Category: Blogging

Blog Interface Refinements

Tweaked the css file to make the following changes:

1. Calendar: Added a border to “Today”.
2. Calendar: Lightened the background on “Today”.
3. Sidebar: Added cosmetic treatments to the sidebar titles.
4. Content: Added underline to the entry title for better definition.
5. Content: Added entry divider for better readability.

WordPress “Official Comment” Plugin

I thought it’d be cool and be even more egomaniac to make my own comments become stand out a little more from everyone else’s with this plugin.

1. Download Official Comments plugin in.
2. Place and unzip the file in /wp-contents/plugins/ directory
3. Edited /wp-contents/themes/_theme_of_choice/comments.php and added the following to line 29 (adds a nice css style to the comment box):

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< li class="comment <?php echo (is_wpuser_comment() ? ' commentOfficialUser' : ''); ?>" id="comment-&lt?php comment_ID() ?>">

4. On the same file, also added the following to line 30:

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<?php if(is_wpuser_comment() != 0) {echo "Official comment from ";} ?>

5. Complete the set up by adding the following css code to /wp-contents/themes/_theme_of_choice/style.css

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.commentOfficialUser {
        border: 1px solid #bbb;
        background-color: #ddd;  
        }

WordPress “Comment Preview” Plugin

Added a preview window in the “comments” section:

1. Download Comment Live Preview plugin.
2. Place and unzip the file in /wp-contents/plugins/
3. Edited /wp-contents/themes/_theme_of_choice/comments.php and added the following to line 98:

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<?php live_preview() ?>

Not that you guys don’t already know what you are typing, it’s just nice to see everything pre-formatted right in front of your eyes before it’s submitted.

WordPress Post Made Easy

I finally got around to do this hack. In order for me to post a new entry, I have to login, go to “Site Admin” panel and then click on “Write” to post. I have hacked the site to have a “Post New” link under “Meta” when I am logged in.

1. Open and edit “/wp-includes/template-functions-general.php”
2. On line 50, I added

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    $link = $before . 'a href="' . get_settings('siteurl') . '/wp-admin/post.php">' . __('Post New') . '' . $after;

NOTE: Don’t forget to add the < sign before "a href". I had to take it out becuase WordPress thinks that line of code is an active http link. Also, the dot on the first line should not be omitted.

Now I can post new entries with just one click.

WordPress Footer Problem

Kyung emailed and said he found an issue with the footer when going under any of the categories. The footer was pretty badly misaligned, making the page ugly as hell.

i checked out ur blog… pretty funny… but,
there’s a problem with the “Mac – OSX” section…
the footer is not aligned with the page…

At first I thought it must be his crazy Linux browser. But then, as always, he was right! Stupid footer…

WordPress footer alignment problems

After almost an hour of looking for the problem at all the wrong places (style.css, page.php, index.php… etc), I finally nailed it down and fixed it.

1. Go to “/wp-content/themes/_theme_of_choice/sidebar.php” (of all places!)
2. Added an end div tag back to the end of the file (where the sidebar.php file finishes and footer.php begins).

I must have deleted it by accident after I added the Google Ads a while back.

Kiss Your Baby, Go to Jail

I can’t help but to think Americans seriously need to use their resources on more important things after reading this article.

Excerpt:

The father and his wife, Teresa, dropped off some photos for processing at a local Eckerd. The role included a shot of Charbel kissing his baby on the tummy. Next thing the parents know, they’re being charged for sexual assault, and their children are wards of the state. It took six months for an investigation to conclude that there was zero abuse in the household, and for custody of their two kids to be restored.

Relax, America…

And to add to this, I’d like to say that corporal punishment shouldn’t be a crime. It has its place in families, especially that of Asian origin. It’s silly to argue that kids who were punished with some spanking will grow up to be abusive and a burden to the society… I mean, crime rate in the United States is among the highest in all of developed countries, isn’t it? Taiwan, Japan and Korea, where corporal punishment has been consistently used as a discipline method, are incredibly safe countries. No “Columbine” there! Maybe gun control (or lack there of) is the problem?

via [BloggingBaby]

Blog Whore

God damn it. I am such a blog whore. I still have about two dozen+ ideas I have saved up in my “to-blog” folder on the desktop that I want to sit down and write about. But I just keep getting distracted with all the interesting tech crap I have been blogging about. I wish I can get paid to blog about all the nonsense that’s in my head full time. That’d be the day.

Note to self: Blog about the following….
– Eileen Fisher
– Meme
– Moral politics (a little help here, Brian?)
– “Harry Potter” books and young readership
– Self-storage America
– Aristotle & dreams
– Human brain
– The Graphing Calculator Story
– Republicans’ Plan to Incorporate Church into State (Evangelical America)
– CNN USA v.s. CNN Elsewhere in the World
– Illusion of Freedom v.s. Lack of Freedom
– Various NPR episodes

But I am extremely happy that I’ve been able to get some stuff out of my head (like that Bob Lazar guy) which I’ve always wanted to document somewhere.

Applescripting and Blogging

I have been using Applescript to help me make my blogging easier. Everything from image resize and image format changes are done via my tiny scripts through Tiger’s Automator. And let me tell ya… it’s a godsend not having to keep memory-hogging Photoshop open all the time. Sure, I could have used third-party software that takes up smaller memory foot prints. But why bother when Applescript is so readily available?

Here is a good article to get started on Applescripting. But if you are on Tiger, don’t bother; Automator is all you need.

Blog Find — dooce

dooce was in the blog-sphere a while ago when the blog got its owner fired from her job. And again, I didn’t really pay attention to it because I thought that was a stupid news.

Tonight after completing my take-home exam at 1AM, as I was going through my daily news-reading ritual, an article on BBC News (god, I love BBC; way better than CNN) ignited my interest in my latest blog find.

Heather’s witty and funny writing has won me over and earned dooce a permenant spot on my daily reading list (50 RSS feeds and growing). The article (“Original Sin”) on getting her first iBook was what did me in. Now I am hooked on her fabulous writing style and penmenship penwomanship — refreshing and resonating. Though her blog has evolved into that of a parent writing about her life raising a daughter, the stories are still facinating reads.

An excerpt:

But do I really need a high-end iBook complete with OS X? What does OS X stand for anyway? Am I ready to give up my right-click privileges? Why is everything, including the air I breathe, now strangely aqua and beveled? Is the church true and does God live?

I bear my testimony to you today that yes, God does live, and his name is Steve Jobs. I am a convert. Praise Jesus and partake of the fruit.

Highly recommended.