davidgagne.net

WordPress Wednesday: Safe Function Calls

dvg — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:45:44 +0000

If you’re editing a WordPress theme template file by adding a call to a plugin’s function, you need to be careful. In six months or a year you’re going to deactivate or delete that plugin, and you’re going to get a big ugly fatal PHP error on your blog. You can avoid it, though, by adding a single if statement.

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© David Vincent Gagne, 2009. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: code, PHP, plugins, wordpress, wordpresswednesday

iTunes Tuesday: Show in Playlist

dvg — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:55:54 +0000

There are two types of playlists in iTunes: Smart Playlists and “regular” playlists. A Smart Playlist depends on parameters you’ve set, like “songs added in the last month”, or “songs by The Beatles or Bob Dylan”. Regular playlists — also known as “user-generated playlists” — are the ones you create. (These are the playlists you probably use to create mix CDs.) A “regular” playlist is just one into which you stick any song you feel like sticking in there.

Let’s say you want to create a playlist of your favorite songs to hear while stuck in the car. In iTunes click File and then New Playlist. That will add an untitled playlist to the Playlists listing in the left sidebar. Enter the name of your playlist; we’ll call it “Driving Songs”. This virgin playlist is empty. Without any songs it’ll make for a pretty quiet ride home, so we should add some tracks to it.

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© David Vincent Gagne, 2009. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bob Dylan, iTunes, itunestuesday, music, playlists, Violent Femmes

Daily David

dvg — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:35:56 +0000

General Stuff
- 4th of July Fireworks over the Pacific Ocean, as seen from Front Street in historic Lahaina Town in Maui, Hawaii, recorded with my iPhone 3GS
- It took a lot of dedication to spend nineteen years building the world’s best model aircraft carrier.
- Is there really such a thing as a rock star accountant?
- Classic advertising is often quite funny.
- Who says money can’t buy happiness?
- A surprising number of people have survived falling from an airplane.
- The University of Florida announced that students enrolling in the College of Pharmacy this Fall will be required to own either an iPhone or iPod touch.
- New research shows that boys with stupid names are more likely to become criminals.
Techie Stuff
- Freeware Genius contains tons of reviews of great free software.
- If you want to know what tech articles I’m reading, you should subscribe to my delicious feed.
- There are a ton of free Twitter icons, logos, and badges available.
- iWebKit lets you easily create websites formatted for the iPhone.
- What exactly is a WordPress Theme Framework?

Friday Five: 4th of July Edition

dvg — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:45:10 +0000

Favorite Things about 4th of July in Bristol, RI

biking to The Parade
lobster and steamers with the family
fireworks
celebrating my birthday, my little brother’s birthday, my aunt’s birthday, and my grandmother’s birthday
the concert in Colt State Park

WordPress Wednesday: Admin Lists

dvg — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:30:36 +0000

Right now I’ve got just under 3,400 posts here on this site. That makes it sort of a pain when I’m browsing through them in the back-end because by default the WordPress engine is set to display lists of posts fifteen at a time. I frequently have twenty or more drafts and / or scheduled posts, so when I attempt to find something I first have to click several times to find my latest posts. I knew that the number “15″ had to be coded into the engine somewhere and I wondered if there was any way to change it.

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iTunes Tuesday: New This Month

dvg — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:23:48 +0000

Sometimes you just want to be able to quickly get to the new stuff. That’s why I have a Smart Playlist called “New This Month”. This playlist contains all the tracks I’ve added in the last month, and I keep it synchronized with both my iPhone and with my iPod Nano. I always have all my brand new tracks handy.

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(Almost) Daily David

dvg — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:02:58 +0000

There is no such thing as “dolphin-safe tuna”.
I can’t decide which is more fun: The Lyttle Lytton Contest or the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
Fans of conspiracy theories will absolutely love the MeFi thread on pharmaceutical companies, the WHO, UN officials, the Russians, Barack Obama, and the recently-deceased, single-white-gloved whistle-blower … Michael Jackson.
Swedish civil rights heroes win freedom of toplessness at public pools.
I have to assume that the guy in Tallahassee that accidentally sent coke and weed through the bank tube with his deposit is an FSU grad.

Weekend Links

dvg — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:44:29 +0000

General Stuff
- My dad continues to regularly post some of his amazing photographs from Portsmouth, Bristol, and Newport, Rhode Island.
- When browsing Craigslist you will often find items that are not (quite) as advertised.
- The International Space Station took some awesome pictures of an erupting Russian volcano.
- Trusting your eyes is just silly. This optical illusion should help prove that.
- Some things are just too cool for words. The Illustrated LEGO Bible is one of them. (See also: The Art of the Brick.)
- I think Google Voice could be awesome … if I didn’t already have an iPhone 3Gs.
- CNN’s Cost of Living Calculator is pretty slick. It looks like Manhattan is the only place in America that is more expensive than LA.
- Megan Fox certainly does seem to lick her lips and teeth frequently.
Techie Stuff
- The Mimo Mini USB Monitor is a great idea. I want one.
- Google has several trillion reasons to want to help you make the web faster. And they’re giving you some cool tools to help get the job done.
- I Use This tracks your software and lets you know when updates are available.

Friday Five: Periods of My Life

dvg — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:15:25 +0000

In my mind my life is divided into five distinct periods:

Youth (1973 – 1987)
High School (1987 -1991)
College (1991 – 1996)
Post-College (1996 – 2000)
Los Angeles (2000 – present)

Only Old Men Wear Colored Socks

dvg — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:29:14 +0000

This was one of those truths that I held to be self-evident for the first 35 years of my life. Wearing colored socks was a clear sign that you had gotten “old”. Only old men wore anything other than white socks. Dick Van Dyke and my grandpa wore black socks. Guys in suits wore black socks. I did not wear black socks. I wore white socks. Socks of youth.

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There Are Places I Remember

dvg — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:27:33 +0000

There are places I remember
In my life … though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments …

I miss my grandmother’s house sometimes. It’s interesting (to me, at least) because I’m not normally one to “miss” anything or anyone. People come, people go. Places exist. I tend to focus on what is happening right the hell now. She lives in Rhode Island now, near my dad, and she still has a pretty cool house. But my grandmother’s original house was awesome.

She lived at 58 Gorham Street in Somerville, Massachusetts in a three-story brownstone that I adored. I mean, really, this was a magical house.

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© David Vincent Gagne, 2009. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boston, family, Massachusetts, Nana, New England

WordPress Wednesday: Pithy Quotes Plugin

dvg — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:15:11 +0000

If you look at the top of this page you’ll see that there is a short quip displayed in my header. Every time you visit any page, it changes. I have about fifteen little quotes in my database and they’re set to display randomly with each refresh of the page. I wrote a plugin which makes it easy to add to this functionality to your WordPress site.

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© David Vincent Gagne, 2009. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: plugins, quotations, themes, thesis, web design, wordpress, wordpresswednesday

iTunes Tuesday: Groupings

dvg — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:30:04 +0000

I love covers. There’s just something thrilling about hearing someone sing someone else’s song. My favorite part of a concert is always when the band plays a cover. (How awesome was it when Pearl Jam played Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”? Or when Less Than Jake plays Cheap Trick’s “Surrender”?) I’ve got just about 300 tracks in my iTunes library tagged as covers.

Tagged? What do you mean by, “tagged as covers,” David? There’s no “tagging” in iTunes!

Silly rabbit. I know that technically there’s no tagging feature in iTunes. But there are groupings. And groupings serve no purpose — as far as I can tell — other than to allow you to tag tracks. Let me explain.

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Random David

dvg — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:28:53 +0000

General Stuff
- I followed a link on Hidden Los Angeles and found a killer list of film locations in town. (I’m going to go out on a limb and assume LA has a lot more of these than most cities. Sometimes I forget that I am living in what has to be the coolest city in the world.)
- If you post a classified ad, think twice before replying to Mike.
- “I thought he wanted to kill us,” Heard said. “He was so angry and upset.” — Perhaps he wasn’t asked if he wanted to spend the rest of his life in captivity. I’m just sayin’.
- They’re a bit expensive, but these trash compactor bookends are sweet.
- Fun: Check out the size of these balls!
Techie Stuff
- It’s great to hear that the first ever entirely volunteer-run open source conference was a huge success. My good friend Thomas had a big hand in that.
- When you’re designing websites, it’s handy to have a test template to check what your stylesheets will look like.
- WordPress 2.8 makes it even easier to code widgets.
- If you want to target links to open in a new window while still having valid code, it can be done with jQuery.
- Which iPhone 3.0 software features does my iPhone support?

How to Delete a Recurring iCal Event

dvg — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:12:06 +0000

I have finally resolved an issue with my Mac OS X 10.5.7 iCal calendar that has been annoying me since I converted from PC to Mac almost exactly one year ago. For some reason I could not delete my birthday! Because I’m now using Address Book birthdays — instead of having unique iCal “events” for everyone’s birthday — I went into iCal and deleted all the “events” that were imported from Outlook when I imported my calendar. This worked fine for everyone’s birthday … except mine.

No matter what I did I could not stop my birthday!

My birthday was a recurring event. (This is actually true. It happens every year on June 26th.) The problem was that because my birthday is set in the Address Book “card” that is tagged as “My Card”, it was displaying twice: once for the recurring event imported from Outlook and once for the Address Book birthday. I would delete the event and it would reappear as soon as I changed anything. I would right-click it and “Stop Recurrence” and delete it, and it would reappear. I’d go to the Day view and delete five or six copies of it until it was gone, switch to Month view, and it would reappear. I would delete it from my iPhone and synchronize and it would reappear.

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The Dexia Rack Laptop Stand

dvg — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:13:44 +0000

My mom got me a Dexia Rack a few years ago as a gift. I had seen one at a bookstore on the University of Florida campus while visiting Gainesville and said that it looked pretty cool. So of course my mom noted that and got me one for Christmas or my birthday months later. (Moms pay attention to that sort of thing.) It’s simply a terrific laptop stand. When folded it easily fits in a briefcase or book bag alongside your computer, and it weighs next to nothing. When opened it’s perfect for working in bed and keeping your laptop off your legs.

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Friday Five: iPhone Games

dvg — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:00:55 +0000

The iPhone games that are occupying the highest percentage of my free time right now are:

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What about Sicko?

dvg — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:36:27 +0000

Does anyone have any idea why the Michael Moore film about health insurance in America, Sicko, got nowhere near the same amount of publicity as Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11? I’m not asking how you feel about the message / content of any of these films. I’m just trying to understand why Sicko seemed to fly so far underneath the collective radar. And why aren’t more people discussing it now, when Obama is in the middle of a media blitz about health care reform?

If the hot button topic right now was gun control, you can bet every other news channel would be referencing Bowling for Columbine repeatedly. I thought Sicko was a great film. It was not even remotely as volatile as either of the other two, and it’s pretty tough to argue that the state of health insurance in the United States is at least as bad — if not worse — as he portrays it. But even if you ignore the fact that nobody is talking about Sicko in 2009 — it has been two years since it was released — why didn’t it garner the same media attention that the other two did when they were released?

WordPress Wednesday: Thesis Theme Tag Text

dvg — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:45:57 +0000

Today I’m going to explain how to make your WordPress blog display a special note based on a tag associated with a post. This tip is uniquely written for users of Chris Pearson’s awesome Thesis Theme, but if you are crafty enough with WordPress, you’ll be able to use it regardless of the theme you’re using.

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© David Vincent Gagne, 2009. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: code, hacks, PHP, Programming, themes, thesis, wordpress, wordpresswednesday

(More-or-Less) Daily David

dvg — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:18:26 +0000

General Stuff
- My dad has recently posted some awe-inspiring photos. You should subscribe to his Flickr feed.
- Moderate drinking is probably not really all that good for you. I try to explain this to people all the time. Shark attacks and ice cream sales always peak at about the same time, but neither one causes the other!
- Little Wheel is a Flash game that will drive you crazy.
- If you’re worried about the potential for killing your spouse in a fit of rage, perhaps you should invest in an anti-stab knife.
- This sounds like a pretty sweet job: We want to hire a social media whiz (your title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent”) who will report on the cool lifestyle of Sonoma County Wine Country and, of course, tell people what you’re learning about winemaking.
Techie Stuff
- Font Replacement Using Cufón
- You can configure your WordPress blog to send SMS (text) messages to your readers.
- Any web developer worth his (or her) salt should know these Javascript best practices.

iTunes Tuesday: Display Song Lyrics

dvg — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:18:43 +0000

Did you know that you can store a song’s lyrics inside iTunes? Simply right-click on any song and choose Get Info. Then switch to the Lyrics tab and paste the lyrics there. Now when you play that track on your iPhone or iPod touch, the lyrics will be displayed right on the screen.

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© David Vincent Gagne, 2009. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: iPhone, iPod, iTunes, itunestuesday, lyrics, music

(Less Than) Daily David

dvg — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:05:55 +0000

General Stuff
- Hunch launches Monday!
- Digg this: Give Dick Cheney a Wedgie!
- Interesting news: Antioxidants and exercise don’t mix?
- Now … Go Break The Windows
- What makes us happy?
- Everything you ever wanted to know about Batman’s ride can be found at batmobilehistory.com.
- The Future of Facebook Usernames
- I never knew that anesthesia was first used at Massachusetts General Hospital.
- 30 Rock vs. The Muppet Show
- Christian Bale vs. Kermit the Frog
Techie Stuff
- How To Turn Off Post Revision In WordPress

Friday Five – Tourist Edition (Part 2)

dvg — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:42:37 +0000

Amazing things I have seen:

The Eiffel Tower
The Louvre
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Roman Colosseum
Michelangelo’s David

Flight Control

dvg — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:48:51 +0000

The absolute best iPhone app on the market right now has got to be Firemint’s FlightControl. You are an air-traffic controller tasked with routing planes (and helicopters) to the correct landing strip at one of three different airports. It sounds simple — and it is easy to learn and play — but after you’ve gotten about 15 landings completed, the planes start approaching more and more quickly.

So far I’ve landed 81 106 planes at the default airport, ~~116~~ 126 at the Hawaiian resort airport, and 63 64 on the aircraft carrier. The Hawaiian airport is a bit easier because there are two helipads there, though you do have to contend with seaplanes. The aircraft carrier is almost impossible; the fighter jets are wicked fast, the landing strips are all scrunched close together, there are always way too many helicopters trying to land, and, oh, the ship is rotating while you play.

This game is maddeningly addictive and brutally fun. It cost me $.99 and I’ve already played it ten times more than every other iPhone game combined.

Daily David

dvg — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:25:29 +0000

General Stuff
- Tom Swifties are awesome.
- The Boston Public Library has posted a huge collection of vintage travel posters.
- Simple Marriage has posted a primer on social media that’s worth a read if you can’t seem to understand the difference between — or reason for — Facebook and Twitter.
- Captain Crunch in court: Reasonable Consumers Know That Crunchberries Aren’t Real, Rules Judge
- The funniest thing I have seen on the Internet in a long time is the literal translation of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart video.
- How Listening to a Waiter can Jack your Profits up 33%
- Waste some time watching all the best clips from Whose Line Is It Anyway?
- Superheroes have to go to the bathroom, too.
- Frodo’s Twitter posts make my laugh.
- Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar is pretty much exactly what it says.
- Han Solo, P.I.
Techie Stuff
- Check the performance of your pages with Google PageSpeed.
- Tired of carrying a bunch of store club cards in your wallet or on your keychain? Use your iPhone instead!