Mindful Musings


6/14/2004

Pictorialis II: Ready for download

Filed under: — Mark @ 12:57 pm

Pictorialis II is finally polished enough to be ready for download. The example blog can be found here:
http://mindfulmusings.net/testpict

Some of the features of Pictorialis II:
-Album building from the post interface
-Single photo addition, much like a photoblog
-Upload from FTP, point to the album, suggest an album name and description, type of thumbnail and click on publish album
EXIF support even without PHPEXIF
-GD and NetPBM support with optional NetPBM binaries
-XHTML compliant code
-Lots of custom fields for versatility and future features
-Picture preview on edit
-Picture Descriptions
-Everything is paged
-Look Ma, no tables!
-Count number of visits per picture (optional)
-Comments, trackbacks etc
-Clean simple design and CSS
-All of WP is included, so all the WP features are available!

Credits:
-Photomatt
-Unteins
-Morydd
-Jesuit
-Skippy_
-NuclearMoose
-Michel_v

Download the zip file from here:
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/pictorialisII.zip

Please post bugs and requests on the Pictorialis Support Forums

5/28/2004

WordPress 1.2 Wishlist or Plugin/Hack Requests

Filed under: — Mark @ 1:18 pm

I (we?) need some ideas for plugins and hacks for WordPress 1.2 There is already an excellent requests page on the wiki which lists some of these. If you have something specific in mind for WordPress (except for multiple blogs) please leave a comment and I will add it to the list on the wiki. I know a couple of people have been looking for “stuff to do” with WordPress and this will satisfy both parties.

5/23/2004

New and Improved

Filed under: — Mark @ 8:01 am

I have upgraded this blog to WordPress 1.2. The theme of this blog is very similar to a Movable Type blog and is meant to be that way. I wanted to debunk the myth of WordPress design. This blog is an extremely customized version of the original WordPress codebase and contains a bunch of plugins. Mose of these are very simple to install, have been coded by me and will show up in the next WuhWuh. This is more of a launchpad for that process.
Some of the plugins in this version include:

  • Wiki Plugin
  • Asides
  • Most popular Posts & Post counter
  • Waypath
  • wp-stats from Jesuit
  • Comment Preview form
  • Google Pagerank strippper
  • Technorati Link Cosmos
  • Threaded Comments
  • Redone narchives.php
  • Redone BreadCrumbs navigation

Over and above my plugins, I had a very inclusive WordPress install which already gave me the following new features:

  • Sub-categories: Categories can be arranged hierarchically and infinitely deep. Multiple categories combined with sub-categories gives WordPress the most comprehensive taxonomy system of any blogging software available.
* OPML Export and Import: You can import and export OPML to systems like Bloglines or desktop aggregators like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon. * Automatic Thumbnail Creation System: WordPress has a refined upload feature that automatically creates thumbnails any size you want. * Encyrpted passwords and cookies: All passwords in the database and password cookies are encrypted, ensuring maximal security. * New plugin architecture: The new plugin architecture simplifies modifying or extending WordPress’ features. Plugins can now hook into nearly every action WordPress does. * Localization of WordPress and Unicode support: The efforts put into internationalizing WordPress have borne fruit, and now you can adapt WordPRess to work in your native language. Several translations are already available. * Advanced comment moderation: You can now fine-tune your moderation filters in a manner very similar to blacklists for other weblog tools. There is also mass-editing of comments, which makes it a snap to delete hundreds of comments with the click of a button, if necessary. * Post preview: Near-instant previews while writing or editing articles help you proofread and make improvements before finally presenting your work of art to the world. * RSS and LiveJournal Importers: The new RSS import script is the closest thing to an universal importer. It allows you to import entries from Radio weblogs even other blogging tools that we may not support specifically. The LiveJournal importer finally lets you have a full blooded self-hosted weblog without losing all your old LiveJournal posts. * Unlimited update services: Now you can define multiple weblog change monitoring services to be pinged when you post. * Directory flexbility: Now you can have all the WordPress files in one directory and the weblog in a higher level directory.

There is still a little more work to be done, but I am very pleased with the result. What do you think?

5/10/2004

IRC to blog script

Filed under: — Mark @ 7:26 am

I wanted to tinker with the socket capabilities of PHP and wrote some small scripts to support automatic blogging of IRC conversations. It turned out pretty well after a few changes and issues that needed to be resolved. Here are the results.

The likely suspect is the #wordpress channel on irc.freenode.net where developers, contributors as well as helpful friendly folk hang out often. All of the conversations from that channel are now blogged to http://proc.homeip.net/wordpress/ This is merely an experiment and if there are major objections to this process, this blog will be removed.

Some of the salient features of this include automatic blogging using xmlrpc. The script does not have to reside on the webhost machine. It is extremely fast and very configurable. At this time, every peice of conversation from every user is blogged as a seperate entry with the topic of the entry as the username of the person speaking. This is also turning out to be a test of extreme blogging through WordPress. The blog slows down after a certain size of the entries. All the entries are stripped of harmful tags before they are posted. Once this script has settled down a little and a few more bugs are ironed out, I will make it available for use. For reference, this uses the PHPIRC implementation for callbacks.

5/4/2004

Stuff on my plate

Filed under: — Mark @ 8:42 am

Ive finally settled down to a harrowing daily routine of looking for jobs and coding, all the while spending some quality time with family. Here are some of the things on my little Post-It Notes Lite on my desktop: – Fix pinging on 1.2 – passed the buck on ;) – Checkbox for threaded comments – urgent – Recent photos pictorialis – somewhat done, needs a little fixing – Multiple upload pictorialis – Fix “who is online” on all blogs – goofy time problem on server – Write XHTMl syndication script, draw some prelim plans – Apply for jobs – throw enough shit on the wall that something has gotta stick!

Just a note of thanks to NuclearMoose (aka Craig Hartel) for creating a very nice header image for Pictorialis. That image, along with the new theme, is going to become the default distribution. I am thinking of starting another little page for Pictorialis stuff with a space for themes. Craig says that if I am desperate enough, he might come up with the first theme for it. I would also like to start a showcase for Pictorialis. I have seen some superb designs come out of it! 1000 downloads for Pictorialis and counting!! :)

4/28/2004

Do you comment on your own blog?

Filed under: — Mark @ 8:21 am

I noticed a post on Chris Pirillo’s blog on which some idiot posing as Chris had posted their acrimonious message as a comment and Chris had to clarify himself and his position on another post. I frequently comment on my own blog in reply to questions and such. I think it is a necessity and very useful at times. Chris contends that he never, ever posts comments on his blog. Is that justified?

4/15/2004

Wordpress PhotoBlog New Version

Filed under: — Mark @ 2:54 pm

There is a new version of Pictorialis out which fixes a couple of issues that were brought up with the Beta and you can download it from http://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/pictorialis.zip

Fixes for this version include:

– Built in EXIF support which does not need pre-compiled EXIF in PHP – There is a selection mechanism for versions of GD which makes sure you always get the best possible thumbnails and pictures conversion. – This also has some file upload fixes which makes sure that the uploaded files do not get erased before the script gets a chance to grab the files. – The installation process has also been better defined with some fixes for the installation troubles reported from the previous version.

As in the pervious version, this new version has the following features: – XHTML compliant code – Simple once click addition of photos, auto thumbnail and resizing – Extraction of EXIF information from original photo and saved as meta – Easy installation, as easy as installing WordPress – Simple, clean design and look – Simple navigation

My example PhotoBlog with WordPress can be found at Pictorialis

3/20/2004

TypeKey Comment Registration - did they miss the lectures again?

Filed under: — Mark @ 11:52 am

Six Apart recently launched their new “TypeKey” comment registration system. I have some serious problems with that system.

1) I agree with Matt and see a real problem with any centralized system that has no local component except for a closed API (more about that later). As has been discussed over and over again, any centralized spam prevention system is doomed to failure right from the start. Six Apart has many more resources than I can ever hope to have and will probably be able to handle all the traffic, but they leave the service open to all kinds of DDOS attacks from spammers which they could NOT handle. (as many other email blacklist servers and services have found out the hard way) If people say that comment spam is probably never going to reach email spam proportions, I will have to disagree. Once there is enough legislation to stop or stem email spam, blogs will just be the natural step down for spammers. But that is an arguement for another day.

2) I dislike that company’s elitist propaganda. Here are some excerpts from this TypeKey page:

“And TypeKey will work with TypePad weblogs as well as other tools and services soon after that.”

They expressly state that there will be a product “launch” and then …
“At that point, there will also be information about what is required to make use of TypeKey services in commercial applications.”

Six Apart is a growing company with many talented individuals who have defined blogging as we know it today. BUT, they are not Gods and never will be! Microsoft-esque promotional documentation language is just annoying and feels very elitist. Just for that I refuse to use their service.

3) How is typekey different from forcing users to register on a blog and only then allowing them to comment? What if I sign up for typekey and then post all kinds of junk?? who says whether my stuff is spam or not?? Some big shot blogger might think that my opinion on their “learned” topic is spam and decide to report me to TypeKey. Would that mean I could not comment anymore? Is one person’s comment another person’s spam?

4) This is proprietary software folks. Nothing to see here. There will …

” ..... be information about what is required to make use of TypeKey services in commercial applications”.

5) What about trackback spam? How will TypeKey prevent trackback spam? Get rid of trackbacks completely? Is there another component? No solution there at all.

6) As Michel points out, what about identity theft? What if someone signs up as Mark Pilgrim with a different email address and posts all kinds of junk? Who is to say that Mark’s email address is blah@blah.com and not bah@blah.com? Centralized solutions of establishing identity break down without getting really personal information involved. I better make sure I am the first to sign up with all my names and nicknames!!

“TypeKey helps ensure that people who comment on a site have a verified identity, keeping conversations on track and helping to prevent abusive or offensive content (comment spam) from being posted.”
– Nah! Doesnt work right and I aint givin you my credit number neither!!

3/17/2004

I think, I think I might be closer to done

Filed under: — Mark @ 4:21 pm

With cautious optimism and glee, I would like to say that I might have more time to dedicate to a job search and coding now. :)
As for the items on my plate, the more important ones are:

  • Promoting my Peace and Unity Meme (see above, please)
  • Applying for jobs for at least 2 hours a day (I have to be regimented, or I lose track)
  • Writing a very simple MySql based wiki’ing system which is designed to be intgrated into other systems (primarily WordPress)
  • Fixing my threaded comments hack to be compliant and non-javascript (and other little issues with it)
  • Writing some code to support a LiveJournal mod of WP which would allow more control over the posts (might take a while)
  • And of course, cooking and spending time with my Jennifer :)
  • My parents are going to here on the 12th of April and that could not happen a day too soon! I have not seen them for almost a year and a half!! Jennifer Luckey will get sooo spoilt (again) ! ;)

    3/15/2004

    A request to update your links

    Filed under: — Mark @ 10:24 pm

    My domain names have recently changed and I would really appreciate it if incoming links to my blogs were updated.

    They are:
    Mindful Musings: http://mindfulmusings.net/weblog/
    Weblog Tools Collection: http://weblogtoolscollection.com/

    Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

    2/19/2004

    WordPress Convetion ‘04 ??

    Filed under: — Mark @ 9:18 pm

    Michel gave me a tremendous idea (not his fault, he was talking about something completely off topic)! I would really like to see a WordPress Convetion organized. It would mean lots of WordPress users from all over the world converging on a populous and fun city, having a “convention” of sorts (booths, vendors, talks, shows, trinkets and the like). I would love to meet some of the people that make up this community. I think it would encourage the community to grow and would draw some positive (and negative for sure) attention to the tool. I know some of you think that WP is not ready for the limelight, but would a convention hurt its chances?

    How many of you would think of attending? Who would like to suggest some cities? Do you think WordPress is ready for that kind of attention yet?

    2/15/2004

    Finished some preliminary work on WordPress Caching

    Filed under: — Mark @ 2:07 am

    Here are some examples:
    Here is a WordPress 1.1 beta blog showing 300 posts.
    Here is the same blog, cached with my method

    Take a quick look at the bottom of the page for the generation times. The number in small letters in the center is for the main entries to be generated and displayed and the larger number to the left is the time for the whole blog to be generated.

    A little more work is required to make this a functional hack. The categories and comments sections (along with archives and others) do not use the cache at this point to display the pages. Only the index page uses the cached entries and produces all the right links. Consequently, some more work is required to update the cache when some information is edited or added. This could include adding or editing a post or addition of comments and/or trackbacks. However, with a larger numbers of posts and links, this cache speeds things up quite a bit from what I can tell. I had to mess around with quite a few of the functions to get them to work correctly with storing a variable instead of echoing them. If someone is interested in the code, leave a comment or email me.

    What do you think? Is this something worth investigating further?

    2/12/2004

    In jotting down some thoughts on a partially static WordPress:

    Filed under: — Mark @ 10:18 am

    In my opinion, the part of WP which takes up the most MySql queries (and the most time responding to a request) is in setting up the posts for display. If there was another table in which the complete post markup was stored (including the post title, author, time, number of comments etc, one single entity created with all the HTML markup, and the filters are executed on the post) after being created (with the postID as the key for the table), the posts could be loaded multiple times relatively quickly. When a comment gets added to a post or a post is edited, the whole row is deleted (in the new table) and recreated with the same postID and new markup that is generated. The blog-header could contain code which would allow a complete rebuild through a switch. There might be the need for a second blog-header to manage the two different types of display requests.

    The categories and archives would work in very much the same way. The blog-header that controls the static posts would do a select postID from all posts in the main posts table for a category and then select again the same IDs from the statis posts table and display those in the order chosen. Permalinks could work the asme way they do right now with comments being selected live from the database etc. Rebuilding (adding or editing one post really) the static post table would take place at the end of a post or edit process and should be quick and painless.

    Any comments on this?

    2/2/2004

    Blog Statistics

    Filed under: — Mark @ 10:41 pm

    My crawler has unearthed dissappointing results. Here are the most recent stats:

    total blogs crawled: 49807
    total wordpress blogs: 193
    total Blogger blogs: 13587
    total Typepad blogs: 1358
    total .Text blogs: 269
    total BlogTool 1.4 blogs: 226
    I was really hoping to find more blogs that are run by Wordpress. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of WordPress blogs do not have the original meta tags from the index and are thus not responding the way they should. In order to circumvent this problem, I would really like to solicit some help from my readers. If you are a blogger and your blog is using the WordPress application (any version) please click on this link, type in the url of your blog and click on submit. If your blog urls is already in the database, it will make sure that it is recognized as a WordPress blog and will show you the list of WordPress blogs crawled so far. This list can be used for publicity and for various other WordPress related issues and statistics. Thank you for your participation. Please feel free to post the above links in your own blogs.

    1/25/2004

    WordPress CSS Styles Competition

    Filed under: — Mark @ 5:58 pm

    To help grow the number of skins for the default WP template, I’m sponsoring a CSS Style Competition!

    Get those creative juices flowing and send in your contributions. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.

    I highly encourage you all to blog about this (use the link above) to help get the word out. Thanks!

    – From the WordPress Forums

    WordPress Blacklist Comment SPAM Filteration System

    Filed under: — Mark @ 1:04 am

    I wrote a little script to fight comment SPAM much along the lines of Jay Allen’s MTBlacklist filter (but for WordPress). This really simple script is compatible with all versions of WordPress and uses a powerful master blacklist from Reflective Reality. I would really like to get some people to try and install it and see how well it works. So if you are using WordPress and have been receiving some SPAM in your comments, please help me in testing this script. WordPress 1.0+ will even allow you to view the SPAM comments without them ever being displayed on your blog (using moderation) which would mean that if you do receive SPAM and the filter catches it, you will know that the script is working. Here is a link to WPBlacklist.

    1/16/2004

    The new domain name should be working now!

    Filed under: — Mark @ 4:07 pm

    The new name should have started working already. I would really appreciate it if your links to my blog are updated. The new url is http://www.mindfulmusings.net/weblog/ Sorry for any hassles and thanks! :)

    OddPost - really interesting email client

    Filed under: — Mark @ 12:08 am

    There are some investments I consider to be good ones. The $30 I would spend at OddPost, I would consider well spent. They tout an email service for 30 bucks a year which incorporates a news reader, full folder functionality and is being upgraded and polished everyday. They give you an email address @ OddPost.com, 50 Megs of webspace and the ability to receive large email atatchments upto 10 megs. The interface (and the application) is compeltely built out of DHTML and XML (I am extremely jealous of their coding prowess), is fast and has SPAM filtering built in. No, you cannot check your Hotmail or Yahoo acount, but you can check upto 6 different POP3 accounts through this. It is like having a Yahoo or Hotmail without the ads and without the hassle of having to keep track of mutiple accounts, like having Outlook Express on the internet. On top of all this, they donate 10% of your fee to a charity of your choice (out of 7 of their choice…) Instead of my rants about how I cannot afford them (among other things), check out the features:

    50 megabytes storage space
    staggeringly effective spam filtering
    news & blog aggregation
    not a lick of advertising
    desktop-style interface with drag & drop, address auto-completion, right-click menus & shortcut keys
    spell checker with customizable dictionary
    send & receive large attachments (up to 10 megs)
    retrieve mail from up to 6 other accounts
    customizable from & reply-to addresses
    custom signature
    accessible via POP & IMAP
    address book import
    automatically checks for new messages

    1/15/2004

    www.mindfulmusings.net

    Filed under: — Mark @ 7:04 pm

    After consulting with Jennifer, my inner self and with some of the readers of my blog (and since I cannot afford .com,.net and org) I have decided to buy www.mindfulmusings.net for myself. Yay!

    1/13/2004

    Why do I read blogs?

    Filed under: — Mark @ 11:54 am

    Precept: I apologize for this post. It is not meant to offend anyone, just a bit of sarcasm and humor.

    Why do you read my blog?
    I read blogs because I am genuinely and deepy interested in the lives of people that I have never met and probably never will. No, Seriously. I read in some blog, that reading blogs is a way for bloggers to seek acceptance in their inconsequential and petty communities. It is a way to troll for hits, a way to vicariously gain satisfaction of knowing that your own blog is popular. Whoring for hits. I read in another blog that blogs are dissolving and wussifying information dissipation and making a farce out of yesterday’s news. Another blog tells of how we should not believe anything that we read in a blog. In all honesty, blogs are a medium, much like any other electronic media. They are elusive, trasitive, without remorse or responsability and are mostly farcical. Some provide useful information but most are just ramblings and should be treated as such. They promote free thought and speech and bring out the best and worst in people. I read blogs because I can. I read about friends and I read about myself. The blogs that I like to read the most are the ones that mention me. I love shameless self promotion and I love being flattered. I dont think there is even one blog (except the Wp Forums) that I read everyday. The information is too stale and I have found that I dont get mentioned everyday in every blog (Darn!), which defeats the purpose of reading them everyday.
    I read blogs to satisfy some inner hunger to be as cool and as bitter as Anil Dash or as dashing and debonaire as Mark Pigrim.
    Maybe I read blogs to vicariously enjoy the swanky and dangerous lifestyle of Aaron Swartz.
    I know I read blogs to grow up to be like Jeremy Zawodny.
    I read Philip Greenspun’s Weblog to pick up on subtle political sarcasm that I use profusely in my sparse social interactions.
    I read Rylan Sanders’ Blog to look at the picture of George W on his front page.
    I read The Agora because I have to learn about politics from somewhere!
    I read Typical Girl’s blog because I am jealous of her programming skills. Uh Huh.
    I read Warped Thoughts because I wish I could draw like him.
    I read Misdirection because I worry about the author.
    Steve works for Google now. I so wish I could take my dog to work!!
    I read Dan Isaacs blog because….well he went to school with Jeremy! (see above)
    I read Toledo Bloggers dot Com because I am from Toledo and it was a good idea, damnit!
    I read through Digital Pimpress because her candid lascivious diatribe is fascinating.
    Binary Bonsai is just a cool name. (he creates awesome images too!) I dont really read his blog. I am just mentioning him to make him feel better. ;)
    I read Carthik’s blog because I wish I could teach college (and he patronizes me).
    I read Dennis’ blog because he likes to read mine and his comments are fantastic.
    David Chait lists cool gear. I wish I could buy any of his toys.
    Xial. What a cool name! Uh-huh.
    TechGnome always links to me but uses wrong names every time. He now knows me as Mike.
    CheekyGirl always has a nice babe on her template. I visit often to see the babes. ;)
    I read Achhoo’s blog because, well, he is Sushubh. I so wish I had his sense of humor.
    Mrs Fish was the original inspiration behind this post. Her and Mr Fish can be quite the inspiration to CoupleHood.
    Reflective Reality sends a lot of visitors my way, so I patronize him. (and his comments are simply awesome and to the point!)
    I never read Mike’s weblog. I just say I do to make them feel better.
    I never read Matt’s weblog. I sat say I do to make them feel better.
    Sisob is a Gnome developer. I HAVE to be jealous of someone with so much experience with code.
    LadyDobry is my girlfriend. Enough said.
    I used to read Chris Pirillo’s weblog, till I grew up.
    G33K is of the female persuasion. I didnt know that for almost a year!
    Biz Stone works for Google. The whole dog-to-work envy again!
    Jish is a Bangalir Bachha who is famous. Jealousy creeps up my gullet again.
    Ian Murdock is a Linux Opportunist. I like crafty entrepreneurs. Same goes for Greenspun. Only he is not about Linux.
    Southern Gal is just so darn wholesome, it makes me all warm and fuzzy like.
    Justin is a baseball freak. He loves the doomed (so far this year) Tigers. But then again I like the Indians. Go Figure!
    Alex has a serious and straightforward blog. He is a coder (a very good one) and he mentions me in his weekly review.
    I read Greg’s weblog because I love the domain name.
    Meowie changes themes all the time. Her photography and her kid are awesome! (and she recently moved to the dark side, she knows what I mean)
    Nuclear Moose, Craig flatters me a lot, so I read his blog, even the old entries, over and over again.
    Dave Barry thinks he is funny. Someone needs to tell him to try harder.

    There are a few others that I cannot think of which means that they dint get read since the first time I saw them. I have a little trick up my sleeve. If you want me to read your blog and make some sarcastic comment about it…mention me in it and it will get all giddy and I will then read your blog everytime I am mentioned on it. ;-)

    Did I say Peace already?

    1/7/2004

    This template for download

    Filed under: — Mark @ 11:44 am

    Since I made this template WordPress 1.0 compatible and there has been considerable amount of interest in downloading this template, I cleaned it up a little and posted it for everyone. Here is the link to what the cleaned version looks like and the download link to the zip file. Unlike other WP templates, you will need to upload the included index.php to get everything to look right.
    Enjoy!

    Finally upgraded to WordPress 1.0

    Filed under: — Mark @ 1:05 am

    I made the leap of faith tonight and was very pleasantly surprised with the minimal effort required! I followed a tedious backup procedure, made a list of all the hacks implemented on this blog, cut and paste some counter code to prevent erronous counts and let er rip! I thinks it looks dandy and I get all the new bells and whistles!! I still have a few hacks to modify, but some of them work just fine! Here is a short list of hacks and what has been done so far.

    List of hacks installed:
    1) Recent Visitor’s hack – alexking.org – Works in 1.0 just fine Spoke too soon, needed a teensie change for the categories changes
    2) Translate this blog – should remain the same
    3) Threaded Comments – will need some work, not to be done at 2:00 AM
    4) Friends conversion – Works as it is
    5) Stats hack – works just fine
    6) Move menu around for CSS - works fine with a few changes
    7) Sticky Posts – this will be a complicated change
    8) Waypath hack – works fine in 1.0
    9) Smilies on admin/edit page – Works just fine
    10) Smilies on comments page (which I might get rid of, too many images)

    PS: I am using the latest nightly build.
    Leave a comment. What do you think?

    11/26/2003

    gregspr0nmunkees

    Filed under: — Mark @ 9:27 am

    Greg finally relented and now he has a blog! I am working on Ed and Jon. But in the meantime, look up GregsPr0nMunkees.com when you have the chance. We could get a closer look at Greg as we know him through his blog. However, despite all of the hoopla, remember and respect the disclaimer that goes with every blog and about every blog owner. Enjoy!:oops::roll::lol:

    10/25/2003

    Mindful Musings 1.2 - The Upgrade

    Filed under: — Mark @ 3:47 pm

    If you are a regular visitor, you will notice that the look and feel of the site has changed a lot. I have upgraded my CMS from b2 to WordPress 0.72 Gold which is a new version of b2. This new tool has a lot of cool features and will add a lot to my site, including:

    Better speed and faster html action
    Better CSS design and code which follows standards
    Better comment structure and control over the blog
    BlogRoll like links, no need for blogrolls
    Most of the code I wrote for Wordpress is usable in my own blog, wonder of wonders!

    I have trimmed down some of the other items and will add the b2/wordpress photohack soon. This is enough for today, I need ot go back to coding in openGL. I might play around with some of my own php code to get some more features and hacks worked in.

    10/12/2003

    Looks like the Blade thing fell through

    Filed under: — Mark @ 5:48 pm

    The erporter had told us that that might happen, so no biggie, yet. :shock: Things were slow this weekend. Jennifer was gone to SanFran and just got back. I intended to get a lot done with homework and projects and such, but got very little accomplished. I believe the word to describe it would be “Blah!” Im tired of school and projects and such and cannot wait till Fall break next weekend. I do have some more work to complete before then but Oh well! I would like to go somewhere for Fall break, but Jennifer just had her vacation and probably will not want to run off again with me. I might stay at home and work on some interesting code that I have been planning. I have been doing some reading on OPML, SOAP and XML integeration and might work on some web-services for my blog and ToledoBloggers. Interesting to note that Blogrolling.com is still having some problems with their server upgrade and might not be completely up for another couple of hours. He has managed to fix the Unicode problem and has fresh.blogrolling.com up for syndication. On another fun note, I got my copy of Microsoft Office 2003 installed at school and it is very very nice. If you are a regular reader of my ramblings, you know that I always harp on usability and really get turned on by software that pays very close, almost uncalled for attention to usability in their software. I think Microsoft is reaching that point. In Office 2003, their cross platform compatibility has almost been ignored and all the attention seems to have been concentrated on making their software easier to use and more attractive. Outlook is a breeze to use and emails are now much more fun to read (you read emails in a vertical bar rather than horizontal) and Word has a built in reader for word documents using the same schema. Check out more Outlook 2003 screen shots at Nikush.com I like it :mrgreen:

    10/8/2003

    WOWZA

    Filed under: — Mark @ 11:52 am

    This is awesome! My Weblog Tools Collection site is getting beaucoup hits (over a hundred in just a couple of hours now). I am psyched! If any of you want some extra attention for your sites, register, log in and post a comment on your own sites and the programs that you use. I cant wait to get some more attention from the Blade.

    10/7/2003

    Update on the Blade Article

    Filed under: — Mark @ 8:56 pm

    From: ******@***theblade.com
    Subject: Re: A Question
    To: dinki@mac.com

    Dear Mark,

    I heard from my editors that the story about blogs will probably
    run this Sunday. That could change, but I wanted to let you know so
    you could be prepared for the extra traffic it may drive to your
    site.

    Thank you so much for talking to me

    ...snip…

    My Comments:——WOOOHOOOO :shock::mrgreen::roll:
    PS if this happens, the reporter would rock my world!:-P

    http://dinki.mine.nu/word/

    Filed under: — Mark @ 12:59 am

    ;) I have just started another blog on my server called the Weblog Tools Collection I have posted some of my tools on there with some small comments (which should grow fairly quickly) I have also asked a couple of my friends (who are accomplished bloggers) to submit their reviews and exhibit their work on my site. I am looking for many more authors and would like to put together a comprehensive list of Blogging Tools and Blogging scripts that are out there. I know that there are a few sites such as HotScripts.com which cater to the scripting population, but only very few good Blog Tool lists exist. If any of you would like to submit some work or would like to comment on the published articles on the site, it would just get things started quickly. This would also mean free publicity for your own site.

    10/4/2003

    Changed the CSS

    Filed under: — Mark @ 10:53 am

    I changed around some of the stuff on the CSS to get the menu on the right hand side as well. Some of the items on the bottom of the menu was not getting as much attention as I wanted them to. So here they are! what do you think?
    On another note, Craig called last night (and fell asleep on the phone while talking to me!) but he is not going to Wooster this weekend, so I am off to shower and go to Detroit for the Durga Puja Celebrations there. They are called Bichitra I might get started on the Durga Puja LinkTour this afternoon. Shubho Bijoya!!

    10/3/2003

    Foxtrot

    Filed under: — Mark @ 7:55 pm

    Foxtrot