BenFSayer.com

How to Quickly Add Breadcrumbs in Thesis

bsayer — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:46:28 +0000

On one of my WordPress and Thesis powered websites I wanted breadcrumbs to help visitors navigate. I felt this was especially important because the site is a traditional website using pages, rather than a blog using posts.

I quickly discovered the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin which cleanly did exactly what I wanted, including integrating with themes by adding a function. I downloaded and installed the plugin. I customized the settings in the site’s dashboard then moved on to the final step: integrating the plugin with Thesis.

Here’s how to add a function to Thesis to make the breadcrumbs appear below the header.

Open custom_functions.php in the Thesis Custom File Editor
Insert the following code into custom_functions.php
Click the “Big Ass Save Button”
Check out your site with its new breadcrumb feature

/***********************************************************
********************* Breadcrumb NavXT *********************
***********************************************************/
function display_breadcrumbs() {
	?>

How to Display Content Based on WishList Member Level

bsayer — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:58:49 +0000

I created a PHP function for my GenealogyTools.com blog last night. It may save you some time if you want to control what content displays for different WishList Member member levels.

I use the Thesis theme, so I added the function to custom_functions.php and use it for an after post hook and to control the display of sidebar widgets.

Here’s the function:

function is_user_premium_member() { $user = wp_get_current_user(); $levels = WLMAPI::GetUserLevels($user->ID); if(in_array('Premium', $levels)) { return true; } else { return false; } }

This function determines whether the user is in the Premium membership level. You can make it check for a level with different name by changing the value ‘Premium’ to whatever your membership level is (e.g. ‘Gold’).

Once you have the function saved, you can use it in the “Conditional” text box of a widget. To exclude the widget for the membership level, enter: !is_user_premium_member(). To only display it for the membership level, leave off the exclamation point: is_user_premium_member().

Similarly, you can use the function within a hook like I have in the following example of an a single post advertisement hook:


/* Ad after single posts */

function single_post_ads() {

  if (is_single()) {

    if(!is_user_premium_member()) { ?>

        // Put what you want to display for non-premium members here
      
    
    }

  }

}

add_action('thesis_hook_after_post', 'single_post_ads');

In this case, taking out the exclamation point will make the ad display only for premium members.

Three Little Words

bsayer — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:16:42 +0000

I’m going to do something different starting today. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s in complete alignment with one of my big 5 for life, which I wrote this morning.

Before I die I want to: experience all children growing while showered with love and free from coersion.

This is a big one! It applies to all childern too—even the one inside you and me.

I thought about how to achieve this while driving to work this morning. I imagined being in our world when this is reality. I knew that I would be different in many ways. One of these I commit to starting now.

I saw myself telling each person I encountered that I love them; to contribute to showering them with love.

I don’t mean the empty, mechanical, “I love you” so often encountered. I saw and sensed an authentic “I love you” that was felt by the recipient too. I imagined how joyous I would feel if others did the same for me and wanted all the more to do this little kindness for everyone.

Later, I reflected on the vision and felt uncomfortable. I knew from that discomfort that it was something I had to do.

I’m making this part of my loving-kindness practice: I will give these three little words to each person I encounter every day. I will push past the discomfort. I will mean it. I will experience my dream as reality.

I love you.

GAE Problem Uploading Data After 1.5.2 SDK Update

bsayer — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 03:42:02 +0000

Naturally the 1.5.2 update of the Google App Engine (GAE) SDK on my MacBook cleared my datastore. That’s a big deal right now as I’m into the last week of development on the mobile app I’m building for attendees of the 2011 Rethinking Everything conference.

Weeks back I completed the bulkdata load to the production server so I periodically download the current datastore and upload it to my local datastore. Fortunately, I did that earlier today. Unfortunately, the upload failed after updating the SDK.

At the end of the stack trace was this error:

BadRequestError: app "dev~rethinkingprogramapp" cannot access app "rethinkingprogramapp"'s data

The fix is simple if you run into this. Simple, that is, if you read the release notes. The application name in the SDK is now prefixed with “dev~” so prepend that to your app name for the –application argument to bulkdata load commands.

Pleasure Potential iPad Unlock Motivation Wallpaper

bsayer — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:13:49 +0000

Here’s another iPad Unlock Movivation Wallpaper I made from a passage I found inspirational today. The quote is from Scott Noelle and the photo is by Pat Ronan.

Get it here.

Resolving the ‘setStatusBarHidden:animated:’ is deprecated Warning

bsayer — Mon, 30 May 2011 19:45:29 +0000

I’m working on chapter 6, Subclassing UIView, of iPhone Programming
by Joe Conway and Aaron Hillegass¹ to learn iOS programming. There’s a deprecated method in the code for hiding the status bar in the Hypnosister app. Xcode 4 generates a warning that UIApplication setStatusBarHidden:animated: is deprecated.

One of the ways I make sure I’m understanding the material rather than just typing in examples is to chase down issues like this. Here’s how I did it: I selected the method, setStatusBarHidden, in the code and used the “Jump to Definition” feature (control-command-D or Navigate|Jump to Definition on the menu). That brought up the source for the method. The comment at the end told me to use -setStatusBarHidden:withAnimation:. Using the code completion feature I changed the original line:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:NO];

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES withAnimation:

Now, that’s not complete because the message that should follow withAnimation: isn’t there and I didn’t know what to send. So I selected the signature, setStatusBarHidden:YES withAnimation:, and used “Jump to Definition” again. That source told me that withAnimation: expects a UIStatusBarAnimation. I thought, “Great. I’m making progress, but is that an enum or what?” To get the answer, I selected UIStatusBarAnimation in that source and again used “Jump to Definition” where I learned that it is an enum that can be UIStatusBarAnimationNone, UIStatusBarAnimationFade, or UIStatusBarAnimationSlide. The first one best matched the original intent of animated:NO so I entered it in HypnosisterAppDelegate² resulting in the following line of working code:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES withAnimation:UIStatusBarAnimationNone];

Now I’m headed back to the iPhone Programming ebook to start working on the next challenge: making the concentric circles appear in assorted colors.

1. I’ll get iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (2nd Edition) when it’s released.
2. I experimented with UIStatusBarAnimationFade and UIStatusBarAnimationSlide before implementing UIStatusBarAnimationNone; no animation just seemed less interesting. I thought fade was cool, but liked slide best.

Four-Steps to Choose What to Do With Your Life

bsayer — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:56:56 +0000

I was listening to Linchpin during my commute this morning.¹ With good books this is a good practice because you’ll discover things you missed on previous passes. With great books like Seth Godin’s Linchpin, it’s a must-do because there’s so much gold in there it takes many passes to pan it all. This reading was no different.

The nugget I found this time was when Seth gave a tip that’s invaluable to guys like me who are trying to reclaim their lives by rediscovering their passions and self-actualizing:

“Find a niche where money flows as a regular consequence of the success of your idea.”

I built on this by thinking about the steps to make this lesson actionable. I came up with these four steps:

List what you love

Study how money flows in each situation where what you love is present

Pick the part of the situation with the best ratio of money to love², then do the work

Pick the part of the situation with the highest love² without regard to money, then do the work

Do the work that you select in both steps 3 and 4, unless the they are the same. If so, bonus!

According to iTunes, this was my fifth listening; I swear it’s been more than that.

These two are personal, so think it through.

iPad Unlock Motivation Wallpaper

bsayer — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:16:54 +0000

I created a wallpaper for the iPad lock screen with a motivational quote I saw today:

Don't worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive. Howard Thurman

I'm calling it an "iPad Unlock Motivation Wallpaper", rather than use Apple's term, lock screen, because I hope it will unlock your motivation. Grab a copy. I’s my gift to you!

Learning Linux

bsayer — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 01:59:26 +0000

I was sick and tired of supporting Windows! I was sick and tired of dealing with Windows problems at work then returning home to deal with them there! It wasn’t always that way.

I embraced learning DOS and encouraged the adoption of Windows when it emerged. I even enjoyed supporting it at work and playing with it at home for the first few years. Then the novelty wore off and I was left wondering why it seemed everything in Windows was so poorly made. Not all operating systems were that way. DOS and its applications were pretty solid. I recalled using a Unix based, multi-user system just before the dawn of the world wide web. Now that was solid! The command line interface, bash, was a mysterious thing that reminded me of the wonder I experienced at my first sight of a CPM-80 command. My employer’s client had some SCO Unix PCs in the test labs and some of the mini-computers ran a different Unix variant. I thought perhaps Unix would hold the same appeal for me in my burned out state. I decided to switch from Windows to a modern Unix variant for my home PC.

The trouble was I only vaguely remembered how to list the files in a directory; use an FTP, WAIS, and Gopher client; and an email program named Pine. Worse, I new nothing about the available Unix operating systems.

In retrospect my timing was excellent. As I was casting about for information about Unix operating systems for PC, the Linux operating system was in its infancy; it was free, and I discovered where to get it.

I downloaded, via FTP over a 2400 baud modem, the sixty or so 3.5” diskettes that comprised the Slackware Linux distribution. After many diskette swaps and a dizzying number of configuration choices, I booted my PC into Linux! I had a command prompt and associated text-only programs. Configuring the system to use my modem was simple enough. With that in place I could download updated software and use a text-based web browser, but I wanted a graphical user interface (GUI).

I had chosen the X Window System (X11), which would enable the GUI, when I installed from the diskettes; although initial attempts at configuring and starting it failed. I did a lot of reading about the then very complex subject and determined that I would have to recompile the kernel.

Okay; that concerned me. I had been programming using Pascal and 8088 assembler as well as having a class in C, but as I was soon to confirm, I was in over my head. I read up on the changes I would need to make, how to recompile the kernel, and how to make the PC boot from from it then gave it a try.

My first several attempts resulted in a system that wouldn’t boot and I didn’t know enough, yet, to fix it. So I reloaded from diskettes each time I cratered the system. I was getting floppy elbow from swapping diskettes so much!

I learned from each mistake, getting closer to a working GUI each time. I finally got the PC to boot from the new kernel and X11 to start in a strikingly ugly GUI. I had seen the screenshots of the pretty GUIs and I trusted that they weren’t faked. I needed to learn how to make mine lovely too. I turned out that X11 was only the foundation; I needed a window manager.

I read about the options and looked at the screenshots. I settled on one; I think it was Xfwm, but that was many window managers ago. In any case, I downloaded the necessary software then configured and compiled each. After a few hiccups I was able to get a nice looking GUI and the graphical versions of the applications I needed: email, web browser, terminal program, and text editor. I stuck with the text-based FTP program, ncftp. Now that I had my GUI I needed the files from my Windows hard drive. It was trivial to mount my Windows hard drive so I could access it from Linux.

With my basic application needs satisfied and access to my old data I began using my Slackware Linux PC as my primary system.

By 1996 I had become so into Linux that I looked for a local user group to join. I was shocked to find that there was none serving southeast Michigan, so I posted a Usenet message looking for people interested in joining one. I formed the Metro Detroit Linux User’s Group (MDLUG) and lead it for two years. It still exists today, although I’ve moved on to a different Unix variant for my primary operating system: Mac OS X.

From Math Failure to Math Success

bsayer — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:37:50 +0000

A few years ago, after nearly twenty years working in the computing field without a college degree I decided to get one. I still enjoyed working with computers so a B.B.A. in computer information systems seemed the way to go. Naturally, I would have to complete the math requirements.

The problem was I failed one high-school algebra class and barely passed the rest. If my memory serves, my final grade was a D- in two of those. My greatest passion in high-school was my hatred of algebra and teachers of the vile subject! But, I wanted the degree so I dedicated myself to becoming great at math.

I looked at the requirements for a CIS degree from Eastern Michigan University. It turned out that I would need several math classes to satisfy the degree requirements. I knew I had missed some key knowledge during my junior high experience and I had been out of high-school for twenty years. I decided I needed some pre-college math courses so I talked with a admissions advisor who suggested Math 097, which I lovingly refer to as remedial math.

Before the class, I contacted the Dean of the department and asked his advice on calculators. He told me that most student use a TI-83, but that he uses a TI-89. I bought a TI-89.

Super geeky calculator in hand, I attended every class and gave the professor my undivided attention. Unlike my approach in high-school, I did all my homework and took the time to learn how to solve every problem with my calculator and how to use its advanced features to check my work. I earned a perfect 4.0 in the class.

I felt ready to proceed and decided to check my assessment by taking the math CLEP test to see where it would place me. I managed to test out of 3 math classes.

I used the same approach: focused attention, completing all homework, and mastering the calculator to the remaining classes. Intermediate Algebra (Math 104), College Algebra (Math 105), and Linear Models and Probability (Math 118) all went the same way as my remedial math class had. I always felt confident that I could solve any problem and check my work and I got perfect scores.

One of my algebra professors even told me after the first couple weeks of classes, that he ordinarily would not allow a student to use the TI-89 calculator because it could solve all the problems presented in the course, but he had been watching how I used it and knew I solved each problem with basic features before checking my work with the advanced ones.

I completed all the math requirements for the CIS degree.

I earned an A+ on every homework assignment and exam except my last exam for which I received an A-. I contend that it was a grading mistake because I had a well established habit of checking all of my work, but having been stressed by maintaing my 4.0 GPA with more than half of my course work completed, I decided to let the 4.0 and the accompanying stress go.