Category Archives: Tech

Gizmos, widgets, and doodads.

XCache Object Cache Plugin for WordPress 2.5+

August 29, 2008 – 12:23 pm

download

Download: xcache-plugin.zip
Version: 0.7d
Updated: August 29, 2008
Size: 1.94 KB

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This is another one of those articles that will be of interest to a minority of WordPress users. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Plugins, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (59)

Macbook + Coffee = Bad

August 12, 2008 – 11:11 pm

Everybody knows that you shouldn’t keep beverages too close to the computer, right? The reason is because eventually, your toddler is going to run up to give you a big hug before she leaves for daycare, and is going to bump your leg. Your leg, in turn, is going to bump the TV tray where you set your coffee cup. The cup is going to tip over and spill several ounces of coffee directly onto the keyboard of your Macbook. And as a consequence, the Macbook is going to cease to function.

Yes, that’s what happened here at Castle Campbell last Friday morning. I tried to disconnect power and battery as quickly as possible, tried using a blowdryer on it, sat it out in direct sunlight for about an hour, and continued to let it air out for quite a while after that. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Hardware, Linux, Operating Systems, Personal, Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (13)

WordPress 2.6 Released

July 15, 2008 – 8:13 am

The release of WordPress 2.6 is now official. In addition to the features I highlighted previously, Ryan has details on his blog about the improved support for SSL, and some new helper functions which will be useful for plugin and theme authors. And the official dev blog post has details on other new features. One of the more interesting things that I didn’t yet know about was that the Press This bookmarklet has some nifty autodetection which will make it easy to automatically embed content from sites like YouTube and Flickr.

In addition to the new features, I’d also like to point out that there has been a recent effort to improve the inline source documentation (using PHPdoc). [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Announcements, Community, News, Software, WordPress | Tagged , , , , | Comments (31)

Whither Spam?

June 14, 2008 – 10:35 pm

When I switched to my new Slicehost server, I spent a while trying to decide what I wanted to do about email for my domains. I contemplated using Google’s domain email service, or some other third-party email hosting. But I just hated giving up that much control of my email setup. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Hardware, Linux, Servers, Services, Software, Spam | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

Atlanta PHP

April 2, 2008 – 11:42 am

Tomorrow night, I will be attending the April Atlanta PHP meeting. My friend Glen Gordon will be giving a presentation titled, “I’m a PHP dev! Why should I care about Microsoft?”

There are a host of technologies and tools from Microsoft that can add value to your PHP solutions, save you time, and are just plain cool. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Community, Development, Operating Systems, Servers, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Roadwork Next 15 Miles

March 13, 2008 – 7:20 pm

I am preparing to move all of my web and email hosting to a new server. I’ve been fortunate to have an in-trade hosting arrangement for many years now (thanks to Jeff at Iguanasoft!). But my host’s owner is winding down some of his equipment, and I had outgrown the server I was on. I’ve secured a new server at Slicehost (a 1024slice running Ubuntu), and I’ll be transitioning my data over the next couple of weeks, as time allows.

I mainly mention this as warning that if my site appears to be down, email bounces, or any other strangeness occurs, it might be because I’m in the middle of moving things around. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Announcements, Blogs, Personal, Servers, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (22)

Internet Explorer 8: Progress!

March 6, 2008 – 10:35 am

It seems that Microsoft has reversed their previous decision to make Internet Explorer 8 crippled by default. They will be enabling the standards compliant mode by default in IE8, and webmasters will have to use the X-UA-Compatible header to force it into IE7 mode, for sites that can’t be updated immediately. Huzzah for progress!

And on that note, I’ll mention that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available for download. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Browsers, CSS, Community, Design, Development, Standards, Web Design | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (6)

Internet Explorer 8: This is progress?

January 23, 2008 – 9:25 am

Internet Explorer 8 passes the Acid2 test. Huzzah!

But waitaminnit… What’s this stuff about forward compatibility by adding some new X-UA-Compatible header to my pages or my server? Am I reading this right? Are you telling me that in order for IE8 to use its fully compliant rendering, we have to add something new to our pages? And that if we don’t, it will fall back to rendering pages just like IE7? Is that what this means?

That’s just dumb.

Screw their stupid “don’t break the web” motto. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Browsers, CSS, Community, Design, Development, Standards, Web Design | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (16)

Reactivate All Plugins feature in WordPress 2.5

January 22, 2008 – 12:11 pm

Once upon a time, I whipped up a Reactivate All Plugins feature for WordPress, to compliment the Deactivate All Plugins action (which is recommended before an upgrade). Unfortunately, the patch didn’t make it into the WordPress 2.2 release. And I forgot to nudge anybody about it for the 2.3 release until it was too late. But, the plugin reactivation patch is slated for inclusion in the 2.5 release, due in March (BTW, you did know that version 2.4 is being skipped, right?).

That said, you might notice that I added a note on the feature request ticket. [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Plugins, Semantics, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (49)

No more daily Twitter posts

January 15, 2008 – 2:11 pm

Just as with my daily del.icio.us link posting experiment in the past, I have decided to discontinue my automated daily Twitter summary. I will continue posting to Twitter, and the most recent of my tweets will be displayed in my sidebar here. But think they should remain separate from my main blog content. I just feel like they “clutter” things up here, and the things I post on Twitter are different in scope from what I normally post in my blog.

I will likely continue to post mostly technical observations here in my blog (with the occasional side-track into non-technical areas). [...]

By Dougal | Also posted in Blogging, Community, Services | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (8)