Wordpress 2.7

I know I’m quite a bit late to the game. But I finally got around to upgradding wordpress to 2.7. You also very likely noticed that I switched back to the Unstandard theme by Derek Punsalan. I dont know what to say, I just simply like its front page elegance.

First Site Using Evincere

http://liulei.name/ is the first blog I know of (besides mine) that is using Evincere. Its kind of exciting! Except that I can’t read anything posted on the blog (without the help of a translator), and it appears that the owner of the blog removed the line at the footer that credits me with its creation (BOOO!)

But Technorati caught the link as a reaction before it was removed.

Amazon Wishlist Plugin

Chadd had asked me a while back for a birthday wishlist, I hadn’t responded back to him yet because I wanted to try to get my Amazon wishlist directly on my blog. And thanks to a slightly tweaked version of the Amazon Wishlist Plugin by Ryan Prins I am proud to present My Amazon Wishlist kindly formatted to match the rest of my site.

Slightly tweaked you ask? Well although this plugin does an awesome job of getting my amazon wishlist, it did it with pages and in a markup I found difficult to format. So I created a new function, which is mostly a clone of the original calling function but this version aggregates all the items onto a single page, and in a format I could more easily work with. I did however, ditch the use of images that the original function had.

Anyway, if your in the same boat as me, and want to get all of your wishlist items onto a single page, this may just be the function for you. All you have to do is append the following code directly before the closing ?> line in the amazon-wishlist.php file, and change the call in your wishlist page to this function. I’ve included the CSS as well. Enjoy.

/**
  * Print a single page with the entire wishlist for all eyes to see!
  */
  function displayPagelessAmazonWishlist() {
  global $listDetails, $imgSize;
 
  /* Get the complete, and formatted list of items */
  $niceItems = array();
  $listData = prepareAmazonWishlistItems(1); /* Initialize the data */
  for($i = 1; $i <= $listDetails['TOTALPAGES']; $i++) {
  $listData = prepareAmazonWishlistItems($i);
  foreach ($listData as $item) {
  $nice = prepareAmazonWishlistEntry($item);
  $niceItems[$nice['PRODUCTGROUP']][] = $nice;
  }
  }
 
  /*
  echo '<pre>';
  print_r($niceItems);
  echo '</pre>';
  */
 
  if(!empty($niceItems)) {
 
  foreach ($niceItems as $group) {
 
  $h3 = $group[0]['PRODUCTGROUP'];
  $output .= "<h3>$h3</h3>\n";
 
  foreach ($group as $item) {
 
  $dateAdded = date('m/d', strtotime($item['DATEADDED']));
  /* Cheap fix to assure XHTML compliance, this should really happen in prepareAmazonWishlistEntry() */
  $item[TITLE] = htmlspecialchars($item[TITLE]);
  $title = "<a href=\"$item[DETAILPAGEURL]\" title=\"$item[TITLE]\"><span> $dateAdded </span> $item[TITLE]</a>";$output .= "<div>$title</div>\n";
 
  unset($item);
  }
  unset($group);
  }
 
  } else {
  $output = "<p><strong>Error!</strong> There was a problem building your wish list, please try again later.</p>";
  }
 
  echo $output;
  }

Easily Distracted

[fa:p:a=blog-images,id=468655827,j=l,s=s,l=p]Yeah, so….

In case you didn’t notice, I have a new theme (again). Which is particularly funny to me anyway, because I never even finished the one I was working on in this post. Oh well … This is probably for the best.

In the end, I decided that I didn’t really have the time to build a theme from scratch, it just takes to long. So I went with a pre-built theme by 5thirtyone (Wordpress V2), the same designer that did my brothers theme (Foliage Mod). I’ve made some minor adjustments to it, but probably not enough for anybody to really notice so the credit certainly goes to Derek Punsalan of 5thirtyone

Most notably though, in my opinion anyway, is that I’ve ditched using Gallery2 for managing my pictures and conformed into using Flickr. It means I’ve given up complete control since Flickr isn’t installed on my server, its actually run by Yahoo. But thats both good and bad. again with the “I dont have the time” theme, I don’t have to control Flickr. Also, Flickr seems to have a better API, so I was able to install a Wordpress plugin, FAlbum By Elijah Cornell, that puts all the pictures right on my website without having to fool around. There are a few other really good plugins installed to, but I’ll leave those for another post.

I’m interested to hear what you have to say about the theme, all you have to do is post a comment

Mainstream Blogging

What is on the top of every computer geeks dreams list? Meet George Lucas of course! However, a very close second is meeting a hot chick who not only knows about technology, but understands and loves it.

I’ve got mine, but the rest of you may be interested in getting to know Justine Ezarik; Mac user, blogger, internet lover and new media connoisseur..

Akismet

Dont ask me how to pronouce it, or even what it means. But it sure does seem to do the job.

I typically get a lot of spam comments here on the blog, its why I have comment approval enabled. But after having to go through and purge over 1,000 comments the other day I decided it was time to get proactive about this problem and I configured the Akismet plugin for Wordpress.

Two days later… I still haven’t had to delete a single spam comment and as of this post Akismet has blocked 17 comments. Granted its still pretty early to draw any serious conclusions, but so far I’m satisfied. I may even be able to loosen my rules on commenting so that the comments you make will show up when you make them, instead of when I realized you made them and approve them.

An interesting post

I was perusing the internet, as I am known to do on occasion, and came across the Earthling blog ( and in particular, this post which contains images of things that my not be immediatly recognizable. So I thought: “Hmm… I could do something similar and kill two birds with one stone, see who visits the site regularly, and I can play with lightbox some more”.

So … with that said; I present you with a few Artifacts from Indemnity. If I can think of a worthwhile prize for any particular items I’ll let you guys know.

Piss Poor Peepage

I was recently going through a lot of the posts here on my site, updating dead links and putting the magical lightbox on images in the posts I ran across the post I made about 8 months back when I got myself on 25peeps and I decided to hop on over there and take a look at the new blood.

I was completely disappointed though. It seems that the half naked images and blogs about sexually adventurous women has taken over.

Dont get me wrong, I like half naked pictures and blogs about sexually adventurous women. But thats not what I expect, or want to see when I go to a site like 25peeps. To me, its a sign of the downfall of a great idea. Its become a shock contest, which I dont think was ever the intention.

Themeing and Scheming

So you probably noticed the change in the way the site looks. I spent a few hours on the weekend creating this new theme and planning a few others.

You may have also noticed the primary links up in the header on the right, let me take a brief moment to explain.

A little more than a year ago I was pretty heavy into creating open source application extensions (Themes, Modifications, Plug-ins etc). I want to get back into it. So I’m arranging my sites around that theme. How much of any of what I want to do will happen is still probably anybody’s guess. Last time, I got completely turned off of the thing when a Developer I was working with made so many un-documented changes to one of my applications that I basically lost touch with it, and when he one day disappeared on me, I was left trying to support something I knew very little about.

I also had a lot of people not understanding that I do this on the side, in between working, school, homework and my girlfriend (in no particular order) and all the duties and responsibilities that come with those things, so I’m linking my blog and personal gallery in with everything else. But you know my blog, what it entails and what I use it for so I’ll glaze over that subject.

Before I start explaining each of the other two sites let me start by saying I haven’t spent much, if any, time on the themes for these sites. So they will be changing to match the look and feel of my blog. Its the template that I’ll use for anything else I put on this conglomerate of sites.

tinyforge.com

(labeled ‘Wiki’ in the links): Tinyforge (tinyforge.com & tinyforge.net) is more or less the central entry point for people interested in my developments more than my personal life. Its a Wiki, like any other Wiki you’ve seen. And at least for the time being, its completely open to edits.

This site will be the location that contains all my applications and designs, as well as download links, documentation, common support and other similar stuff. Think of it as a users manual written in pencil. When you have a question you can open to that section, but if you see a mistake or want to add to it, just change it.

This should help me stay on top of the documentation and common support of any of my applications.

dormlife.us

(labeled ‘Forum’ in the links): For a two way communication of support, you can use the forum. However, its not necessarily the only thing the forum can be used for. I have other hobbies, other interests, even some local events may show up on the Forum. I don’t actually expect the forum will get much use in that facility though, because most the topics that might show up on there, end up in my face to face conversations with my friends anyway. But its there if anybody wants to use it.

So that’s the scheme for the Indemnity Web as I’m going to be calling it from now on. Let me know if you come across any bugs that need to be worked out for my blog’s theme, its the only one I’m considering done.

Happy Birthday Jessica!

I don’t know if she reads my blog at all, I think the only reason she will be on here is to read about the hike. But her birthday is today, and so I thought I would take a second to wish her Happy B-Day.