I thought I’d better break out the camera and take a couple of shots of my new workspace before it gets buried in drawings and project files. This way I’ll at least have some evidence later on that indeed there are actual desk surfaces under all that crap.
Of course I could make the big hurrah about GTD and ‘staying on top of it all this time’ but let’s all be honest with one another here.
Plus, if you set the bar low enough, you can only succeed. 
Here are the shots:
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve come back to Twitter. One benefit/curse of that is that Steve Gillmor has my attention once again. Getting me thinking about new things is the benefit, having to translate from Steve-speak into something I can really grasp is the curse.
Freeing the @reply
Lately, he’s been ignoring the @reply functionality in search of something better. Why? Well I’m still trying to fully wrap my head around it, but one of the main points is that the reach of the @reply is dependent on each user’s Twitter settings. An @reply doesn’t guarantee delivery to the recipient.
For example, if I want to direct a Twitter update at Steve Gillmor, I could use “@stevegillmor - blah blah”, but if Steve has chosen to only see @replies from people he follows, which is a valid choice in anyone’s Twitter settings, he’ll never see my message.
So Steve’s looking for a better method. Right now, the solution is to drop the @ symbol and find a better way to monitor for those tweets with his name in them using the ‘track’ functionality. You can track any terms you want and you get all the twitter updates containing that (or those) terms.
GTalk + Twitter
In addition to all this @ symbol ducking and diving, Steve’s also a proponent of using Google Talk (or GChat) for playing in the Twitter stream. I’ve been trying this out myself lately and I can kind of see why he likes it, and also what shortcomings it has. It behaves like any other IM client, and doesn’t really poll periodically for updates like most of the desktop clients do. It’s also nice because it’s inside the browser and not installed on the desktop which I like. I don’t want to have to worry about using a Linux compatible client at home vs. a Windows client at work.
One of the problems with using GTalk is that the @reply functionality (or anything like it) disappears. You get normal web link functionality, but the @ symbol is meaningless in GTalk unlike most other Twitter specific clients. A secondary problem is that there is no running count for the 140 character limit. Steve says he just ‘prays’ he’s staying inside of 140. I’m not sure if there is an easier fix for this.
Improving the GTalk experience
So how could the GTalk experience be improved? One way might be to add some Twitter specific functionality to the right-click menu inside of GTalk. By double-clicking on a users name you get the name selected (minus the @symbol if it’s there) but what do you do with it? It would be nice to have a menu entry for getting the last few tweets from that user, or something similarly useful.
Presently, in Firefox3 Beta3 you can right-click and select a Google search on the highlighted username which pops up in a separate tab in the GChat window. And if you’re lucky, those search results might yield a twitter page. More often than not, however you won’t be that lucky.
The SmartSearch Extension
With a bit of searching however I found the SmartSearch Firefox extension which has versions for FF2, FF3beta3, and FF3beta4. This little gem adds a context menu item allowing you to search for the highlighted term using any of the Smart Keyword searches you’ve added to Firefox.
Smart Keyword searches are a godsend to begin with. You can create one just by right clicking on almost any search box. I’ve got Smart Keyword searches set up for Google (gg), Google Image Search (gis), Wikipedia (wkp), and IMDB (imd) to name a few. So I can just type “gg lasagna recipes” into the address bar and up come my search results.
So all I did was head over to my Twitter page and create a Smart Keyword search for the Twitter search box (right side of page halfway down). Now when I’m in the Gtalk window I can double click on a username, right click and select Twitter from the search choices and up pops a separate tab with that Twitter user, their profile info and their last tweet. Useful!
Of course undoubtedly someone who knows something about creating FF extensions (ie. not me) could create something a click or two shorter, and a lot more useful. This is merely duct-tape when we really need bondo.
Now if someone could just embed a character counter in my GChat window I’d be all set.
[Update: Turns out you don’t even need to double click the username, the SmartSearch plugin will just take whatever word is under the cursor when you right-click. Nice!]
Another problem I’ve just noticed I’m having with WordPress 2.5 has to do with image uploading. After attempting to upload an image to a blog post, I was presented with the following error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_constrain_dimensions() in /home/u5/ng0larmlon/blog/html/wp-admin/includes/image.php on line 173
A quick search revealed (again) that I’m not the only one having this problem. I’ve checked that I can post images no problem if they are specified by a URL (eg. hosting it on Imageshack, my own server etc.) but if I try to upload an image from my local machine it barfs.
Now one thing I’m not sure of is whether or not the problem(s) I’m having is because of the way I installed WordPress initially. I took the newbie route and installed it via my ISP’s control panel. Problem is, the latest version on their control panel is still 2.3.3. So being the adventurous soul I am (not really), I went ahead and upgraded it via FTP. Now when I got back to the control panel on my ISP’s site, the currently installed version is listed as “N/A”.
Maybe I should have NOT gone the route of letting my ISP install it and should have just rolled up the sleeves and done it myself.
What do you think? How did you first install WordPress? Via your ISP’s control panel or in a more macho way? Do you think this could be part of the problems I’m having?
I haven’t made a lot of tech purchases in the last couple of years. Not that I don’t enjoy tech pr0n as much as the next guy, but aside from maybe a laptop, there’s nothing I actually really need. I’ve got a perfectly usable (thanks to Linux) P4 desktop system with a 19” lcd monitor (note: I’m not a gamer so this system is probably way too low-spec for most), a quality flatbed scanner and a decent quality photo printer. But in recent weeks, probably the most ignored part of a typical desktop system started annoying me - the speakers.
Ah yes, the lowly and oft-forgotten pc speaker system. These beige babies (JBL Pros - whatever cachet that holds I haven’t a clue) came with my Compaq AMD K6-2 system of years gone by. Hey, don’t laugh. It had 3DNow technology! Falcon 3.0 ran like buttah! But over the past few weeks (or is it months?) adjusting the volume became a noisy, scratchy affair and more recently the left or right speaker would cut out with the only remedy being to insert and remove the headphone jack a few times until both were working again. Clearly it was on its last legs.
So after absolutely no research, and a quick trip out around the lunch hour, I returned with a nice shiny box containing the Logitech X-240 speaker system. I was determined to spend well under $100.00, they are pc speakers after all, not studio reference monitors. I was also determined to get a system with a subwoofer so I could actually get some decent bass response when playing music - or wonderful Inkscape screencasts .
After unpacking the $60.00 system, I ventured into the dangerous cable jungle that is the underside my desk. I gingerly tugged out the existing speakers and cables, careful not to disturb the almost organic nest of cables, twist ties and dust bunnies. There is no power brick (the transformer resides inside the subwoofer housing I would guess), and along with the two rectangular satellite desktop speakers (with real honest to god metal grilles) comes a control panel that also functions as an mp3 player cradle. This little black monolith contains the power button, rotary volume control, headphone jack and a little pull out cradle to support an mp3 player (iPod or otherwise). I don’t have an mp3 player so the little silver shelf stays pushed in and flush just like a little horizontal accent.
The satellite speakers are about half the size of my old beige ones, but they sound much better. And that subwoofer at my feet makes a huge difference to all sorts of audio, even YouTube videos. Now I can hear and feel the grunt when Bobby-Joe get’s hit in the pills by an errant basketball.
While it’s no concert hall experience, it’s worlds apart from what I was hearing before. And for that, I am happy.
I followed WordPress.org’s 3 step upgrade instructions and I think I’ve got it right. Every thing in the dashboard and editor is nice, pastelly, roundish cornery goodness. The blog itself still looks fine. I’ve got all the plugins reactivated and it seems to all work hunky-dory. However..
When I hit my wp-login page, I see an unstyled page with two simple text fields in which to enter my login credentials. Not the centred gradient boxy wordpress thingy, but just almost a css-less page. The login works, but I’m thinking maybe I screwed something up (forgot to copy over something?) which left my login page looking like dogs balls.. so to speak.
Any clues on why it looks unstyled? Maybe it takes a bit of time for that part to ‘take’ ?
[Edit: Seems I’m not the only one with this issue. Check out: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164246]