http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/370-Beech-Street_Highland-Park_IL_60035_1109385563

Spotted in Savannah, originally uploaded by Otto42.

Spotted this one early in the trip. Too early, in point of fact, to actually drink Jager.

Also found this site called Free Shipping Day. A bunch of stores are banding together and offering free shipping this Thursday, the 18th. That’s the last day you can order anything and get guaranteed delivery by Xmas. So if you need to get that last minute shopping done, check out those sites on Thursday.

If you’ve played a lot of games, then you know that some of them have advertising in them. Over the years, games have had all sorts of advertising, sometimes fake, sometimes funny, sometimes real stuff. Many years back, I recall participating on usenet in a discussion of the virtual worlds of games, and the subject of in-game-advertising was brought up.

See, up until this point, advertising in games was mostly a static thing. The games didn’t, on the whole, change the ads much. At some point during the discussion, the idea was advanced to the point of changing them dynamically. I mean, these are just big textures, there’s no reason that the game could not detect an internet connection and download new ones on the fly. At the time, this was roundly hailed as preposterous, mainly because “internet” at that time mostly consisted of modems and dialup connections. Large scale multiplayer gaming was relatively new, and home broadband was basically limited to expensive ISDN connections.

Of course, the idea was natural and obvious, but I quit most of my gaming about then, and so I didn’t see how the idea went on and advanced in reality.

Both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 have more or less mandatory internet support. That is to say that while you can certainly use the thing without internet hooked to it, virtually nobody does, because it enables the vast majority of the functionality of the thing. And so, naturally, advertising came in-game on those too.

IGN Worldwide handles almost all of this advertising, from what I can tell. And recently, this got a big story boost, as it affects the elections.

Screenshot of the Obama Ad in Burnout Paradise

Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 and PS3 have billboards beside the highway that show advertising. On the 360 version at least, from October 6 through November 3th, if you are a player in one of ten “battleground” states, then you’ll be seeing Obama ads in the game.

The ads say that Early Voting has begun as well as pointing to Obama’s Vote For Change website.

NPR’s Morning Edition went on to confirm that the ads will appear in a total of 18 different games in those 10 states only, including Madden NFL and other sports games.

They also mention that the ads are targeted to men 18-34, but I’m not certain if that means that they will only be shown to players fitting that demographic or not. It certainly could be, since if you use those consoles on the internet, then you have an account with demographic information like that.

I find it fascinating that I missed this trend, and I can certainly see how it could be a good thing or a bad thing. I would not personally mind my games having live ads like this, as it would add a sense of realism and up-to-date-ness about them. On the other side of the coin though, I can see a lot of gamers upset by this sort of thing, as some people are simply against ads wherever they may be under any circumstances.

It’s still pretty neat, I say.

Read on if you’re a theme author…

Note: A lot of people seem to miss this key bit: Enhanced Comments are optional and default to off, even after you make these changes. You have to go to the Settings->Discussion panel to turn the features on.

Actually “compatible” is not quite the right term. Old themes will continue to work fine in WordPress 2.7. It’s just the threading and paging and javascript enhancements need the theme to support it. This is much the same as the sidebar widgets, the theme has to support it for the functionality to work. So this article is really not about 2.7 compatibility, it’s about 2.7 capability.

Note that this article will explain some of the changes needed to make themes capable of supporting the new comments functions, however there’s no substitute for the real thing. Install a local copy of WordPress trunk on your home machine (possibly using XAMPP) and test it there.

Also note that this is all based on the current state of WordPress trunk, and is subject to change before WordPress 2.7 is released. However, it’s probably not going to change all that much at this point.

How to create a 2.7 compatible comments.php

2.7 Detection

If you want your theme to be backward compatible as well, then there’s a simple way to do it. Just check for the wp_list_comments function, like so:

if (function_exists('wp_list_comments')) :
// new comments.php stuff
else :
// old comments.php stuff
endif;

While you could check for the version number of WordPress, this method is better because it simply looks for the actual function you’re going to use anyway. Never make assumptions based on version number.

One of the more interesting ways I’ve seen to use this is to have the “old comments” php in a separate file entirely, which is then included. This preserves backwards compatibility for your theme in a simple way. Here’s a quick example code for that approach:

< ?php
add_filter('comments_template', 'legacy_comments');
function legacy_comments($file) {
	if ( !function_exists('wp_list_comments') ) 
		$file = TEMPLATEPATH . '/legacy.comments.php';
	return $file;
}
?>

Adding this code to a theme’s functions.php file will make the theme use the “legacy.comments.php” for older non-2.7 installations. That way, you can simply rename your old comments.php and then make a new one based on the new functionality. Clever.

Password Protection Check

Put this code at the top of your comments.php file. This is what lets it support the post password functionality. Note that this code is quite similar to the previous way that it was done (by checking the cookie directly), but now WordPress has a specific function to do it. You should use this function in case the functionality changes in the future, your code will be forward compatible:

if (!empty($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']) && 'comments.php' == basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']))
	die ('Please do not load this page directly. Thanks!');
if ( post_password_required() ) {
	echo 'This post is password protected. Enter the password to view comments.';
	return;
}

The Comments Loop

The Comments Loop used to look similar to this (much simplified from a real one):

if ($comments) :
< ?php $comment_count = get_comment_count($post->ID); echo $comment_count['approved']; ?> Comments
<ul class="commentlist">
< ?php foreach( $comments as $comment ) :
// stuff to display the comment in an LI here
endforeach;
?></ul>
< ?php else :
if ('open' == $post-comment_status) :
	// If comments are open, but there are no comments.
else :
	// comments are closed
endif;
endif;

Basically, it went through the comments manually and output all the necessary pieces. Easy, but very manual. This also had the problem of being very inconsistent and hard to manage for your theme’s users, especially if you heavily customized it.

The new comments loop is much simpler:

< ?php if ( have_comments() ) : ?>
<h4 id="comments">< ?php comments_number('No Comments', 'One Comment', '% Comments' );?></h4>
 
<ul class="commentlist">
< ?php wp_list_comments(); ?>
</ul>
 
<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft">< ?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>
<div class="alignright">< ?php next_comments_link() ?></div>
</div>
< ?php else : // this is displayed if there are no comments so far ?>
	< ?php if ('open' == $post->comment_status) :
		// If comments are open, but there are no comments.
	else : // comments are closed
	endif;
endif;
?>

That new one is, in fact, a complete comments loop. No simplification at all. Unless you want something displayed for "no comments" or "comments closed", of course. I don't have anything showing there.

There are three important pieces to note here:

• The have_comments() function replaces the check on the global $comments variable.
• The wp_list_comments() function now outputs all the comments. It does threading, the classes, everything new.
• There's a new navigation section to do comment paging.

The Power of Javascript

To support the new Javascript functionality with comment threading, some minor bits of code are needed:

First, in the header.php, add this line immediately before the call to wp_head():

if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( 'comment-reply' );

That code adds the comment-reply javascript to the single post pages, letting the comment reply links work correctly. WordPress specifically does NOT do this itself, for the reason that use of this script requires certain naming conventions and parameters in the comment form, which you'll have to add.

So, your comment form has a new parameter that you have to add:

< ?php comment_id_fields(); ?>

This adds a bit of code to your form which makes it display two hidden inputs: comment_post_ID and comment_parent. Your form probably had the comment_post_ID before, so you need to remove it. The comment_parent is there for the javascript, so that replies to comments get threaded properly.

Also, your comment textarea MUST have an id="comment". The javascript expects it for focus purposes. If you used anything else, change it. Note that because of this, no other element on your page can have the "comment" ID.

Finally, the entire comment form MUST be surrounded by a DIV with an id="respond". In some previous themes (including the default ones), there would be an anchor tag like this:

<a id="respond"></a>

This was there to allow the link from the front page to go directly to the respond section when there were no comments already. That still happens, but now there's a double purpose. The javascript moves the comment form to where the reply link is, so instead of it being an anchor, it needs to be a DIV that surrounds the comment form.

So, remove that anchor, and add a DIV with an id="respond" around the entire comment form. The link from the front page still works this way with all modern browsers, and the javascript can now move the form around on the page as needed.

Next, you can replace the call to your normal "Leave a Comment" text with something like this:

<h3>< ?php comment_form_title(); ?></h3>

This makes a comment form title of "Leave a Reply" which will change to "Leave a Reply to Whoever" when somebody is replying directly to another person. You can customize this, if you like, with two parameters, like so:

< ?php comment_form_title( 'Leave a Reply', 'Leave a Reply to %s' ); ?>

The %s will be replaced with the person's name. This will only happen when the javascript isn't working and the reply links have to cause a page refresh. So it's usually not worth customizing much. Still, not everybody runs javascript and so this is nice to let them know who they are replying to.

Finally, you'll notice that when somebody clicks "reply" and the comment form appears there, maybe they decide to cancel instead. So, that cancel link needs to be in your respond section. Here's the code to do that, just put it right below your "leave a message" header in the comment form area:

<div id="cancel-comment-reply">
	<small>< ?php cancel_comment_reply_link() ?></small></div>

That's pretty much it for making the AJAX work. With this, the new features on the Settings->Discussion panel will work. Obviously, you can modify this somewhat as needed for your theme, these are just general principles that you'll need to use.

Styling

Now that you have it working, there's plenty of new styling you can add to comments. The new comments loop automatically puts every comment into an LI tag, and threads them as well, with embedded UL/LI tags. It also adds a ton of classes on all these LIs which surround every comment in this fashion:

• comment, trackback, pingback classes get added depending on the type of the comment.
• byuser gets added if the comment is by a registered user of the site.
• comment-author-authorname gets added for specific registered users.
• bypostauthor gets added if the comment is by the author of the post the comment is attached to.
• odd and even classes are added to odd and even numbered comments
• alt is added to every other comment
• thread-odd, thread-even, and thread-alt classes are the same as the odd/even/alt classes, but these only apply to the top level of each set of comments and replies
• depth-1 is added to the top level comments, depth-2 to the next level, and so on.

What's more, a comment_class filter is provided to allow you to add your own classes. Here's an example of that. This example function adds a microid to every comment with the microid for the comment authors given URL and email address. This sort of thing could be done in a plugin or a theme's functions.php file, whatever.

// add a microid to all the comments
function comment_add_microid($classes) {
	$c_email=get_comment_author_email();
	$c_url=get_comment_author_url();
	if (!empty($c_email) && !empty($c_url)) {
		$microid = 'microid-mailto+http:sha1:' . sha1(sha1('mailto:'.$c_email).sha1($c_url));
		$classes[] = $microid;
	}
	return $classes;
}
add_filter('comment_class','comment_add_microid');

Simple and effective. It just adds the class to the given array of classes and lets the comment display functions take care of the rest.

And there you have it. It's not hard to support the new functions. And if you need to customize your theme's comments section even more, wp_list_comments() supports a number of parameters. Most of this is not documented yet, because WordPress 2.7 is not out until November. However, the code is relatively straightforward, and anybody with a good understanding of WordPress should be able to work it out.

Additional: A lot of people keep asking me for a full-fledged example. Really, I recommend that you examine the comments.php file in the default theme in the 2.7 beta versions. However, the actual comments.php file I'm using on this site can be found here: http://ottodestruct.com/comments.phps, if it helps you any. It has the code I've described in this article, pretty much verbatim. The only additions to it are a couple of extra options on the wp_list_comments() call, such as avatar_size and reply_text.

Ahoy!

In celebration o’ International Talk Like a Pirate Day, all posts on me blog will be translated into pirate, for today only.

Remember, Talk Like a Pirate Day only comes once a year, so get out thar and drink some grog, lads!

What is the plural of "ninja" anyway?

I guess if you’re going to be a vigilante, then you may as well try to do it with a little style.

The Clifton police in New Jersey recently arrested a couple dudes who were dressed like ninjas and armed with “Asian martial arts weapons” while they were delivering warning letters to drug dealers and users.

It gets better. They claimed to be “Shinobi warriors”, and had knives, throwing stars, swords, nunchucks, and bow and arrows on them. They got charged with weapons possession and one of them was charged with leaving a harassing letter for his ex-girlfriend (if you’re going to be harassing drug dealers, then I guess you might as well get some personal grudges settled at the same time).

The letters stated that the “Shinobi will stop your cruel and sadistic intentions with justified yet, merciful force.” and accused the dealers with having “committed sin of passing impurity” to others and that the “wind guides us to those of impure heart and intent.”

Nerds with weapons. Wow. This could be an extremely entertaining trend.

Click on any of the images for more details on it.

Chicago Air and Water Show 2006

I’m taking the weekend off to go up to Chicago for the Chicago Air and Water Show, and to hang out on my friend Chuck’s boat. Should be a good time.

Expect more than a few Twitter posts while I’m there. For this reason, I might disable the auto-blog-posting of those during this weekend. If so, you can still see the latest ones on my Twitter feed, to see what I’m up to.

The plan is to drive up there late Thursday, stop at a notel somewhere for sleep, and continue on in early Friday morning. I’m not a huge fan of that idea, but I’ve got people coming with me, and they’re not really the drive-for-8-hours-and-then-continue-to-party-for-24-more types… So a good nights sleep at some point is likely the best course of action.

I also hope to get some good Chicago pizza and have a few drinks at the top of the Hancock building (that’s where everybody says to check out). But mostly, I plan on sitting on the boat, having a few brews, and enjoying the lakefront.

I’ll post a gallery of pictures upon my return.

Yeah. Fuckin’ metal.

Found on Today’s Big Thing.

Thanks to Twitter Tools for making it work properly. Good WordPress plugin, still has a few odd points to it and some kinks to work out though. But it works well enough.

Feel free to respond more directly to anything I have to say on Twitter.

So, I upgraded to the latest 2.7-bleeding edge version of WordPress on my blog today, and discovered a new feature that I had missed in my earlier readings. There was a new menu item on the Plugins menu:

New Menu Item - Install Plugins!

Yes, it appears that WordPress now has plugin installation built into it. Similar to the Plugin Upgrade feature introduced in 2.5, 2.7 will be able to download and install plugins directly from WordPress.org’s plugin directory.

Naturally, I had to try this out, so read on if you want to see what it looks like…

The new Plugin Install screen

The new plugin install screen has several ways to find plugins, including all the normal plugin lists from the WordPress Plugin Directory. It also has a pretty good search as well as a fairly large tag cloud at the bottom, if you’re not entirely sure what you’re looking for.

Tip for plugin developers: Now might be a good time to look closer at those readme.txt files you’ve been making for the plugin directory, and be sure that you’ve got everything nice and neat. Especially think about tags and keywords… People have to find your plugin somehow.

Choosing a plugin

Choosing the plugin is just a matter of finding it and then clicking the Install link. When you do, you get to see more info about it first, before installing it.

Plugin Information

Note the “Install Now” button in the top right corner. Also note that only the description shows up, note of the other normal tabs. I don’t know if this is going to change or not, but nevertheless, plugin authors should consider that their descriptions will be getting more visibility this way.

Install process

Installation is much the same as upgrading, except it’s now in a thickbox. Yes, upgrading now happens in a nice thickbox too, using this same interface. The description screen is also smart enough to detect when you already have a plugin install and have the latest version of it, and tell you “Latest Update Installed” instead of “Install Now” and such.

Activating the plugin

After activating, it all goes back to normal. The resulting plugin gets its own subdirectory in the plugins directory, and all is well.

Important note for plugin authors: This sort of thing was already critical for upgrading, but now installing makes it even more so. Your main plugin’s PHP file and readme.txt file must be in the root of the SVN! You cannot package it up yourself as a ZIP file or anything like that. If it can’t find the plugin’s PHP file after downloading it, then your plugin won’t show up, it won’t be activated, and it generally won’t work for anybody.

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by Otto42.

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by Otto42.

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by Otto42.
The Liquor Fairy

Well, somebody took something awesome and made it awesomer. Witness the glory:

The creator of this map even color coded it. In his words: “Green I recommend without hesitation, Yellow I recommend but have at one time or another had less-than-stellar experiences or food, Red I don’t recommend at all, and Blue I’ve not visited…”

So there you go. I agree with his recommendations for the pitifully few places on that map that I know well. Hey, I don’t get out of downtown much.

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by Otto42.

Multimedia message, originally uploaded by Otto42.

Too lazy to paint a house yourself?

That’s right kiddies, JCrew sells pre-paint stained jeans. For those people too lazy to paint a house, now you can look like you’ve actually been working too, but without all that pain in the ass “labor”.

I understood the patched jeans fad. The scuffed torn thing, I got. The wrong size thing was weird to me, and god help me I even understand stone-washed. But this is simply too far out there for me. Not because of the look, although they look terrible, but because of the price.

Those jeans cost $285.

That’s right. Take one $60-$80 pair of jeans, add $1 worth of white paint, and charge $285 for it.

Note the salesmanship tactics they use in the description. Emphasis is mine:

A hand-crafted collector’s item in authentic selvedge cotton denim from one of Japan’s oldest and most renowned mills. We spend hours on each pair to create a unique jean for the most discerning denim connoisseur, so we have only a handful available—and no two are quite alike. Each one is made with denim woven on the original 100-year-old narrow looms. Each pair is stonewashed, hand-distressed, hand-splattered with paint and hand-finished, giving it the kind of character only individual attention can impart. Button fly. Traditional five-pocket styling, with reinforced back pockets. Import. Machine wash. Catalog/jcrew.com only.

My questions about this copy are two-fold:

1. Who the hell considers themselves to be a “discerning denim connoisseur”?
2. I wonder if this sort of sales pitch really obscures the fact that you’re paying damn near $300 for a pair of pre-ruined jeans?