WordPress 2.6.1 update

I know, I know,…. it has been a while since my last post, and I promise to correct this, but I figured I would let you know that Wordpress has been upgraded to a new version.  You can read about it it here.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

So I’m crusin’ Twitter (not that I’m a subscriber - it’s a long story) and I notice all these references to Dr. Horrible. My search for it, eventually got me to the Dr. Horrible website. What a treat!!! It’s from Joss Whedon, who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. It’s starring Neil Patrick Harris and others you know.

What we have here is a pure Internet show. It’s not on TV (but it is TV). It’s not theater (but it is theater - in the Little Shop of Horrors genre). Please, please go to the website to see the episodes, but for those of you who need to see a sample first, here’s the preview:

If you really enjoy it, you can download the episodes at iTunes.

New Wordpress version 2.6

Wordpress has just released version 2.6. I haven’t downloaded and installed it yet, but here’s a video of some of the changes:

Admittedly it looks to benefit the blog authors, but that, indirectly, effects the readers as well. You can find out a lot more about Wordpress on their blog, as well as their website.

I’ll probably upgrade over the weekend.

Jing

I know,… it’s been a while since I’ve made and entry. It’s not because I have had nothing to write about. With the attack on privacy, I especially want to encourage the use of PGP or GPG. In fact, I will be adding my public key to this entry, and will make it a permanent resident on the About Page.

What I’m interested in at this point in time though, is a program project called Jing. People probably know that I use Macs but this particular item is cross platform. It run on Windows as well as Mac.

What exactly is Jing? Watch the video tour on the Jing page. You will be seeing a few more Jing things here, and I’m sure in other places too. This is just an example of a still image:

Imagine if you could do something like this as a video, and imagine that it only took a few seconds to do. Think of the decrease in emails because Read more »

On dogs

You have to understand. This is not a mainstream blog. I get one or two visitors a day, and on good days, I get maybe five. So, I was baffled when I went to StatCounter and discovered that over 120 people visited my blog and they all went to the same page. By time the surge ended (it ran from the 18th to 19th), I had 198 page views which boiled down to 152 unique visitors.

I have no idea why that page is so popular. Also of interest is that so many visits came from Europe and especially the U.K.. A number were multiple visits. My first thought was that possibly my sight was being used as some type of portal but considering how aware I am of setting up security protections, that seems far off. No, it seems that I chose a picture of dogs that is pretty popular, because most of the searches came from Google images.

Search fixed

I finally figured out what the problem was with the search feature and permalink problem. Clicking on the title of any post should take you to its permalink and comments page (each post has its own page). This wasn’t happening. Anyway, it turns out that though some posts were labeled as “published” the “status” was unpublished.

The problem now is that this has to be corrected manually,… post by post. I’m working my way backward to 2004. I’m about halfway finished.

New theme installed

The Deserta theme is now installed and it appears to be very clean (visibly and as far as code is concerned). I think the problem I was having with the search function may be fixed now. Before, if you did a search, whether using the search function or the comments or tags or any mechanism for looking at past posts, on occasion, you would get a 404 error message. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it. If I refreshed the permalinks sometimes it would fix it and sometimes it wouldn’t. I think it had something to do with the way the Default theme is written. All of that is to say, if anyone has a problem retrieving past posts or get a 404 error code, let me know.

Meanwhile, it is good bye to the Default theme… it served well.

UPDATE RE: Searching

Searching, I have discovered, works perfectly well for the first item but if you need to see the comments (for example) of that posts you have to be registered.  Only registered users can go past one search.

Here’s an example to try.  Type the word Sicko in the search box.  You’ll get all the posts containing that word. Go to the post labeled Sicko 2 and click on comments. If you are registered, you’ll see those comments, otherwise you won’t.

I’ll make a note on the About page.

Themes being considered

I’ve been looking at some of the newer released themes for WordPress, have found two that are interesting.

• One is called Andrea
• and the other is called Deserta

There’s a third one that I’m not sold on called Jeans.

Feel free to let me know which you prefer either by email (if you’re registered) or by poll (on the right side of the Main page). Right now, I’m leaning toward Deserta as the first test. I think I’ll run a theme for a week or two and then change to the next one… depending on how it goes. Again, opinions welcome.

Old Starfire Gone

I cancelled the old Starfire account this evening. If you go there, you will get a 404 error message. It was great while it lasted, but alas, all the entries live here now. Use the search tool to find old items. Now the search begins for a more interesting face for the new StarFire.

Wordpress.org changes code for video

It appears that Wordpress.org has changed the way to put video on your blog.

Before, one could insert the url into the video icon for adding media (on the Write Post page), and if it were a YouTube video it would insert something like:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/ABunchOfNumersHere]

This would show up on your post as a screen with the familiar arrow, and clicking it would play the video for you. Now, you insert the code and then give the link a name, and a link shows up on your site. That’s it. No graphic of any kind, plus the link takes the viewer away from your site.

In order to get the display of the video the way it was before, you have to copy the code labled “embed” (on the YouTube page) and paste it in the HTML editor. Then, all is well again.
It works like this.

Here’s the link method.

And here’s the HTML method.

At first I didn’t like it, but I see now that this offers more options than before… Good job WordPress.org!