Followed this from digg. I’m still laughing.

edit: Sigh. Apparently the video was removed by the author. Presumably a DMCA “violation”. God Paramount/Viacom can be douches…

HA! I win. Alternate copy located.

The long awaited 0.2 release of my first WP plugin is finally here. My apologies for the delay, I’ll do better on the next release…

This version adds support for limiting the maximum number of tags displayed, some code clean-up and approximately 5 new lines in the readme. I’ve adjusted some of the titles/filenames/etc. to be more clear. ITC seems as good an acronym as any, so the name will likely stay.

The new version can be downloaded from my projects page.

see also: ITC 0.1
update: Someone added the plug to a codex-style site. Neato.

“See a need, fill a need.”

I present the initial release of my 1st complete and functional WordPress plugin.

Improved Tag Cloud 0.1

ITC is designed specifically to combat a problem I have with the normal tagging cloud and related plugins currently available. Namely, the number of terms generated by someone who’s pretty bonkers about accurate tagging/searching. This blog with it’s sub-100 posts already has well over 100 tags and that’s only because I was distilling them down to keep the cloud small!

All ITC does is ask you what the minimum amount of posts you require a tag to have before it’s displayed in your cloud. For my blog a setting of ONE actually works perfectly! Your mileage may vary. I didn’t really test it (or code against it) but an excessively high number would likely produce … uh … nothing? Don’t do that!

I have also added a “My Stuff” page to the index as well where I’ll chronicle my ongoing coding exploits. THE HORROR!

This is my first foray into WordPress hacking, so be gentle.

update: The E! True Hollywood Story on this project was that I wanted to generate some code I could show a potential employer that was applicable to their business. Long story short, they kicked me to the curb after (what I thought) was two excellent interviews with some of the nicest people you’d care to meet. I guess you never can tell with people…

Minor housekeeping and such this evening. Pay no mind if you’re looking for actual, you know, words and stuff.

Dropped the 2.3.1 wordpress upgrade and a couple wp-plugs in/out/upgraded. I dropped the Technorati tag generator in favor of a newer iconic one. Saves an extra line on the posts and makes it nice and easy to cloud into the local site or techno. Still looking for good cloud and link widgets. I can’t believe someone else hasn’t hit on something similar to what I want yet. Oh well, maybe I’ll finish writing mine.

I was moving through the Akismet catches from last week and there was actually a comment-spam from a technorati category. Not sure if that’s supposed to be funny or sad, but I chuckled…

edit: Some days I just don’t understand…

So I was browsing the referrer/stats/miscellany this afternoon and one of the links I followed led me to the best non-porn use on the interwebs – free shit. Take My Tech is a blog listing various pieces of used “tech stuff” and invites users to post comments for any item they’re interested in. When the comments ding 100, a random commenter gets the goods.

The  site is powered by AdSense which funds the transfer of the goods and, I’m assuming, a little profit. Take a look, drop a post, you might get lucky!

Pushing Daisies, however, most definitely is.

This is the best new show I’ve seen in a crop of pretty damn good shows.

I love the cast.
I love the cinematography.
I love the premise.

Watch this show.

edit: because some of you won’t get it…

As is fast becoming infamous, I watch a lot of TV. So it’s no surprise when I break down the new hotness every fall.

All good.

• Chuck (NBC, Monday)
• Journeyman (NBC, Monday)
• Reaper (CW, Tuesday)
• Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, Wednesday)
• Lucy The Daughter of the Devil (Toon, Sunday)
• Bionic Woman (NBC, Wednesday)

All bad.

• Big Bang Theory (CBS, Monday)

On the bubble.

• Big Shots (ABC, Thursday)
• Moonlight (CBS, Friday)

Did you actually want commentary? Yeash. Pushy bastards…

Read the rest of this entry »

In my previous lamentations regarding the recent WordPress 2.3 upgrade I bemoaned the lack of good options for splicing the new tagging into Technorati, which I had already grown accustomed to using. Will Garcia over at Gormful.com apparently shared my angst and, as coders do, solved the problem.

Enter WP23-Technorati-Tags. A few code changes to the theme and voila. The already-handled tagging supplies both local-cloud links and Technorati links. It’s a little redundant, ’tis true, but I’m sure I (or most likely someone else) will find a more elegant way to present that information. On first blush I’m thinking that use a “cloud” display for the local tags and leave the techno ones in the clean list format.

hmm, that is a good idea. Mayhaps I’ll look into that!

Now if I could only get WP to automatically put ALL of my posts into the same, single, ALREADY DEFAULT category we’d be golden.

I love upgrades.

Multiple plugin fuckery, editing, site re-organizations, etc. are now “complete”. Apparently I’m still doing things wrong, so we’ll see what breaks in a week. The new mod-rewrite stuff is ridiculous – and I’ve been using it in “regular” Apache setups for years!

I’ve been tagging/re-tagging everything that appears on the front page as of the last post, which populated the new cloud. Still no connection to technorati, but that’ll get in there eventually I hope. I’m still working on getting the categories/tags set the way I want them. Shit happens, I guess.

I added links to two new special pages, accessible via the menu bar (top right) or the sidebar. Unimpressive stats, to say the least, but I’m a nerd.

edit: As referenced by this post, Technorati support has returned!

As chronicled here and here I, on occasion, make bad choices when it comes to my own personal web stuffs. For reasons that escape my current understanding I upgraded my perfectly tuned and working WordPress 2.2.3 install to the “eagerly anticipated” 2.3. I followed the preflight checklists the the letter and even used a “preflight” plugin that verified everything I intended to use was on the compatibility list.

Result? The db failed to upgrade on the first, second and 3rd passes. A db/file restore got my old stuff back up and running again tried again after reading some of the troubleshooting instructions. Huzzah, the db upgraded cleanly…sort of. All my categories were deleted and the new cano-rewriting engine sent my crap into infinite loops for a solid hour until I moved things around. Apparently trying to redirect “www” traffic AND having my blog in a folder called “/blog” was an unforeseen function. Oy.

I made the assumption that eventually I’ll have to deal with this crap so I chose to do it now. I just finished re-categorizing every post I’ve ever written. Of course all my old technorati tags are gone now as well and the native tagging features are … whatever. I don’t know at this point. I was under the impression that I would be able to (finally) just use tags instead of categories but there are still two blanks. Color me confused, I guess.

Anywho, bear with me. I’m searching for a 2.3 compatible theme that doesn’t suck so I can re-mod everything to get back to where I’m happy. If shit is broken blame THESE GUYS and not me, ‘kay?

Also: It seems that 2.3 is dogshit slow. Sorry. If it really starts to be an issue I’ll launch a ticket with dreamhost and see if there’s something they can tell me.

edit (11:25pm): After a few hours of hax0r I think I have this working somewhat reasonable. I really like the theme, which means that it’s already in use on 99.9% of all blogs ever. Such is life. This theme is actually plugin/tag aware so everything seems to be kosher. I’m using about half the plugins now that I was before. a) in an effort to speed things up and b) because they’re broke.

edit, part the second: technorati reconnected!