A Random Pattern

As you can see by my last test post, I do have the arc90 lab javascript code working. Now I just need to clean it up (it’s a mess!) There are several things I want it to do differently, but hopefully you’ll just notice the improvements and not all the work (frustration) going on behind the scenes.

I’ve just been looking through some buttonsnap and moresmilies php code, and it looks like it might take me a little longer than I hoped to make my first plugin. So for now I’m going to manually insert my sidenotes by hand-coding.

While I’m on the subject, I’ll list the other things I want to accomplish with this plugin. But first, I’d really love your feedback on whether these sidenotes are useful or distracting, and what could be done to improve them.

1. Change the colors. I want to tone them down quite a bit. The free colorpix tool will help tremendously here.
2. Make them behave more like the other hyperlinks on this page. That is, red text until you move the mouse near them, at which point the sidenote shows up.

3. Behind the scenes, I want to make it easier to create sidenotes. Instead of manually typing a bunch (ok, a little) code, I just want to click a button and type in the sidenote. Even better, I hope to have it handle urls (web addresses) and perhaps images gracefully. Cross your fingers.

4. Finally, I’d like to clean it all up into one or two nice little plugins, then yank it out of my code and use it properly as a plugin. This is probably me dreaming, because I doubt I really have the know-how to finish this. Hey, if anyone wants to mentor, answer questions, or even just help out a little….

Last thing on WP plugins. Here are a few of the articles that helped me get started.

Good recommendations on software tools to use

How to write a simple WordPress plugin

Tons of useful WP articles. Tips, tricks, you name it she’s got it.

The codex (official WP documentation) on plugins. It’s all greek to me. :p

This is a test, this is only a test. You can ignore this post.

In fact, please do ignore this whole thing. Skip ahead to the next post. More unnecessary text to test some more display type things.

So here’s some more text.

Family and friends, my brother Michael has started a blog. Check it out, and leave him a comment. Everyone needs a comment now and again to keep them encouraged that they’re being read.

Speaking of blogging, this is a good time to mention that I’ve got several posts scheduled to come out over the next several days, spanning almost all my favorite topics. Next up is a post on the recent conversation about “A-list link getting” that happened in the blogosphere. (The blogosphere is a geeky term for the conversation that happens amongst a bunch of nerds bloggers that all link to each other, sort of like an adult nerd version of myspace.)

So make sure to come back around for some news, tips on Ubuntu, pictures, and other cool stuff.

Peace.

This has been a train wreck in the making for awhile. There are a lot of people still using an Operating System on their computer that is no longer supported. And by “no longer supported”, I mean “about to become a spamming tool owned by hackers”. Put simply, if you are surfing the web, and your startup screen says “Windows 98″ on it (you probably see it often if that’s the case), get off the internet until you can get a more secure OS.My recommendation? Drop $500 on a Mac Mini, then you don’t have to worry about it. Or just install the FREE but just as effective (for web surfing, email, and similar activities) Ubuntu Linux. The easiest way to do it? Just contact your local geek. Trust me, they like doing this stuff. (Even if they’re muttering something about hunting me down under their breath. Really. )

Why do I care? Because all the people that ignore this advice are going to end up sending me (and everyone else, including themselves) spam without their knowledge, as well as contributing to the general “clogging of the tubes” on the internet.

Courtesy of MacDailyNews, I was glad to see this report from Apple on their factory investigation. This is an example of a company taking something seriously, and this is the type of thing I’m really glad Apple takes seriously.

The conditions still seem a little shocking, but keep in mind for my American readers that life in different countries can be radically different than it is here.

I also read a reply from some director of human and trade union rights, but as far as I can tell it sounded like sour grapes, not responsible criticism. The person quoted is director of “human and trade union rights”, so I suspect that his viewpoint is slanted. Of course, though unions here have in some ways become what they sought to replace, perhaps they do have a useful role to play in other countries. I don’t know. Read the article and form your own opinion (again courtesy of MacDailyNews).

Update:  As usual, Ars provides a well-written editorial on the subject.

Fellow (Firefox) geeks, I need your help. I’m in way over my head here.

Although I’ve been blogging about Ubuntu, and am quite happy learning and using it, we also recently got a Mac Mini. My wife would be fine using it, except for one critical thing: one website doesn’t display pictures on Firefox on the Mac.

Tonight, I got around to digging into it more, and also used some tools that I know very little about. The site (and an example page) is www.babycenter.com boards. First I ran the Javascript Console, and discovered the site throws a ton of errors. The errors seemed to be similar and similar in number on both the Mac and Windows. I didn’t look too much into these, as I wouldn’t know what to do next anyways.

So I opened the DOM Inspector and inspected a specific item I knew was failing on the Mac. I looked at the first picture of our kitchen that my wife had posted, and happened to discover that “Moz-binding” was “none” on the Mac Firefox, but had the proper image address on Windows. If anyone can tell me where to go from here, or what this means, I’d appreciate it as I would like this to work.

I did discover that the same page works ‘properly’ in Safari, as well as in Ubuntu Firefox. So who do I feed this back to? Is there a fix possible? And what, exactly, did I find out (or not find out)?

UPDATE:  My wife says that the page displays fine on my Mac login, just not on hers.  I first installed Firefox on my account, so maybe that has something to do with it?  I don’t really know too much about how the Mac user accounts work as far as sharing applications.  Can anyone shed any light on this?

After we let Tessa down from the dinner table, she went over next to the kitchen cabinets and knelt down.

“Don’t go in the kitchen.” she repeated over and over.

“Don’t go in the kitchen, spider” as she shook her index finger at the little black insect.  After a few more admonitions the spider gave in and turned around, heading back out to the living room….

Here’s a screenshot from one of the games I tried when I first installed Ubuntu. The first thing you have to do is try the games, right?

“Simply remove all Bubbles by the creation of unicolor triplets.” (Snicker) That’s why I love geeks. My wife told me recently that my whole blog since I switched to Ubuntu sounds like that….I took the feedback to heart, though I’ll probably need continual reminding (I love you Honey!).

Here’s some screenshots of the new Blogger. I’ve also got a test bed beta blog up at schristopher.blogspot.com, if you’d like to see it. Enjoy.

I just migrate from Blogspot to my own domain, and what happens? Google finally introduces new features for Blogspot, that’s what! It’s not fair, I tell’ya!

Now, to be honest, the feature bump certainly wouldn’t have been enough to keep me there. I really like all the power and flexibility of having my own domain and (shared) server. Still, it does sting a little. And if you’re not into paying a bunch of money to have your own domain hosted somewhere, well, Blogspot (or better yet, WordPress.com) gives you an awful lot of value for FREE. And competition is always good.

Key features:

-For geeks, comment feeds.
-New templates, (presumably nicer ones).

-More control over where and what is on your page.

-Dynamic content, which means easier and faster publishing.

-An improved dashboard, or control panel, when you log in.

I still have to recommend WordPress.com over Google, though the Picasa integration with Blogspot makes that more tempting if you’re using the free Picasa tool to manage your photos. Picasa I can definitely recommend, though I haven’t yet tried it on Ubuntu.

More to follow on this, after I go experiment on my old blogspot account. Cheers!

Update: One more link, if you’re currently on Blogger and want to migrate it to your Google account login.

Update 2: Two big features I missed, Labels and Private.  You can now “tag” articles with different categories, so when your mom visits she can look at posts that have Pictures or Personal tags, and ignore the Ubuntu articles.  ;)  The Private feature lets you have a blog that only people you invite can see.  Perfect for a tight-knit family or group of friends.