WordPress & My iPhone in the Garden
I just had to try the new WordPress application for the iPhone. So I snapped a couple photos while out in the garden gathering lunch and wrote this post.
It connected to my blog effortlessly and allowed me to easily add categories, tags, and a photo.
Great job WordPress team!
I only have a couple minor gripes that I hope will be addressed later:
1. It would be easier to type if the application supported landscape mode and the wider keyboard that provides.
2. It’s too bad WordPress does not extract and store the GPS information along with the other metadata it grabs from photos.
I would love to hear comments from others who have tried it. How has it worked for you?
WordPress Admin Color Scheme: Fresh Plus Visited
Although I like the new look of WordPress 2.5, I miss having the visited links in the dashboard shown as a different color. I like to keep up on the latest WordPress news and I previously relied on the link color to see what I had not yet read.
Fortunately, WordPress 2.5 has a way for plugins to add additional color schemes. So I whipped up a quick plugin to add the style necessary to mark those visited links in a different color. You can grab a copy from my downloads page for admin color scheme: Fresh Plus Visited.
WordCamp Dallas 2008
I’m looking forward to attending my first WordCamp this weekend in Dallas. I’ll be eager to learn from the great lineup of presenters, and hopefully, personally say thank you to some of you who have contributed so much to the WordPress community. Be sure to say hello if you’re attending too. I’d love to meet you.
I believe they are still taking registrations, so you may not be too late to sign up if you haven’t already.
It’s Spring and Even the Porcupines are in Love
Happy spring everyone! Our Illinois Winter has seemed a little longer this year so it’s nice to feel things warming up.
Every spring I recall an old Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies cartoon from my childhood. The cartoon starts out looking like a nature documentary as the camera pans through the forest. Then the narrator says, “It’s spring … even the porcupines are in love.” Two porcupines repeatedly pucker up, kiss, then jump back in pain with an “ow ow ow ow!” You gotta love that classic Looney Tunes humor.
So here’s a little spring quiz for everyone. What is the name of that episode and is it available anywhere?
My kids are probably tired of hearing my wife and I quote it every time someone mentions spring. 
I’d love to show the cartoon to them but I can’t find it. It would stand to reason that it may be a Pepé Le Pew story, but I’m not sure. We own the first three Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD box sets and it’s not on any of those.
Happy Pi Day
Happy pi day to everyone. Here’s the dessert we served tonight in honor of the day.
I know, purists might only celebrate at 1:59 and 26 seconds, but we saved it for dinner anyway.
Nofollow and the Spam War Arms Race
Recent events have caused me to rethink the use of the nofollow attribute on my blog comment links. Much has already been written about whether or not to use the nofollow attribute, so I won’t re-hash those arguments here. Personally, I had come down on the side of believing that nofollow did little to stop spam. Besides, commenters add value to my sites and it’s appropriate to reward them with a link. So I’ve been running one of the DoFollow plugins for WordPress to override the default nofollow behavior.
Then the spam flood came that most of us have seen by now. These spam comments are harder to detect because they seem to be written by a human and customized to somewhat fit the post content. [ Continue reading Nofollow and the Spam War Arms Race … ]
Have Some Ice Cream with that Diet!
Here’s some more fun from my local grocery store. Buy six diet food items and get free ice cream. That’s right, you can start your diet and then ruin it, all with this one deal!
OS X Leopard, 16 Great Small Touches
Mac OS X Leopard has been running on my primary computer for a week now and I’ve had a chance to put it to the test in my daily activities. Much has been written by others about the some of the larger new features so I won’t bother boring you with more of that. However, Apple has done a wonderful job, as usual, with their attention to some of the little things.
So here are just a few of the smaller OS X Leopard features that stood out to me. I don’t claim they are undiscovered new things. In fact, some are well-documented. But they are nice touches that I’ve found particularly useful. [ Continue reading OS X Leopard, 16 Great Small Touches … ]
Grocery Store Offers Free Old Rotten Food
My local grocery store featured these paper bags for only a few days. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time to promote “It’s Fresh or it’s Free,” but let’s think about the message taken to its full conclusion.
I’m sure they wanted to communicate that they only carry fresh products, but the real message is that they have old rotten food available. If you get some, well sorry, we don’t guarantee freshness. But your reward is that you can have it at no charge instead of us tossing it in the dumpster! Bon Appétit.
WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin Version 1.1
I just finished a minor update to my WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin. Here are the changes:
- Additional checks for plugins knowing about the new tag system so they don’t get flagged as incompatible. i.e., Sitemap Generator 3.0.
- Internationalization of text. The .po file is included. If you do a translation send the files over and I’ll be happy to post them on the download page.
- Miscellaneous clean up.
- Added GPL license text.
Get it on the Upgrade Preflight Plugin page. (My apologies for this not being on the WordPress Extend plugins directory yet. I’ve applied for access but they apparently have quite a backlog in approving new plugins.)
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