The Sunday List Post, 2nd Edition

• My new favorite thing is Tweetie for Mac. Supports multiple twitter accounts, is sleek, lightweight and works very well.
• In case you missed it, windthefrog.net is back, pulling duty as a tumblr.
• I’m back on Vimeo. With Facebook support and about the best HD video experience, I had to. Might even go Pro fairly soon too.
• I wasn’t lying. The EeePC is for sale if anyone wants a deal. It’s a great machine, just not great for me. Too bad I realized it a week after I could return it. Contact me for more info.
• I have three Wordpress projects on the go right now. 2 are done, 1 is close. Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing them soon enough. One of them is a very nice blog theme that I’m going to make available for download.
• I almost have v2.5 of this sites theme ready to go. So far, it’s coming along nicely and I think you will really like it.
• The Blackberry is finally behaving and I can’t help getting excited about the possibility of an ATP on Verizon in the somewhat-near furture.
• I took the Canon down to the beach last week and got some pretty good footage. Plus I’ll be working on a new project for my Grandfather that is video related this coming week. Should be cool
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That’s it really. At least that’s it for now. Follow along at Twitter or the Tumblr for stuff I’m finding interesting on a daily basis.

The Sunday List Post

• New favorite app. this week; Trashit for when you just can’t get the trash emptied, no matter what. Yes, I tried that. Tried that too. This worked. And free.
• Another cool one Hazel. Nifty app that lets you set up rules for folders and it does stuff. Check it out.
• Merlin copying the w(t)f video hour, and doing a much better job.
• Even still, the Wordpress HTML editor still can’t post embeded video. You would think that would be fixed by now.
• I’m excited about iLife ‘09.
• Last week I upgraded the Storm to OS version .85. I think I’m going to take it back to .75 when I get a chance.
• I seriously need to reinstall OS X on my laptop.
• I hate the show The Gilmor Girls with the heat of 10¹⁰⁰⁰ suns
• It’s amazing how much of a time suck having a job is. Where is my money tree?
• The house I wanted to move into has been rented. I was not happy about that
• Diggin’ the new job. Diggin’ the fact that I don’t have to spend 4 hours in my car every day getting there and getting home too.
• I wish I had build-real-stuff-skills. Dad’s shed is turning out very nice and I can only sit back and watch it go up.
• Taking a photo of myself every day is fun.
• Need to rework my gym schedule. Get up at 5:30a or get home at 9p? Tough call, I know.
• Scales disappoint me, especially when they are telling me I weigh at least 10 pounds more than I want to.
• I would never pay $6k for a laptop. Even if I had a money tree. Even if I had 2.

Especially the Gilmor Girls one. Oh my god people! How can you watch that crap?

The front page is 100% automated pulling posts from a single category twice, all of the posts once plus the feed from a message board. Almost exactly like the homepage here. A new addition to the layout that I have not used before is a jQuery slider. After some tweaking it’s actually very very cool. To get an idea, it works like this. I will be getting more into jQuery in the very near future.

Moving off the home page is a custom category template where, if need be, a different header graphic can be displayed for each category. Too keep the template file to a minimum, this is all driven from 2 php files and 1 css file. Normally you could build out 1 category template for each category, but with over 20 cats, that would get to be a bit unweildy. Same goes with the CSS. It’s just easier to keep all those category page specific styles in their own file. Turns out, I am not doing the individual templates, but should minds change, it’s ready to go.

From there, it’s just a normal single.php and index.php to display everything else.

Something new I’m having to deal with is user accounts. No comments without first creating an account and all that. I did it once and did not like the fact that a regular user, upon logging in, sees the WP Dashboard. A quick google search got me a hack for wp-login.php that redirects on login to whatever page I specify. Very very cool. I will be adding a login area anywhere that is needed to keep normal users from seeing either the WP login page or the Dashboard.

And, of course, since I have user logged in or not information, I’m able to do some cool if-else magic for displaying ads or not, changing sections of the page, or not. Pretty much whatever I want to do. Could probably have a completely different theme for users that are logged in if I wanted to. Very very cool stuff.

In total there are 17 template files, 4 files for the script that runs the slider and 3 CSS files. By far the most involved theme I have ever built. And right now it is 100% operational. I need to do a little tweaking on the layout yet plus run it through IE.

I hope it passes.

I’m sure you’ve seen the front page of donburnside.com or even the Motoringfile News Room. I built both of them using features built into Wordpress and nothing else. How did I do it?

Start by checking out this page at the Codex.

Retrieves an RSS feed and parses it. Uses the MagpieRSS and RSSCache functions for parsing and automatic caching and the Snoopy HTTP client for the actual retrieval.

If you scroll down the page a little bit there is an example of what you need to get things working. In my testing, I started with that as a base and modified it for how I needed it to look and work. Once you get it working the way you want, what do you do with it?

I built custom page templates within the Wordpress theme that included the code to pull the RSS feeds I wanted. Then, I created a page with a title and used that custom template for the page. If you are familiar with modifying WP template files or creating custom template files, then it should be easy for you too.

We’ll be recording audio, I will, again, attempt video. Plus I’ll be posting a bunch of photos to my Flickr. And, if I can, I will be posting to Twitter.

Posts here from Thursday to Monday might will be lighter than usual.

On another note, later this week I will be giving the pressd section it’s very own Wordpress install right here at w(t)f. New feed and everything. I will post when that happens.

Cameras will be with me all week too. Hopefully I will get some stuff posted before MTTS.

New Toys

I’ve had a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate burning a hole in my account for the last month, so I thought I would use that to get a new toy or two, plus a book for the lad.

First up, a replacement clip for my Gorilla Pod. I lost the original one somewhere and Amazon sells them for $5, so that’s done.

The other thing I’ve been wanting to get is a mono pod to use with the The Flip. You might have seen the test I posted the other day. So far, I think it’s pretty awesome. I can’t wait to try it with the other cameras in the house either.

It’s an Opteka. Collapsed it’s only about 18″ long. Fully extended it’s 6′. Lightweight, nice handle with a wrist strap and it even has a spike on the bottom if I’m in grass or dirt. Pretty snazzy. Oh yea, and cheap! This only cost $12.95. Not too shabby.

You will see this device in use at MTTS LA for sure. Just look for the dork carrying the black walking stick, that will be me.

Wordpress stuff

As much as I’m totally diggin’ the new pressd section, I’m still not 100% happy with the way it works. I managed to make the single post pages look right and the navigation is pretty ok, but it’s screwing up the front page. I’m not sure if I want to hunt down that particular fix or not, so I might be moving it into it’s own Wordpress installation on w(t)f. Watch for that, possibly later this week.

Next up for w(t)f as far as Wordpress goes is a modernization of the theme. I would like it to work with widgets and to get the avatars working in comments. Plus some minor refreshing of the layout is in order. Again, watch for that to happen later in the week.

I’m hoping to get those changes done and start possibly on a redo of WRR. I’ve not been pleased with it’s appearance for quite a while, and have a some huge ideas for it. So keep an eye out for that in the near future. Besides, we are 3 years old. Time for something really really cool I think!

I wasn’t terribly pleased with the way my “Press This” posts were blending in with the normal posts here. They were, really, out of place I’m sure you would agree.

I know our good friend Josh does, since he moved all of his link-type posts out to a whole other site.

I tried that with tumblr if you recall, but the lack of comments and layout control really bothered me.

So, I built my own. Ha.

It’s not fancy. No plug-ins are used or anything. It’s just this page, completely stripped of everything and some layout changes made. You will notice those posts are now gone from the front page even. Sure I’m going to tell you how I did it (after a jump), but before I do, lemme tell you how to find it.

http://www.windthefrog.net/archive/wtf/category/pressd/.

Ok, so it’s not terribly elegant and that’s only because of my ridiculous spam-bot-squashing ninja-like rewrite rules. It’s ok, the link is also at the bottom of all of the pages. What’s even cooler than that is when you get there, you will see a very large feed icon. See? Who watches out for you, huh? That’s right and don’t you forget it!

Update. I have also modified the main w(t)f feed to exclude those posts. If you want to keep them separate, unsubscribe to the old one and resubscribe to the new one. Or, don’t change anything, it’s entirely up to you. But, if you subscribed to the pressd posts and the original wtf feed, you will see posts twice. No good that.

Now, on to the how. Jump!

This is probably the easiest Wordpress mod you can do yourself. Here is what I did.

• Create a category for those links. Get the category number by pointing at the category in the wp-admin once it’s created and looking at your status bar. Safari users, I can’t help you.
• Make a copy of your index.php and call it category-xxx.php where xxx is the category you just created.
• Upload the new file to your wp-content/themes directory.
• At this point, you are done. If you want to also exclude that category from your main page, you will need to modify your index.php thusly.

find:

< ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

And add beneath it:

< ?php if (in_category('xxx')) continue; ?>

• Upload your new index.php into your wp-content/theme directory

That’s it! Take a few minutes and style that page out if you want. I gave mine a different header page, removed the sidebars and stripped out a bunch of the formatting. It’s up to you.

Update 2. I’ve made the single post pages look correct as well. Full info on how to do that can be found here. Handy handy stuff!

Man I love Wordpress.

Mail.app

Been using this for a solid week now with Gmail POP3. It’s been pretty good I must say but there are a few things I think could be a little better.

1. Setting up rules and mailboxes could be more streamlined or at least have a keyboard shortcut
2. Flagging a message needs an easier keyboard short cut, or someone at Apple needs to stop with those rediculous symbols that I don’t understand.
3. Restoring the window from the dock needs to be more elegant/easier to figure out, but this is a problem I have with most Mac apps. cmd-n works, but then I have to close the new message window.
4. Better keyboard navigation in general would be keen. Arrow and tab keys are my friend

Next will be getting my address book and iCal current. I’m really excited to see how well they integrate.

Projects

Quite a few of these on the go. My latest Wordpress project will be online for testing soon. I’ll let you know when that happens.

I’m in the process of starting a new Podcast, this time with Fireball Tim. I got the domain name, have an intro done and we will be doing testing this week. Yes it will be car related. And yes, you will hear about it here first. At least until we get 5 or so of them done, then we’ll tell everyone! Ask nice and I might post the intro.

Another site I just did a bunch of work on is KCL Productions. I cleaned up the navigation and completely rebuilt the portfolio section using lightbox. It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Full re-do of the site will be coming later in the year more than likely.

MTTS

Most of you know that I won’t be going to Chicago. I am, however VERY excited about LA. Besides it being the last stop, it will also be the third anniversary of the show. If you are in or around LA the first weekend of August, I expect to see you!

My Music

I know you are all jealous that I actually have the time to do this, but boy am I glad I did. My music library is now about 17gb lighter than it was before, I removed all of the crap that I didn’t know I had or didn’t want and cleared out a bunch of old podcasts that I already listened too. Only need to do a final rebuild of the library and it will be done.

Video and photos

I really need to get back on this. Part of the problem for video is I lost a piece for my suction cup mount I use in the MINI. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make a new one without spending the $15 to replace it. I have an idea and hope to have it figured out soon.

As for photos, I’ve just been lazy. I did, however, get a replacement clip for my gorilla pod (another piece I lost months ago) and I’m dying to start using that again. Watch the flickr for something soon.

Ok, that’s it for now. Back to the job boards.

Now, 2.6 has been released. And yes, you are soaking in it.

First things first. Out of date plug-ins are now noted directly above the link for the plugins page to alert you that you are some that are in need of updates. I like that. Then I clicked the turbo button.

This installed a Google Firefox plugin that is supposed to allow for better performance from the wp-admin. As I already have a connection that gives me speeds that makes it feel like a desktop app, we shall see if it gets any better. If you are on a pokey DSL line, I’m sure you’ll notice a difference straight away.

But, that’s all for now. It’s late (after 2am) and I think I’m finally tired. So I will play more.

After I sleep.

For example, my current project currently exists as a site with about 10-15 HTML pages and a Wordpress blog. I’ve got the layout pretty much done and will start bringing in pages and blog posts early next week more than likely. The whole thing, much like Fireballed, it will be 100% contained within Wordpress.

I’ve had trouble with this in the past. Having a static page as the front page with a blog having more than 1 category behind it presents some navigational issues. So much so that there is one site out there (that I will be fixing very very soon) that I had to move the blog out front and have the pages behind it. But not any more.

It’s all in the categories. And the Category base. Here is the trick.

All of the posts categories for the blog need to be children categories of 1 main category. For example, if I were to do that here I would have a main (parent) category called blog and all of the other categories (rants, tech, personal, etc) would be sub-categories (children) under it.

Now here is the real trick. You need to set your category base. First reaction is to also call it blog (like the parent category), but in doing so, none of the navigation you setup will work correctly. Next and previous pages, for example, won’t work. Archives either. What you need to do is set that category base to something different that the parent blog category. In my case, I used section.

So, the main link to the blog becomes [sitename.com]/section/blog. If you want to link directly to a category (like I have done for the new site) you would link to /section/blog/category. All navigation works and it’s a beautiful thing.

Another neat trick I’m using on this new site is displaying an excerct from the latest post in 1 category on the main page. And, the excerpt is an image that links back to the originating post. Do do that, I am using a second Loop that has been modified to work after the main Loop has run. I’ve done this on a custom page template that I built specifically for the front page of the site, that way I can still use page.php for all of the other pages.

Did I mention I’ve done all of this without any plugins? Sure, there will be plugins on the site, but only to increase functionality (subscribe to comments, live comment preview, akismet, markdown and contact form). Just a little Google and Codex searching to find the right bits.

The site is still a week or so away from being live, but I’ve got a screenshot up if you’d like to take a look. Any and all feedback is always welcome.