That’s funny. I don’t feel a day over 38.99726.
Feedlounge is live
This is old news now, but what the heck — I haven’t posted in a while, and this will be quick. In case you didn’t already know, FeedLounge, that fantabulous online feed reader that all the Cool Kids have been raving about, is out of testing and ready for the world. It’s currently only available with a paid subscription, but to get a taste (the first hit’s free), you can take the Three Hour Tour.
I’m using FeedLounge to track stories from over 100 different sites (over 120 feeds, but a few are different topics from the same site, see?). As an alpha tester, I get a couple of months service for free. But when my free time is up, I’m going to see if I can squeeze a subscription into my budget. This is one of the few web-based applications that I’d ever consider paying for.
Ping-O-Matic Fun
The problem with running a service like Ping-O-Matic is that sometimes you have to send emails like this:
To: [...deleted...] Subject: Re: pingomatic > Hi! > > I have tried to ping pingomatic for about 2 days now > but it will not work for me. My site is > http://www.[...xxxxxx...].com/ > > Do you have any idea of why I can not ping your site > anymore? Because we don't want pings from porn sites? > Have a nice day! Thanks, you too! :) -- Dougal Campbell https://dougal.gunters.org/
Six Rules for Driving
If you are going to share the road with me, here are some rules that I expect you to know:
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Don’t tailgate me.
If you tailgate me, I’ll slow down. Unless you try to pass me, in which case, I might speed up. And if we’re in a no-passing zone, I’ll slow down more. Just. To. Piss. You. Off.
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Use your signals.
It’s a shame that you spent $35K on that Mercedes and the signals don’t even work. You should take it back for a refund. If you are about to make a turn or switch lanes, use your freaking turn signal. That’s what they’re for: to warn the other drivers on the road that you’re about to do something
stupid.that they should pay attention to. -
Don’t use your signals.
If the car in front of you is about to turn, don’t use your signals to warn the cars behind you. That’s just dumb. If you aren’t the one making a turn, leave your signal off. If your brake lights work, then we already know that we need to slow down. And by the way, you forgot to turn your signal off five minutes ago, and it’s driving us nuts.
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Slow down.
Have you ever sat down with a calculator and tried to figure out just how much time you save by speeding? I have. Unless you are travelling very far, very fast, it’s not likely to save you more than a couple of minutes. Which is worth more to you: the three minutes you saved by trying to zoom past everybody, or the $2500 in body work on your car when you slam into the yahoo who turned in front of you without signalling?
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Merge.
Just do it. If the other drivers value their cars, they’ll make room for you. Quit sitting at the end of the merge lane waiting for a big opening. Maybe you should turn your signal on, so people will understand that you want to change lanes, eh? You’re making the rest of us late for work, and we’re going to have to speed to make up the difference.
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Slower Traffic Keep Right
Have you ever seen those signs that say “Slower Traffic Keep Right”? Well, just because you don’t see one right this minute doesn’t make it any less true. If you aren’t in the process of passing somebody right now, get out of the way. But use your signal first.
If everyone will just keep these things in mind, I’m sure we’ll all be a lot happier.
return(true);
function do_stuff() {
if (in_array($date, $holidays) && $vacation == true) {
travel('away');
visit_family();
$gifts->exchange();
eat();
travel('home');
}
if ($new_year == true) {
eat() && drink();
$weight++;
$sleep = false;
}
$slack = false;
$resolve++;
$work->resume();
return(true);
}
New features in WordPress 2.0?
A lot of people are still asking what the differences are between WordPress version 1.5.2 and version 2.0. I did mention that a lot of the differences are under the surface, and I mentioned the WYSIWYG editor and the new user permissions scheme. Rather than list the changes here, I’ll point you to those who have already written about it.
One of the best articles is probably What’s New in WordPress 2.0? over on Owen Winkler’s site. There are also several articles over on Ryan’s site which detail some of the new changes.
Christmas Lights
One of the things that I only recently discovered myself is the fact that images uploaded to a post become “attachments” which become sub-pages themselves. In other words, each uploaded image becomes a WordPress page, with its own comments. This gives you the basic functionality of a photo gallery without the need for any external software. Click on the image in this post for an example.
WordPress Book
Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress
Well, actually, the book isn’t just about WordPress. But it does devote six chapters to our favorite blogging platform. The book I’m talking about is Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress, co-authored by Mike Little.
The result is six chapters on using WordPress to help build an online community. Although I wrote the book using version 1.5.x most of the WordPress chapters are version agnostic. This isn’t a “how to use WordPress†book (the excellent WordPress Codex is good for that). This is a book about how to use WordPress to help you build an online community.
It’s published by Apress, who really seem to get the Open Source community. I’ve got several other books by them, and I hope to write up some reviews eventually. I’ll have to see if I can add Mike’s book to my collection, too!
WordPress 2.0 Release on December 26
In response to concerns about availability of support over the Christmas holiday, the release of WordPress 2.0 has been delayed until December 26. This will allow all the fine helpers who answer questions in the forums and on IRC to enjoy the holiday without feeling that they need to rush back to assist upgraders.
Upgraded
I went ahead and took the plunge: this site is now running WordPress 2.0 RC3. Everything seems to be working fine so far, despite some of the ugly hacks I have in my home-grown “Rock’em Sock’em Robots” theme. I’m not using the new WYSIWYG editor, as I prefer to write my post markup by hand. And even though the new version lets you add categories on-the-fly, I’m still using the Tags4WP plugin, because it will auto-complete category names for me as I type. And likewise, I’ll probably continue to use the Image Browser plugin, because I don’t like how the built-in media manager stores images in subfolders by date. What I probably need to do is create a plugin to customize the upload location (using the upload_dir filter).
Yahoo! Web Hosting adds WordPress
Double Yow! Another announcement from Matt: Yahoo! Web Hosting has added WordPress to their offerings. And as an added bonus, they automatically enable the Akismet plugin, which is going to add a wealth of data to that service’s spam filters.