ever searched my site on say, ‘flower’, my but you’ll kill both your and my bandwidth. Pagination will eliminate this problem.

The developers are also providing a Dashboard, I think for an overall linking mechanism to the site and the features, but it’s still under development–right now there’s nothing in the page. and you’re redirected to new posts. They’ve also packaging themes into their own subdirectory, and you can install and switch between themes just by coping the files into the directory and clicking a button in the administration pages. This will be good if you like to play around with your site a lot.

Architecturally, for the tweakers, the individual global values that you used to access in code previously have been added to a general object, but the old global values are maintained for backwards compatibility, at least for one release. The organization of the pages has changed, with a new header and footer page, which should help make the pages a little cleaner to work with. Recently when I talked about keeping your weblog tool independent, I mentioned about a split between the content of the page before the posts, the post listings, and the content after the posts. This is mirrored in the WP page split between wp-header.php, index.php, and wp-footer.php. I like it.

There’s also been function changes, and I’m still exploring what these are. From what I read, existing functions will be supported in a deprecated state for at least one software release. Good for those who have tweaked their pages.

Multiple blog support isn’t there, but an interesting announcement was made last week for what sounds like might be a parallel branch of development called WordPress MU. This isn’t a ‘fork’ in the code (i.e. a new and separate development based on original code) as much as it is a ‘wrapper’ around WordPress, from what I’ve read. The announcement about it says that it provides both Smarty template support and multi-user/multi-weblog support–in hosted environments.

The multi-user/multi-weblog capability should make WordPress more attractive for those who need a classroom solution to weblog hosting – a tool that can be used to create many weblogs for many different people, but administered from one spot.

As for the use of the Smarty template system, I am curious if this can be dropped into a regular installation of WordPress, for those who would prefer Smarty over the embedded function calls. If so, this would make a nice option to those who are uncomfortable messing with PHP code directly. Where before a person did the following:

<?php the_date(‘’,'<h2>’,'</h2>’); ?>

They would, instead, use a Smarty template tag such as the following that would resolve to the function call:

<h2>{$smarty.now|date_format:”%Y-%m-%d”}</h2>

 

The sidebar is also split off into a separate file. This does concern me a bit from a design perspective as this tends to enforce a specific type of weblog look, the two column look.

As an aside from a discussion of WordPress 1.3, when Movable Type announced it was providing a dynamic PHP-based wrapper around Movable Type, I thought that the company would take core bits WordPress and modify these to point to their own database so that WordPress plugins and templates would work with the Movable Type database. With this, though users would have lost the Perl plugins for MT, they would have gained the PHP-based WordPress plugins. At least, those plugins that deal with parameterized data, only.

This wouldn’t be all that complicated either. Smarty could have been used to transform tags for the traditional MT users; while others could have used the WordPress embedded function calls (and themes) if they wished. Licensing wouldn’t have to be an issue because MT could continue to license the MT ‘engine’ with associate Perl code, and GPL’d the code for the PHP wrapper. They would gain friends from the open source community, while the supported, proprietary, corporate Perl code would still be there for corporate types who get nervous around the word ‘open’.

And wouldn’t this have been an interesting way to mix proprietary and GPL code?

Categories
Events of note History

The 1989 Hare and Hound Race

The program for the race yesterday featured a story about the 1989 balloon race, the only one where the balloons actually took off and landed in the same place (lack of wind). The story was so funny that I re-printed it here…with a photo. Of course.

A small issue with balloon “races”–of the Hare and Hound variety, such as the Great Forest Park Balloon Race–is that spectators rarely get to see both the beginning and end of the event. The balloons tend to fly away.

That wasn’t the case in the 1989 race. In fact, the balloons never left the park–they just flew from the Balloon Field to the eastern edge of Forest Park, near Kingshighway. Winds were extremely light. Hare pilot, Ted Staley, rightly judged that the balloons would never clear the city, or even make it to the Arch grounds, it was so calm.

The Hare landed across a lake. The hounds gently floated to the target. Some, literally. The ingenious pilots tried it all: Steve Lohr used the Slighshot Approach, with his crew swinging the basket of his flying seven-story balloon across the water to the ‘X’. Gene Grace tried the Cleopatra Crossing. His crew swam the lake, haulted the tethered balloon lines across, then pulled the basket to the target.

The race was contested greatly. Some heated exchanges were recorded. Then all were reminded that the trophy was a broken toaster, and protests weren’t allowed anyway because there is no protest procedure for the Great Forest Park Balloon Race (as noted by Ballooonmeister Henry Fett at the pilot’s meeting every year).

The result: Grace was awarded the win because of the damp effort of his crew. One balloon ripped through the trees, hit near the ‘X’ and was cited for second place and dim judgement.

I think you can see now why I enjoyed this race so much.

Categories
Weblogging

This is wrong on so many levels

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

As Matt Mullenweg said recently in comments about another post, this is wrong on so many levels.

Both Biz Stone and Robert Scoble have a ‘How to Win the Blogging Game’ entries, except their posts are titled, Promoting your Blog and How will your blog get discovered. There is much in what both write that I can agree with; but there is an underlying implication with both writings that the act of having our participation discovered is more important than the act of participating, itself.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

I do agree that webloggers can help themselves be discovered by pinging the recently updated services such as Pingomatic or weblogs.com or Technorati. Unless you’re writing for a closed audience, and aren’t interested in new readers, you’re going to want to ping when you post. Same can be said for making your site search engine friendly, though many of us are taking a closer look at the viability of this.

I also agree that comments are a wonderful calling card for other webloggers. I think that almost all of the people I read now I met at one time or another through links in other weblogs or through comments: in my weblog or other weblogs. I still think this, and links to specific posts, are great ways of connecting with new people.

I also see the benefit of putting your weblog on your business cards or email signature, or attaching it as part of your profile – if you want the extra visits (not everyone does). And of course, providing interesting material is always helpful if you want readers.

But Scoble talks about linking to other weblogs just to get them to notice you, and that reminds me of the kids we all knew back when we were young who would bring candy in so that the other classmates would be friends with them. And I also think this is much of a reason why many of the top webloggers are in the A-lists – because they have buzz and people want in on that buzz, not necessarily because anyone is that interested in what the person is saying.

He follows this with a suggestion to ‘hang out with’ the bloggers you want to connect with, such as Glenn Reynolds, or the gang that ended up at FooCamp. Leave aside that geographically, webloggers live in cities other than Boston, San Francisco, LA, Seattle, New York, London, and Tennessee, all this will do is give even more ego gratification to those in the upper echelons of weblogging. Bluntly, he’s advocating groupie behavior.

Wanting to meet people who you’ve come to know over time on weblogs is not only natural and healthy, it can be an exciting prospect–think about meeting people for the first time when you’ve read their writing for years.. And wanting to spend time with someone you admire or are interested in is a great way to grow personally and intellectually; isn’t this the main reason why we weblog? But wanting to ‘hang out’ with someone specifically to get your weblog noticed? Sad stuff. Very sad stuff.

I am more ambivalent about Scoble’s suggestion to do things for people and they’ll remember you. I happen to think it can be very satisfying doing things for others, but to do so primarily because you want to get more buzz for yourself or your weblog–well, all I can say is there is a fine line between whoring and marketing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with marketing your site, your abilities, or something you believe in; I don’t do it enough, myself. But marketing should be peripheral when you’re ‘doing things for others’.

I remember conferences and going to this bash or that put on by a company. This was expected and accepted as such – none of us believed that the invitations and gifts were personal. But to do something, personally, for others, personally, purely for marketing purposes can lead to mixed messages and confusion about the reasons you’re doing what you’re doing. There’s few things I can stand less than a person who is acclaimed a ‘hero’ for helping others, when the only reason they did their ‘good deed’ is to add to their own status.

Someone bringing martinis for a group of people in a biz-tech environment can be seen as indulging in friendly marketing without any confusion about motives. But taking a weblogger out to lunch just to chat, or exchanging books or gifts, or even dating a person–that’s personal. If you do this just because you’re trying to get hits and buzz, that’s cheap. And pretty sleazy too.

As for pitching your site or a post to others–that’s a tough call. Sometimes we want something we believe in to have a wider audience than we have ourselves, and I can’t help thinking this can be a good thing. But pitching something just to get links: see above.

Biz Stone had some of the same suggestions as Scoble, but he also gets into type of weblog posts and following memes.

Like Scoble’s suggestion on doing things for others, I am ambivalent about Stone’s suggestion to follow the memes that circulate throughout weblogging. On the one hand, they can be a lot of fun and a great way to connect with others. He mentioned the Friday Five, but I’ll also add the Carnival of the Cats, which has been nothing but fun when I’ve participated with it recently. The Ecotone projects that people participate in also seems to provide a very positive kernel to some very interesting writing, as well as a way of finding great new folks to read.

But in each of these cases, the people participating are doing so based less on hits and more on interest. The interest is in the topic of the meme, not the fact that it is a meme. I think that someone participating just to get noticed is going to come across phony – as if they’ve studied weblogging as a genre and are now applying the ‘Ten rules to become an A-Lister in 6 months or less’.

As for style of weblog writing, Stone wrote:

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Note the brevity of the aforementioned Kottke post. People will come back daily to read your fresh new work but spare them the one thousand word diatribes. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on. Think of you[r] blog as a cumulative effect. This doesn’t mean you should never practice some long form writing now and then, it’s just something to keep in mind.

This is wrong on oh so many levels. (I love this phrase, and I’m not even sucking up to Matt. Honest.)

You, who ever you are, do what you want; but if you’re only here to be the next Kottke, or Scoble, or Stone, quit now. You’ll never get to their position aping their behavior or their rules; you’ll just end up miserable because you’re not writing the way you want, and for the joy of the act. Fuck me, too many sheep in this environment. How can your ‘ba-ah-ahh’ be heard when you’re surrounding by people bleating the same thing?

Someone let in the wolves – it’s feeding time.

Of course, you have to take what I write with a grain of salt. Domestic, refined, mined salt. I’m not as popular as Robert Scoble or Biz Stone, so one can assume that their suggestions work, while my ‘long form diatribe’ won’t do you a bit of good if all you want is to be known.

Or as a friend (someone who I actually like and respect as a person, regardless of how many hits he could send me) says: do what you want, anyway, because we’re all just making this stuff up.

Use of surnames does not imply lack of friendly feeling towards those who have been referenced in this weblog entry. Just a quirkly thing I feel like doing today.

Categories
Browsers

More on Firefox

Another new, or I should say heavily modified, feature I accidentally discovered with the RC 1.0 version of Firefox (I don’t think it was in the .9x releases) is the “Find in this Page” text search capability. Previously, the search function was a window that would open, you’d type in the phrase, and it would scroll to item.

Now when you click the link for “Find in this Page”, a bar opens at the bottom of the browser. As you type in the word you want to find, Firefox immediately scrolls to the first word that matches the letters as they are being typed. And it works very, very fast, too.

You can also highlight the words if you want to see all occurrances in the page. And leave the Find bar up for use in all your pages, if you’re doing some heavy researching on a term.

Firefox beats out any other browser I’ve used, on either my Mac or my Windows laptops. Unfortunately, I still have to use IE for printing on my Windows 2000 laptop because Firefox does not work well with my printer. In fact, I have to re-boot the machine to kill the runaway process triggered by Firefox if I forget and do a print. But the HP drivers I have for this printer are badly behaved anyway (I must see if there are updates that fix the problem) so I’m not blaming the browser.

Categories
Stuff

Arghhh

Damme I almost forgot – today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. Shiver me timbers, I am such a gob.

I thought I would re-post some writing and graphics from previous Pirate Day essays. Either that, or I could write on the upcoming US Presidential race–the two are interchangeable.

re-printed from 2003’s Talk Like a Pirate Day

Ye be a sorry lot and not a True Pyrate amongst ye! Me thinks it’s because ye can’t talk like a pyrate. How can ye be a True Pyrate if ye can’t talk like one, I says to meself.

A few lessons in how to Talk like a Pyrate for the Pyrate Impaired:

From Maritime Pirates

Cackle Fruit – hen’s eggs

Hempen Halter – hangman’s noose

Nelson’s Folly – rum

Run a rig – play a trick

From Pyrate Talk:

To Go on Account – a pleasant term used by pyrates to describe the act of turning pyrate. The basic idea was that a pyrate was more “free lance” and thus was, more or less, going into business for himself.

Take a Caulk – on deck of a ship, between planks, was a thick caulk of black tar and rope to keep water from between decks. This term came to mean to “take a nap” either because sailors who slept on deck ended up with black lines across their backs or simply because sailors laying down on deck were as horizontal as the caulk of the deck itself.

Quarter – deriving from the idea of “shelter”, quarter was given when mercy was offered by the pyrates. To give no quarter was to indicate that none would be spared. Quarter was often the prize given to an honourable loser in a pyrate fight. If enraged, however, a pyrate would deprive the loser any such luxury.

From The Olympian:

Aye, aye: “I’ll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over.”

Arr: “Yes,” “I agree,” “I’m happy,” “I’m enjoying this beer,” “My team is going to win it all,” “I saw that television show, it sucked!” and “That was a clever remark you or I just made.”

Beauty: The best possible pirate address for a woman. Always preceded by “me,” as in “C’mere, me beauty” or even “me buxom beauty.”

Lubber: This is short for landlubber and is the seaman’s version of land lover, mangled by typical pirate disregard for elocution.

From The Pirate’s Realm:

Avast – “Avast Ye!” from the Dutch term for ‘hold fast’ and means “Stop and pay attention.”, like, “Get a load of this.”

Black Spot – a death threat among pirates made of a black spot or mark on a scrap of paper with more specific detail sometimes written on the other side, referred to in the story, Treasure Island.

Black Jack – large drinking cups made of leather that were made stiffer with an application of tar

Bumboo – A drink of the West Indies made with watered rum and flavored with sugar and nutmeg

Arrr.

as for the flags…from the same day

Arrr, me beauties! Cast your eyes on the beauty of the flag we be sailing today, for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Some seek to cast our maidenly efforts into shadow with their offerings but soon find themselves cast adrift, the scallywags.

Arrr!

jollybandana2.jpg

(Reverting to multisyllabic non-gutteral speech)

I know that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, rather than just plain Pirate Day, but a history buff such as myself can’t go through the day without imparting a few nuggets of piratical lore. For instance, the flag that I started and that Elaine beautifully modified was actually an adaption of the flag that the priate John Rackham used to fly. Rather than the traditional skull and crossbones, Rackham showed crossed swords beneath the skull’s head because, rumor has it, he was always up for a good fight.

As for the skull and crossbones, known as the Jolly Roger, rather than being flown to strike terror in the hearts of those about to be attacked, it was, in some ways, a reassurance – a promise that if the prey gave in without a fight, their lives would be spared. Maybe.

However, if a pirate flew a flag that was red in color, this was a signal that no quarter would be given, the pirates were out for blood. In fact, it’s been hypothosized that the name “Jolly Roger” was from the French joli rouge – pretty red.

So, what does our flag say? The crossed swords could signify that the women who fly it are up for a fight, but this message is somewhat softened by the gentle coloring and delicate detail, the tasteful bandana, and the elegant and stylish beaten gold earrings.

Perhaps what the flag is saying is that the women who fly it are up for a fight, but we’d rather not, thanks all the same. Or perhaps all it says is that though we may be deadly, we haven’t lost our keen fashion sense.

Of course, if a ship was carrying webloggers, there would be only one possible flag…

Updated for modern times, in honor of the political pundits among us who really understand what talking like a pirate is all about – the cat would be wearing jammies.