One of the things I do on the back-end is choose “plug-ins” that add features to the blog that (hopefully) enhance your experience here or at a minimum help me accomplish something that the blog software (WordPress, in my case) doesn’t do natively. For example, and at issue . . . → Read More: So long, BlogGlue]]> I don’t talk much about the technical side of having a blog, but though it might look technical, this is really about the business side of blogging.

One of the things I do on the back-end is choose “plug-ins” that add features to the blog that (hopefully) enhance your experience here or at a minimum help me accomplish something that the blog software (WordPress, in my case) doesn’t do natively. For example, and at issue here, at the bottom of each post is a list of “Related Links”. A plug-in provides those.

The plug-in that runs now lists older posts on my blog so if you liked the post you can find similar things I’ve already written. For the last month, I’ve been running a different plug-in that has a great feature: in addition to listing old posts I’d written, it also links out to related posts written by people I hand-selected on their blogs. I thought it was a great way to introduce some of you to some of the people I read, and they in turn could (and did) use the same plug-in to introduce me to their readership.

That plug-in, BlogGlue, also has some integration with Facebook and Twitter to make it easier for me to let people know when new posts are available.

In general, it functioned as advertised, in that it successfully found related posts from both my own blog and those I identified and put them on my posts. Cool.

But then the trouble began.

As it was first processing my site, it started posting random years-old posts to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Very messy and annoying. So I turned off the integration until it was finished processing.

I never turned the Facebook integration back on, though, because it kept randomly throwing links to old posts on Twitter, and even worse started sending direct comments to one of the guys whose blog I linked to saying “I suggested you in” whatever the post was. What? Why in the world would he care that this software added a link to an old post on his blog in a years-old post on my blog? It’s just spammy.

But then, that’s who this plug-in seems to cater to: spammers. Out of the hundreds of sites using this plug-in, I could only find an extremely small handful who were not quite obviously spammers. I couldn’t even fill the limit of 5 associated blogs that comes with the free account after an hour or more of searching for non-spam blogs.

And speaking of limits, that is finally what did them in for me. They have a 400 post limit on the free account. After that, you have to pay $10/month to raise the limit to 1000. I have over 400 posts already, and I pay less than $10/month for my entire hosting account. So nothing I posted after I installed the plug-in was getting related-posts additions, my friends weren’t seeing any traffic from any of my new posts, and to fix that, I’d have to more than double what I currently pay to run this blog.

Not happening.

Great idea for a plug-in. Nice related post functionality. But it needs some serious work on the other features.

• Don’t bug my friends with pointless Twitter pesterings.
• Don’t spam random old posts all over the place. At least give me the option of whether to tweet about old entries.
• Maybe allow me to control how far into the past to index my older posts – or just index a rolling 400 (or more reasonable limit) of my old posts so the newest ones actually show links.

In my opinion this plug-in is just a way to make some quick bucks off spammers. I’m all for taking money from spammers, but I don’t need to be on the giving side of that equation – especially when the ancillary functions are so annoying. So… later, BlogGlue.

Just found Grooveshark. Loving it. On their About Us page, this was a quote one of their employees used:

“If it weren’t for physics and law enforcement, I would be unstoppable.” — Bukowski

For now, that’s my favorite quote.

The reason I found Grooveshark? Lee, over at . . . → Read More: Utter randomness]]> Nothing mind blowing today. This is pretty much going to be a stream of conciousness post. We’ll see if it’s even vaguely interesting by the time it’s over.

Just found Grooveshark. Loving it. On their About Us page, this was a quote one of their employees used:

“If it weren’t for physics and law enforcement, I would be unstoppable.” — Bukowski

For now, that’s my favorite quote.

The reason I found Grooveshark? Lee, over at Quit Your Day Job, has been doing a series of posts called “music to draw robots by” and has been posting the music from Grooveshark. The latest was “Carry on My Wayward Son” by Kansas, which I love. I also like the drawing. (Head over to QYDJ for more).

Grooveshark also has a WordPress plugin, so I thought I’d try it out here with a little more Kansas goodness.

“Kansas,” as some of you may know, is not just the name of a rock group. It’s also the name of a state in the United States. I know it’s hard to believe, but apparently there is no copyright problem there.

I don’t live in Kansas, nor have I ever been there. I do live in Pennsylvania, where I just saw local cable coverage of the PA Farm Show’s “Tractor Square Dancing” last night. As odd as this sounds, I was impressed with the drivers’ ability to actually do some interesting “dances.” Yes, I did actually watch it for almost 5 minutes. I’m still not sure why. I think I was hoping for an accident or something. In the end, it reminded me of simpler times when entertainment wasn’t in-your-face action/drama, but simple, fun, and personal.

Then I changed channels.

And I caught Backdraft, one of my favorite movies. If there’s a better “cheek actor” than Kurt Russell out there, I’ve yet to find him. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, GO WATCH THE MOVIE! Seriously, it’s really good. It also has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. Apparently a lot of other people like it too, because it shows up as the theme for unrelated trailers periodically as well as commercials. It’s also in a toy fire truck we got for my daughter one Christmas, made almost 2 decades after the movie.

um …

… uh

So I actually had more to say here, but I just got interrupted for about 4 hours, and completely lost my train of thought. I remember having a lot of ideas. Suffice it to say that there would have been something witty integrated about cows, to riff off the use of “utter” in the title. Okay “witty” may be overstating it. There was going to be something about TV and a few things that have happened recently, but hey… that’s what happens with stream of consciousness: you lose your thought and the stream becomes a trickle and dries up. So…. maybe it’ll come to me later. And then there will be another post.

Until then… as the song says, carry on.

The first thing that . . . → Read More: The Atahualpa Whallop]]> I’m looking to start a new blogging project online. Hopefully it’ll come together soon. I’m just in the planning stages now, but one of the things I’m considering is what the blog will look like. In tooling around the available themes for WordPress, I came across one that leapt out at me and started jumping up and down on my chest, slapping my face, shouting “Look at me! LOOK AT ME!!!”

The first thing that got my attention was the name: Atahualpa. A theme named after the last emperor of the Incan Empire. Great choice. It’s hard to ignore all those “a”s.

The next thing was the claim of customizability. It claimed to be either fixed- or flexible-width, 2 or 3 column, republican or democrat… and that you could control almost every aspect of the theme easily.

Well, I downloaded it and looked for myself. The claims are true… mostly.

You can control just about everything, to a much more granular level than I’ve seen in any other theme, right through the settings page, without opening the style.css file. It’s amazing the level of flexibility this thing affords. Check out the list of sub-pages on the Settings page…

The list of categories you can control in Atahualpa - many with multiple options each

There have got to be well over a hundred individual items you can style and control through this Settings page. It’s crazy.

The flexibility is great, but even though you don’t have to enter the style.css file, these settings aren’t for the faint of heart. Quite a few of the settings are just text boxes for you to enter CSS. There is a lot of guidance and great examples, but you gotta know CSS if you’re gonna mess with the default much. There’s no getting around it.

If you like the default, though, or there are just a couple small things you want to change, this may be a great style even for the CSS-ignorant. You just gotta ask for a little help from someone who knows what they’re looking at.

Here’s how this site would look with the default settings:

Caddickisms with the default Atahualpa look

For me, this theme is right on the edge. I like the basic default look, but there are a lot of little things I want to change. I love to tinker, too, but this may be a time when there are just too many options. I’m almost overwhelmed and that’s making it hard to focus on exactly what I want to alter.

Still, this is the best alternative theme for Caddickisms I’ve found yet. If I can determine what to change and then find those options, this might just be the next look for the site.

I think I’m going to go with something else for the new project, though.

If anyone has any thoughts they want to share, I’m all ears.

So far I haven’t seen any errors (though the database upgrade page was filled with errors, it also said it was successful at the end). Here’s to nothing cropping up moving forward.

And it even looks like I might be able to keep my theme. . . . → Read More: Upgrade successful!]]> This time I followed the directions to delete (almost) all the WordPress files on the server before uploading the new versions. That seems to work much better than overwriting them.

So far I haven’t seen any errors (though the database upgrade page was filled with errors, it also said it was successful at the end). Here’s to nothing cropping up moving forward.

And it even looks like I might be able to keep my theme. Still haven’t messed with the sidebars yet. That’s next.

Well, I finally upgraded WordPress to 2.3.3. I’d been putting it off because I was afraid it would break things. It ended up being worse than I thought.

I’m still finding errors in the upgrade itself! I had to pull old versions of files just to get it complete the upgrade procedure. Who knows what I’m going to find when I finally get through all this.

Most of the plugins I use actually work . . . → Read More: Upgrading broke half my stuff!]]> Argh.

Well, I finally upgraded WordPress to 2.3.3. I’d been putting it off because I was afraid it would break things. It ended up being worse than I thought.

I’m still finding errors in the upgrade itself! I had to pull old versions of files just to get it complete the upgrade procedure. Who knows what I’m going to find when I finally get through all this.

Most of the plugins I use actually work fine. That’s nice. The one exception is the polls, which I just have to upgrade, but holy cow, that one’s a pain in the neck to upgrade. From the instructions, it looks harder than upgrading WP itself.

And the biggest disappointment…. my theme, Tiga, died. It was already having problems with the previous upgrade but I was able to get past that issue. This time, it’s too much for me to figure out. Seems to be a sidebar widget problem, mostly, but that’s beyond me. It’s a shame, ’cause I really like this theme. Guess I gotta go out on a search. If anyone has suggestions for a nice 3 column theme, I’m all ears. (If I get the polls working, maybe I’ll put up a poll on it… ).

Anyway… lots of transition around here for the foreseeable future. Don’t be surprised if things break, get fixed, go away, come back, and just look plain different.

[Update: HA! At least three hours invested in this so far, and I finally got to the point where I had to restore my previous version. Too much was broken. I couldn't even edit posts. Cut my losses and run. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow night.]

As you can see from the previous post, I’m trying out a new plugin to embed video in WordPress (the software running this blog). There are some good players out there, but I’ve found that CoolPlayer does the job nicely for me, with a total minimum of effort – and that’s . . . → Read More: CoolPlayer – WordPress media plugin]]> [UPDATE: as you can see below, I'm having some problems with CoolPlayer - like it doesn't work anymore. I've switched to the Anarchy player.]

As you can see from the previous post, I’m trying out a new plugin to embed video in WordPress (the software running this blog). There are some good players out there, but I’ve found that CoolPlayer does the job nicely for me, with a total minimum of effort – and that’s what I’m really after.

I’ve had trouble using the YouTube provided “embed” code previously, because WordPress mangles the OBJECT code it uses. This simple plugin lets me avoid that issue. It also handles more than just video – it plays audio, too – and it allows me to use both on-site and off-site files. Multiple file formats are supported. It’s really a nice little app.

Here are some examples of using it:

Off-site video (YouTube):

[coolplayer width="480" height="380" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="1" mediatype=""]
Google Docs in Plain English
[/coolplayer]

On-site audio (mp3) – the little blue arrows aren’t part of the player, they’re from another player technology I have installed here:

[coolplayer width="100" height="100" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="1" mediatype=""]
Pop-pop not talking
[/coolplayer]

Honestly, I don’t think I like it as much for audio, but it works.

[tags]WordPress plugins, video, audio, coolplayer[/tags]

So, for what it’s worth, here is a draft of my talking points for presenting some Learning Technology ideas to my team (click on the map and drag to move it, or zoom in using the wheel on your mouse or the controls in the upper-left of the . . . → Read More: Mind Map of Learning Technologies]]> Nothing new going on here. I created the map for a project at work, and I wanted to test out the embedding plugin bubbl.us has for WordPress.

So, for what it’s worth, here is a draft of my talking points for presenting some Learning Technology ideas to my team (click on the map and drag to move it, or zoom in using the wheel on your mouse or the controls in the upper-left of the map):

Hmm… I’m not sure I like that I have to pick a static size for the view. It’s not terrible, though. For those of you with smaller screens… sorry about this. Lemme know if it’s really out of hand.

As for the content, the goal of this particular effort is to show how a bunch of different learning technologies can support different modes of training/learning. It’s by no means complete… just a discussion starter. But if you have any insights on technology categories I should use or selling points for each of them, please share. I’ve still got over a week before I have to present this, and I could use the help.

[tags]bubbl.us, mind mapping, learning technology, learning 2.0, web 2.0, collaboration software[/tags]

If I’m subscribed to the feeds, those interesting posts generally make it into my Google Reader Shared Posts page (currently in the right sidebar here, though I’m going to move it to it’s own page once I figure out how to get . . . → Read More: LinkList: Sci-fi edition]]> I find a lot of stuff that I want to share, but that doesn’t make it into a blog post of its own, for whatever reason (usually a lack of time and/or energy).

If I’m subscribed to the feeds, those interesting posts generally make it into my Google Reader Shared Posts page (currently in the right sidebar here, though I’m going to move it to it’s own page once I figure out how to get the Javascript to work in WordPress). For the other posts I run across, I’m going to start periodically creating a “link list” post like this one. At the moment, I’m thinking I’ll try to categorize the links, but I’m still figuring out what will work best so that may change.

So, that’s enough with the extended preamble. On to the links!

Which Operating System would your favorite Sci-Fi characters choose?
» Spock loves Linux, Vader is a Mac Daddy | Geekend | TechRepublic.com

The History of Sci-Fi, written by the fans
BBC – My Science Fiction Life
Thoughts and memories about all the sci-fi we grew up with, from the 1930′s to today, across all “platforms” – books, movies, TV, radio, comics, etc. – chosen and examined by users.

Justice League Of America – The Movie?
Slice of Scifi – Science Fiction TV & Movie News, Interviews & more » JLA Finally Coming to Theaters? Keep Your Fingers Crossed!
In theory this is really cool. In practice, I don’t think they’ll pull it off. In addition to the casting issues the post mentions, there’s the problem of trying to fit all those characters into a 2 hour movie. It’s hard enough to get a single fully fleshed out superhero character in a film, let alone seven. The closest movie to pull that off was X-Men, and they really only focused on Logan (Wolverine) and Rogue in that one.