Deep Thoughts by Robert Felty http://blog.robfelty.com thoughts on wordpress, latex, cooking et alia Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:59:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 New wordpress plugin – Image Meta http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/huZYIodXu3Q/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/06/22/new-wordpress-plugin-image-meta/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:59:46 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=680
Image meta options

Image meta options

I just released my 7th wordpress plugin, Image Meta. This one has to do with image handling. Before wordpress 3.0, when you uploaded an image, the filename of the image was set as the title, and if you had given the image a caption (e.g. with Picasa), then the IPTC caption would be used as the caption for the image. In wordpress 3.0, the default is now to use the caption for the title of the image. I don’t like this, mostly because I had set up my theme’s image handling based on the old way. So I decided to write a little plugin which hooks into the image uploading process, and sets all four image fields at once – the title, alt text, caption, and description. The plugin allows you to select between setting each field to either the filename, the IPTC caption, or leaving it blank. I hope some others find it useful.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/06/22/new-wordpress-plugin-image-meta/feed/ 0 image-meta http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/06/22/new-wordpress-plugin-image-meta/ Showing total number of replies in bbpress http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/rH2fbScUAhc/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/04/09/showing-total-number-of-replies-in-bbpress/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:36:59 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=662
showing total number of replies on a bbpress profile page

showing total number of replies on a bbpress profile page

For awhile now I have been wanting to show the total number of topics started and replies in a bbpress forum on the profile page. Today I finally figured out how. I like bbpress quite a bit, as it integrates very nicely into wordpress. The main downside of bbpress right now is that the documentation is still basically nonexistent. Maybe someday I will help out with it.

Anyways, to get the total number of replies, simply use the following little mysql query:

<?php
global $bbdb;
$totalReplies = $bbdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(post_id) FROM " .
$bbdb->prefix . "posts WHERE poster_id=$user->ID");
?>

To get the total number of topics started, use:

<?php
global $bbdb;
$totalTopics = $bbdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(topic_id) FROM " .
$bbdb->prefix . "topics WHERE topic_poster=$user->ID");
?>


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/04/09/showing-total-number-of-replies-in-bbpress/feed/ 0 totalReplies http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/04/09/showing-total-number-of-replies-in-bbpress/ New wordpress plugin – category reminder http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/-M1I6pzaomk/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/04/01/new-wordpress-plugin-category-reminder/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:44:57 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=654
Category reminder screenshot

Category reminder screenshot

I recently released my sixth wordpress plugin – category reminder. I have seen several requests around for a plugin which forces users to select a category for each post they publish, so that the posts don’t just end up as uncategorized. Bloggers with multiple authors seem especially interested in this. I have wanted this requirement for myself as well, since I sometimes forget to categorize a post before publishing it. Now users can easily add this functionality via this plugin.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/04/01/new-wordpress-plugin-category-reminder/feed/ 3 screenshot-1 http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/04/01/new-wordpress-plugin-category-reminder/ Tofu-stuffed eggplant with mushroom ragout http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/ChxupRuJv2U/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/03/04/tofu-stuffed-eggplant-with-mushroom-ragout/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:50:39 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=642
Tofu-stuffed eggplant with mushroom ragout

Tofu-stuffed eggplant with mushroom ragout

Tofu-stuffed eggplant with mushroom ragout in baking dish

Tofu-stuffed eggplant with mushroom ragout in baking dish

Tonight I made a new recipe. Clare had bought some mushrooms the other day, and I bought eggplant yesterday. I thought that an eggplant mushroom ragout sounded good, though I didn’t know exactly what it would entail. I googled it, and found 2 good possibilities. The first possibility, which I did not choose, was more what I would think of as stuffed eggplant. It involved slicing the eggplants in half and filling them. This particular recipe seemed to throw away most of the eggplant flesh though, which seemed strange to me. The second choice, which I did make, instead called for rolling up thin slices of eggplant. I decided that the eggplant would taste better this way, so I went with it.

Even though it took several hours, the result was very tasty, and worth the effort. I followed the recipe almost verbatim, except that I substituted dried tarragon for fresh basil in the stuffing, since my basil plant is pretty much dead. Clare enjoyed it too, though as I predicted, she wasn’t too wild about the sun-dried tomatoes. She couldn’t put her finger on it until I told her the ingredients though. She also mentioned that I should have put more olive oil on the eggplant, which is correct.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/03/04/tofu-stuffed-eggplant-with-mushroom-ragout/feed/ 0 IMG_2246 IMG_2241 http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/03/04/tofu-stuffed-eggplant-with-mushroom-ragout/ Multi-column balanced lists http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/W3XGlb2txfo/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/02/18/multi-column-balanced-lists/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:25:36 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=626
List with balanced columns

List with balanced columns

List with unbalanced columns

List with unbalanced columns

Recently I was working on a project where a client wanted a list of items to be displayed over multiple columns, and requested that the columns be balanced (as balanced as possible). It didn’t take me too long to figure out how to do this for 3 columns, but I knew that there was a more general solution, which did take me a little time to figure out. I am sharing my solution here for my future reference. Perhaps some one else will find it useful too. The solution is in php, though the general algorithm should apply to any language.

The intuition that led me to this solution was to examine unbalanced columns. Let’s look at the case of 5 columns with 56 items, as shown in the figures. It quickly becomes obvious that you need 12 items per column (ceil(56/5)). However, this yields columns of lengths 12, 12, 12, 12 and 8. If you decrease the number of total items to 55, then you have balanced columns of 11. If you increase the number of items to 60, you have balanced columns of 12. Thus, it is possible for the last column to have n-1 items less than the other columns, where n is the number of columns. The preferred output is to have columns of 12, 11, 11, 11, and 11. So what we are doing is shifting over elements from columns 2, 3, and 4 to column 5 (note that we are not messing with the order of the elements). We can always achieve the desired result by simply decreasing the number of items from some of the columns by 1. To determine which columns to decrease, we simply look at the difference in the number of elements per column in the unbalanced solution. In the case of 5 columns with 56 items, the last column would only have 8 items, which is 4 less than 12. So we should start reducing the number of items per column at the 2nd column ((5-4)+1). If we had 57 items total, we would start reducing at the 3rd column ((5-3)+1).

Here is the snippet of code which takes care of figuring this out:

$numCols = 5;
$numItems = 56;
$itemsPerCol = ceil($numItems / $numCols);
$adjustedItemsPerCol=$itemsPerCol;
$blank =$itemsPerCol - ($numItems % $itemsPerCol);
if ($blank!=$itemsPerCol && $blank >0) {
  $adjustedItemsPerCol--;
}

While we are looping over our array of items (or, in my example case, using a while loop), we check to see which column we are on, and if we are on the column where we start to decrease the number of items per column, then we switch $itemsPerCol to $adjustedItemsPerCol.

if ($colNum == ($numCols - $blank)) {
  $itemsPerCol=$adjustedItemsPerCol;
}

Feel free to look at this working example, along with the code for it. I have used the CSS float property to make the divs act like columns, and added some colors to help them stand out.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/02/18/multi-column-balanced-lists/feed/ 0 balanced-columns unbalanced-columns http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/02/18/multi-column-balanced-lists/ A year of new recipes http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/VVnAoSWx9mk/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/13/a-year-of-new-recipes/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:16:49 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=562 Working towards 52 new recipes in 2009

Working towards 52 new recipes in 2009

My resolution for 2009 was to make 52 new recipes throughout the year, or roughly one per week. I tracked my progress using kibotzer.com. I didn’t quite reach my goal, but I ended up making 45 new recipes, and I am pretty satisfied with that. Most of the recipes were from cookbooks I already own or from the internet, but some were my own inspirations. For most of the recipes, I also blogged a little about them, so that I would remember how I made them. In 2010, I am looking forward to revisiting many of these recipes, and continuing to improve upon them to fit my taste.

I tried this goal once several years ago, and enjoyed it, but by June the goal had definitely slipped my mind. Kibotzer helped me keep working towards my goal through gentle reminders every month or so, plus having my goal public also gave me a little extra incentive.

Here is a little slideshow of most of the recipes I tried.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/13/a-year-of-new-recipes/feed/ 0 recipes http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/13/a-year-of-new-recipes/ Rigatoni with seitan puttanesca sauce http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/1XjKbFGWmgE/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/09/rigatoni-seitan-puttanesca/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:22:51 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=556
Rigatoni with seitan puttanesca sauce

Rigatoni with seitan puttanesca sauce

This was my last new recipe for 2009, and it was fairly improvised. I had recently looked up puttanesca in wikipedia, discovering that it is a “pantry dish”, meaning that most of the ingredients are staples in an Italian pantry, and mine too. I did alter it a bit. Normally it has anchovies, which I omitted, and normally it does not have onions which I added. And I also added in some seitan for protein. The result was quite tasty.

Here is what I used:

  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 2 pasilla (poblano) peppers
  • 1 large onion
  • 1 can mock pork (seitan)
  • 20 green olives, chopped
  • 2 cans petite diced tomatoes
  • 1 can tomato paste
  • 2 tsp capers
  • 1 cup white wine
  • Italian seasonings


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/09/rigatoni-seitan-puttanesca/feed/ 0 IMG_1955 http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/09/rigatoni-seitan-puttanesca/ WordPress 2.9 image changes http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/X8Mt6D3yqBc/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/02/wordpress-2-9-image-changes/#comments Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:58:48 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=534 WordPress 2.9 has several new image enhancements. One of the biggest features is some basic image editing functionality. Another one is that you can now specify different alt text from the “caption” field. The “caption” field places a caption under the image. The “alt” text is used to describe the picture to non-seeing users (including search engines). This is a nice addition. However, I usually like my caption, alt text, and title text to be all the same, and I don’t like to have to enter it all manually or copy and paste. By default, wordpress will use an IPTC caption as its “description” field, which shows up in the title attribute of the image. This is nice, since I can add a caption in my image editing program of choice (Picasa) and then I don’t have to enter it again. Except for those pesky alt and caption fields, which are blank by default.

This is particularly important if I am uploading many pictures. So I wrote a little sql which will set the “caption” and “alt text” fields to be the same as the description. I already had this working for the “caption” field for quite some time, but getting it to work for the different alt text handling in 2.9 was a bit tricky, since I discovered that the alt text is not stored in wp_posts like the other fields. Instead it is stored in the wp_postmeta table, which is new in 2.9. Although it took me awhile to figure this out, the new table is a welcome addition. Now for each image you upload, wordpress stores meta information in this table, including the width and height, different sized versions of the file, the IPTC caption, some EXIF info and a few other goodies. This means that if you like to include EXIF info about your pictures, that doing so requires only a simple database lookup, instead of having to read the headers from the image, which should be considerably faster I would imagine.

Now for my little SQL which sets the “caption” and “alt text” to be the same as the description. I run this on my server after uploading pictures. It would be even better if I could figure out how to do this as a wordpress plugin.

-- First we set the image caption (post_excerpt) to be the same as the
-- description (post_content)
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_excerpt=post_content WHERE post_type='attachment' AND
date(post_date)=curdate();

-- Next we set the alternative text to be the same as the post_excerpt
INSERT INTO wp_postmeta (wp_postmeta.post_id, wp_postmeta.meta_value) SELECT
DISTINCT wp_posts.ID, wp_posts.post_excerpt FROM wp_posts, wp_postmeta WHERE
wp_posts.ID=wp_postmeta.post_id AND post_type='attachment' AND
date(post_date)=curdate();

-- This line sets the correct meta_key for the previous line, which doesn't
-- seem possible otherwise
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_key='_wp_attachment_image_alt' WHERE meta_key IS
NULL;


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/02/wordpress-2-9-image-changes/feed/ 0 http://blog.robfelty.com/2010/01/02/wordpress-2-9-image-changes/ Penne with butternut squash sauce http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/2jMk3Rgm994/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2009/12/18/penne-butternut-squash/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:29:24 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=530
Penne with butternut squash sauce

Penne with butternut squash sauce

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, so I have been trying to use up what is in the house. One thing I had on hand was a butternut squash. One of our favorite recipes is corn, bean, and squash soup, but we have had that several times recently, so I decided to try something different. I thought it might make a good sauce for pasta, so I went with that. I mostly stuck to this recipe from the nourishing gourmet, but I added some cannellini beans and some whole milk at the end, since I also needed to use that up. The result was ok. Adding more salt helped a lot, but I think that it was too thick, too squashy, and too much sauce for the amount of pasta. So next time I would probably use either more millk and pasta, or less squash (and more salt). It was a nice way to use my new immersion blender though, and I have been looking for tomato-less pasta sauces recently, since I keep hearing how canned tomatoes are bad for me.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2009/12/18/penne-butternut-squash/feed/ 1 IMG_1781 http://blog.robfelty.com/2009/12/18/penne-butternut-squash/ Mjadra sandwich http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DeepThoughtsByRobertFelty/~3/e4yc3_H2LWM/ http://blog.robfelty.com/2009/12/15/mjadra-sandwich/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:33:35 +0000 robfelty http://blog.robfelty.com/?p=525
Mjadra sandwich

Mjadra sandwich

While we were in Michigan over Thanksgiving we stopped at our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in Ann Arbor, Jerusalem Garden, for a tasty mjadra sandwich. Mjadra is basically just lentils, caramelized onions, and either rice or bulgar. I haven’t been able to find it at restaurants in Colorado, so I decided to try to make it myself. I found quite a few recipes online, some with rice, and some with bulgar. Some had almost no spices, and some had many. I decided to use a cup each of brown lentils and brown rice, 2 large onions, a little cinnamon and some cumin. I also added about a half cup of bulgar at the end to soak up the remaining water. It was pretty good, though I think next time I will cook it a little longer, use less cinnamon, and add garlic.

I put the mjadra in a pita, along with some baba ghanoush, lettuce, a pickle, feta cheese crumbles, and a little Red Hot.


]]> http://blog.robfelty.com/2009/12/15/mjadra-sandwich/feed/ 1 IMG_1733-1 http://blog.robfelty.com/2009/12/15/mjadra-sandwich/