Archive for August, 2006

Library Re-Loaded…

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Reading ListI made the final push to get all the books on my list loaded into the database, some 119 [Edit: missed three..] titles in all, and took the time to tweak the templates a little more. For the sidebar (picture on left), I moved the current book to the top as it was a little lost between planned and finished, though the original layout reflects a transition better. Additionally, I added the sums of each book into the header with the stock function call found in the library template (I’m grateful for Rob’s well laid out code!) to add a sense of perspective–if I read a little over a book a month I have seven years remaining!

One of the coolest things about Now Reading is that it is fairly extensible, the functions are well documented and data is stored in separate tables which will allow me to do all sorts of different things (RSS feeds, sorts, groupings, etc.). I just need to take the time to hack at it. One thing I would like to do is to be able to associate comments to books and authors as it would be neat to have the potential for a dialogue to emerge on those topics. My inital thought is that it would have to be separate from the regular WordPress commenting system as if I ever decided to deactivate Now Reading or it breaks with a later version of WordPress I’d be left with one hell of a mess. Things to chew on.

Back to reading!

Tuesday Ha!

Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

“Sudo Make Me A Sandwich” (Thanks Tyler!)

Travesty

Monday, August 28th, 2006

Just check my site in IE6 for giggles. What an ass-broken rendering…

Reading List

Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Well, it appears that the site I was relying on for tracking my reading list, Reader2.com, is down (SQL connection error) and has been that way for several days. The programmer, it seems, last updated it over six months ago–along with all the other related sites–so it looks like it’s reached the state of abandonware. It was a great service while it lasted and I managed to load in some 90+ books, tagged, reviewed, and cross referenced so loosing it is a bit of a downer.

Regardless, it’s passing gives me the chance to pull the reading list into the site which gives me a greater degree of control and to do so I’m using Roblog’s Now Reading plugin–after some hacking of the default templates it flows decently with K2. On the left you’ll see a grouping of pending books, currently reading, and finished as well as a link to the “Library,” while at the moment is a tad sparse I’ll be filling it out over the next couple of days. Hopefully, I’ll be able to revamp the existing reading list page to reflect the information from the plugin to make the page a little more useful.

In other site news, I’ve moved onto the latest K2. I’m finding it to be a more polished experience; live search is tightly integrated and commenting flows smoother. One minor annoyance was that page template with comments was broken so I had to make a copy of the non-comments one and commenting to it. Beyond that I decided to change the background color to draw eyes to the posts rather than have them sort of bleed out into the surrounding page.

Good times.

Stressful Day.

Saturday, August 26th, 2006

Spent the better part of today at the hospital where Management was hooked up to a fetal monitor as she has been experiencing pre-term labor type pains for the past couple of days. After being poked, prodded, and getting yet another ultrasound done (no complaints from me about getting a chance to see my daughter) she was given a clean bill. No dilation, no infections, nothing. She is on bed rest for the next 48 hours and if the pain and cramping persists we’ll be heading back in on Monday. The experience leaves me feeling helpless but at least she has some great doctors and all of the attending nurses were some of the best I have ever met and I’m grateful for that. Hopefully, the experience at delivery time will be just as good.

Fun is!

Friday, August 25th, 2006

After playing with the Kororaa Xgl Live CD I now have an even more pressing need to get a new laptop.  Xgl + Compiz is so frickin’ tasty that even my Windows loving curmudgeon of a coworker was impressed.