Canada Rocks Firefox Persona

I’m sure you will agree that is does prove to be more patriotic than images of the solar system.

You can install this persona on your own web browser by visiting the Canada Rocks Firefox Persona detail page: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/128649.

When the festivities are said and done for, browse the site for more themes you can use to spice up your browser layout.

Happy Canada Day, eh?

My first attempts using get_post() returned empty values. After hours of searching and plugging away at the task, things started to click. I figured I should record this keep track of the solution for future reference, and to help out anyone else with the same problem.

Retrieving a specific post using get_post()

The get_post() function takes two arguments:

• $var_id: The ID (of type integer) of the post you wish to retrieve.
• $type: The data type returned. Default is an object. The data could also be returned in an array, either associative or key-indexed (ARRAY_A), or numerically indexed (ARRAY_N).

An idiosyncrasy of the get_post() function is that because the function passes $var_id internally as a reference, the parameter cannot be a literal integer. You must pass the parameter as a variable.

What data is returned?

This example shows how to retrieve the data object for my “About” page, or post id #2. Insert the following code in a PHP template, or within the body of a function:

$post_id = 2;   // specify the post id to retrieve
$specific_post = get_post( $post_id ); // get the post object

Use PHP’s print_r() function to display the following:

[ID] => 2
[post_author] => 1
[post_date] => 2008-05-07 16:14:19
[post_date_gmt] => 2008-05-07 23:14:19
[post_content] => { removed to save space, but you get the idea... }
[post_title] => About Tony Chung
[post_category] => 0
[post_excerpt] =>
[post_status] => publish
[comment_status] => closed
[ping_status] => closed
[post_password] => { not telling }
[post_name] => about_tony_chung
[to_ping] =>
[pinged] =>
[post_modified] => 2009-06-20 12:03:59
[post_modified_gmt] => 2009-06-20 20:03:59
[post_content_filtered] =>
[post_parent] => 0
[guid] =>
[menu_order] => 0
[post_type] => page
[post_mime_type] =>
[comment_count] => 0
[filter] => raw

You can then output any of these values by referencing their key. Because the default data type is an object, to display the contents of the post_title property, you would use

echo $specific_post -> post_title;

If you request the data as an ARRAY_A instead, use the following statement:

echo $specific_post['post_title'];

Letting WordPress format your content for you

Hey, wait a minute! WordPress includes number of internal functions that process your content for you. This processing pretties up text by breaking blocks of text into paragraphs, replacing square bracketed options like captions into full HTML, and making straight quotes and apostrophes all nice and curly.

When you display your content, you could use the following statement:

echo wpautop( $specific_post -> post_content );

wpautop() takes care of basic content formatting for you.

However, if your pages require processing for options in square brackets, like image captions, or embedded media plugins, you should instead use the setup_postdata() function instead. This lets you publish the output using the_content().

setup_postdata($specific_post);
the_content();

For more information, read How WordPress Processes Post Content, or Displaying Posts Using a Custom Select Query at the WordPress Codex.

More random stuff because I’m just that way

This next example shows how to put a number of things together. I needed a way to display a random page based on the specific section a user visits. To restrict the list of page choices, I organized the pages into collections of pages and sub-pages (or children). By passing the page parent as a parameter, this function chooses a random page from the list of its page children.

function random_page_select( $parent_page )
{
  // creates array of child pages under $parent_page
  // in order to choose a random page
 
  // get page_children
  $page_children = get_pages( 'child_of=' . $parent_page );
  foreach( $page_children as $page_child )
  {
    $page_list[] = $page_child->ID;
  }
 
  // give the mt_rand() function a lo-high range
  // lo is 1, high is the size of the array
  // reduce the result by 1 because $page_list array
  // is zero-indexed
  $page_key = mt_rand( 1, sizeof( $page_list ) ) - 1;
 
  // select random page child based on this key
  $post_id = $page_list[$page_key];
 
  // gather post content
  $specific_post = get_post( $post_id );
 
  // format post content
  // option 1: print wpautop( $specific_post->post_content );
  // or option 2:
  setup_postdata($specific_post);
  the_content();
}

Adding a post heading

In the above function, the title of the post is missing. This is intentional, because in my application the page title is meant to be the same on every load. It’s easy enough to add the title. Simply output the post_title property into an appropriate location in your template.

Most WordPress templates use this:

<h2><?php echo $specific_post -> post_title; ?></h2>

I’m more comfortable using this:

echo '<h2>' . $specific_post -> post_title . '</h2>'; ?>

Whatever you choose to use, be consistent.

I hope this post helps you out with your WordPress template creation. I look forward to hearing your responses. Thanks for reading!

Let me explain what I’ve done so far, with the hope that someone out there on teh Interweb would be able to help me out. I’ll post an update when I get it sorted out. (Sorry, I’m not posting screen shots to save time.)

One wiki, one plugin, and minimal code

So far I’ve been able to get away with minimal code. I installed MediaWiki Version 1.15.2, one plugin, and added a couple of variables to the LocalSettings.php to configure and register it within my wiki.

To add article comments, I found the extension: Article Comments by Jim R. Wilson. With little effort, I can embed a comment form in any MediaWiki page.

To embed the comment form on every new page, I added the extension’s markup to the special pages Newarticletext and Noarticletext. To figure out which pages to edit, I found all the default system messages listed on the page http://{mediawiki_server}/index.php/Special:AllMessages, where {mediawiki_server} is replaced by the location of your server.

This extension only adds comments to the Talk page of an existing article. While I can set the form to display on blank pages, I encounter errors when submitting the form because the article doesn’t yet exist, so the talk page can’t be created.

The $1,000,000 question

How do I convince MediaWiki to create a new page as soon as it’s requested? Can anyone point me in the right direction of recent resources?

What do technical communicators do for fun?

I apologize in advance to those who hit this blog post before I added this missive. I decided later on that a link to the blog post with the photo album would not provide as much value as would a brief recap of the activity while I visited Dallas for the Society of Technical Communication (STC) 57th annual Summit, held May 2-5 2010 at the Hyatt Regency at Reunion Towers.

The primary purpose of the Summit was to gather technical communication professionals the world abroad to discuss trends in our industry, share knowledge, participate in sessions led by peers, and just hang out with other people more similar to us than those we know back home.

This year’s summit served an additional purpose. Due to the recession, the STC was almost at the point of extinction. Fees rose, notable features diminished, the profession was at an all-time high yet professionals were out of work, and membership dropped over 61 percent. Things did not look good. This could have been the very last. Technical Communication Summit. Ever.

From out of the great beyond

Fortunately, the professionals who make up the STC didn’t listen to all the doom and gloom dispensed from head office. While the main HQ shouted messages of “We Will Survive” and “We’re Still Here” the professionals retorted “We Never Left” and “Don’t Stop Believin’!” Even with the undercurrent of doom and gloom (we’re not out of the woods yet), we banded together with a camaraderie known only by the deepest of family, friends, and frat buddies.

Many of these people I follow as @techcom on Twitter. Others I’ve spoken to over email on one of the gazillion mailing lists I read. Eventually I’ll have to get around to filtering my Bloglines RSS feeds. But for now I’m content with Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to manage my incoming data flow.

Writing is often considered a lonely art. We woodshed behind our keyboards, listening to Led Zeppelin on headphones to drown out the din of our family cacophony (or to kill the awkward silence),  and crank out page after page of what we consider to be the next treasure trove of literary genius. Often our families don’t understand why we do what we do. We need events like this to share our experiences with others who can empathize, and often provide cathartic relief.

Spending time with others of like mind helps us to remember why we do what we do.

OK Tony, why do we do what we do?

I won’t profess that everyone who writes necessarily feels the same as I do. However, I found similar consensus among other attendees at STC TCS 2010, purely through casual discussion. We are romantic idealists, believing that there is a greater good than what we so far have seen. We find understanding in the company of strangers who share similar occupations. We desire to grow in our chosen careers and take on new challenges that we can’t speak about with those back home.

Sure, we have stories. I could share my summary of the Content Management in a Nutshell pre-conference workshop with people back home, but only those who were there would see the humour in the professional training facilitators who brought a vast array of sharpies and post-it notes into the sessions. I could tell them of the LinguaLinx-sponsored karaoke night at Founder’s Grill, but the irony of the extroverted technical writer being the one who looks down at your shoes would be totally lost on them. And don’t even ask me to explain that people don’t fart around on twitter mobile while in each others’ company at a tweetup.

No, the stories we can share are the ones that others will find in common. After all, we are the masters at knowing our audience. We don’t reveal more to those who don’t understand what we do, because we know that 80 percent of them won’t pick up on more than 20 percent of what we talk about. I’ll bet I may have lost you on that last sentence.

The stories we can share

While we return home with a lot of stories, heads full of knowledge, and a business card index that doubled the weight of our suitcases, we will choose to share with those back home only those stories we think they’ll understand.

We’ll compare the rarity and cost of sushi in Dallas to the proliferation on the west coast. We’ll describe that Gator’s in Dallas got themselves twitter-blacklisted because they swapped out the beer bought by our sponsors, Just Write Click and XML Press. And we’ll talk about how Dallas is a fine city that we wish we’d had more time to visit as tourists.

This conference was more than just a conference to me. Over and above the educational summit, which was the purpose for bringing us all together, this conference showed us that our profession is alive and well, ever evolving, growing, changing, and shaping to meet the demands of an increasingly more disconnected world.

The Beatles may have been the walrus, but we, fellow techcom-ers are the glue, eh?

(Everybody take a shot—Tony said “eh”!)

This just in: My new TCTechCom video channel goes live

I wanted to create a YouTube channel just for Technical Communication materials. Unfortunately, I couldn’t add it to my current channel. So here’s a new channel I started just for this: Tony @techcom video channel (tctechcom)

Last edit: Updated to use standard object tag instead of embed.

Posted via email from tonychung’s posterous

I figured that I should still complete this post for the benefit of those who may still be suffering through the Windows XP/Trend Micro Internet Security hassles. I still run a similar setup in a Virtual Box on my Mac, so the solution is still valid to me.

Another day at the home office

Picture this: I’m working from home. I need to browse the Internet for something, so I open my trusty Firefox web browser (or Iron, Chrome, Opera,  Internet Explorer, or what have you—I’m not biased). Unfortunately the web browser keeps returning the error page that it can’t find the site I’m looking for: my home page.

So I’ve got a deadline, and can’t get the information I need. I’m stressed.

Being the systematic troubleshooter that I am, I wonder if it’s a problem with my hardware or the cabling. Then I start poking around with other services like email, instant messenger (chat), FTP, and SSH. Guess what? The first time this happened, only the web browser was disabled, but every other Internet service worked.

I checked the firewall settings and even disabled it, but I couldn’t restore service to the web browser. Eventually I exited Trend Micro Internet Security altogether and it worked fine. My guess is some nefarious system update collided and that the problem would be fixed in a future update. I uninstall and reinstall the program, and it works fine, even after the latest pattern and engine updates.

I log a nice chat with some guy at Trend, and he sends me to a system analyst, who sends me their HijackThis system profiler. But because the problem eventually resolved itself (after hours of futzing by yours truly) there was no need to continue the call.

Now, imagine that this happens again and again, more often than I care to count. And imagine that instead of only web traffic being blocked, now my email will send but not receive. SMTP works but POP3 is locked. Things are getting serious. Deadlines are backing up even worse than before, and me being the troubleshooter I am just can’t let this thing die.

Fool me once, fool me twice

Of course you wonder, then why not just turn the bloody thing off. Well, smarty pants, would you run around naked in the middle of a busy intersection? There’s no way I’m running a Windows XP system without an antivirus program and software firewall. And the reason I didn’t switch to Bitdefender is because Future Shop offered a deal for Trend first. And I must be a glutton for punishment.

Well, losing email receipt was the last straw. I searched the net again, and this time I found a solution for the 2008 version of the software, but it also applies to 2009.

Solution to Trend Micro Internet Security woes

When Trend Micro Internet Security blocks any of your Internet services while running, even when the firewall isn’t active, the problem is with the setting to search the Trend Micro Data Network database for related issues. Sometimes this server goes down, or otherwise becomes unavailable. When the program doesn’t receive a response from the server, it times out the request and you get stuck at the error page.

To disable the Trend Micro Data Network:

1. From the main console, click Other Settings.
2. Select Trend Micro Data Network.
3. Disable both Certified Safe Software Service and World Virus Tracking & TrendCare Program.
4. Click Ok, then close the console.

Trend Micro Data Network

After completing the above steps, Internet service was restored. I’ve run my Windows system like this since October, even though only the kids use that computer anymore just to play website games. As I said, I solved the problem the old fashioned way: I bought a MacBook Pro.

Note: this post isn’t meant to slam Trend Micro, because I still believe in their enterprise product (Office Scan) and their online virus scanner. Most of the time, when helping friends to clear problems with their systems, I use a combination of MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, ClamAV (Windows, Unix & Linux, OS X), and follow up with a Housecall.

Solution links:

• Tech support forum: Trend Micro 2008 blocking Internet
• Trend Micro forums: Internet Security blocking most websites and internet access

Movie URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBGKdnUj4Yw

Many thanks to Nick Lewis’ tell-it-like-it-is blog

Just in case you’re wondering, I’m not jumping onto the Drupal 7 bandwagon while it’s still in Alpha.

Tony Chung: Creative Communications

This message is long overdue. While I can’t go into specifics as to what has kept me from my blog for the past few months, I felt it necessary to post a message to celebrate the turn of 2010. Several technical communicators have had a hard time reconciling the value-add proposition for renewing their membership with the Society for Technical Communication. Some have been very vocal about the society’s lack of support, lack of expertise, lack of understanding, and lack of relevance for the communications field. In blunt terms, the STC is a dinosaur, with a business and operations model that doesn’t fit the current trends.

Some of the outspoken include volunteers like myself who thought we could help initiate and support change from the inside. When my own project, (the STC Forums), got pulled I felt the sting of bitterness which may have clouded my judgment. Fortunately I am involved in the very active Society for Technical Communication – Canada West Coast Chapter, which is experiencing a new wave of volunteers who thrive on connecting within this community. As well, I participate in a couple of really experienced special interest groups, the Single Sourcing (officially), and Contractors and Independent Consulting (locally).

Volunteering: Strength in numbers

My back door into the STC was its newsletter. For some reason I really like newsletters, having cut my teeth on manual paste up on a community centre youth newspaper during my teens. What can I say? I love the smell of hot wax. Desktop publishing was a natural progression, so I leaped at the opportunity to leverage my Pagemaker/InDesign skills on the STC CWC newsletter. I maintained the web version after our chapter executive weaned us of print, and this year I tasked myself with revamping its page layout to new design specs (a work still in progress–ergh! Maybe with this announcement I will finally start working on it!)

While it’s true the cost of STC membership skyrocketed this year, and I don’t have an employer to foot the bill, I realized the main reason I didn’t want to renew my membership was because the strategic initiatives committee shut down the STC Forums, which I had just upgraded to the new version on a new server. To me, the forums were a good resource for discussing relevant TC issues. Its sister site, the STC Wiki, was a good place to store the resolution of various issues for future reference.

Note: read only versions are hosted at the STC Carolina site (forum | wiki). Thanks to Rick and the team for putting that together.

Another time, another place

What made the forum shutdown sting so much was the familiar feeling of something I was used to. I worked for fourteen years in a very illogical logistics department. While I knew I had the skills to move beyond my job, I held to some ancient notion that the hard worker got noticed and was given more opportunities to grow and succeed.

It took a long time, but that idealistic vision eventually came to pass, when a long time colleague started a new data integrity and verification team in our office, and she specifically asked me to help lead the technical end. She considered it a promotion, and I agreed. After the first few months my extra efforts were squashed by new management. I equated the death of my STC volunteer work to the death of my data integrity leadership position.

Just like starting over

However, in the dead forum’s wake arose many new content silos on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Some STC members created new social networking sites using the Ning platform. At the time, I commented how we as an organization failed to consider that we sanction single source content, but work in silos. Instead of a single unified resource came the flood of many resources of different flavours.

As I review the events since leaving the forums behind in July, I began to see these different silos as positives, not negatives. Think about it. Now we have a variety of sites, mailing lists, discussion groups, and repositories:

• Combining different levels of STC influence
• Dedicated to further the field of technical communication
• Catering to the unique communication styles of their contributors
• Harnessing a variety of social media networking tools and technologies

Where before I wanted to focus on only one method of communication that reached a small percentage of the population, several rose in different arenas to reach people based on their preferred communication methods.

Tom Johnson posted an introduction to his screencasting webinar on the STC Notebook. While not directly related to the subject, it definitely got me thinking about the transition the technical communication field is undergoing.

The future of TC (Technical Communication)

After the 2006 summit a fellow chapter member observed that technical communicators are expanding from the traditional plan/interview/write model into the facilitation and editing of user authored content. User generated systems including forums and wikis are part of this model, as are collaborative authoring systems like FLOSS manuals. Other specialties not specifically related to content specialization include usability and user experience.

This exciting trend from writer to enabler has always appealed to me, because as technology gets more complex, it becomes less necessary to understand the details first hand. Instead, we can apply our strengths to making complex information make sense. This shift to enabler may also involve incorporating video and multimedia services–whatever it takes to get the job done.

The future of TC (Tony Chung)

I’ve always been on the periphery of traditional technical writing. While I am technical and I love to write, I also have a passion for music and multimedia, web design and programming, graphic design and illustration, and performing. It’s been difficult finding jobs that match my level of interest in technology and my love to write. That said, I’ve found lots of work in the web development arena, and am excited at being able to harness these skills and abilities in my current job, along with writing and editing.

I’ve always been into the media. I drew comics as a kid, played music in a band, record videos of my various life experiences. More often than not I prefer to watch a video showing me how to do something than read a book on the same subject.

The STC needs me, and they need you.

STC member 2007 to 2010

In light of the current recession, the STC offered several options to pay for our memberships. 400 financially-strapped members will be granted subsidies to balance the difference from last year’s membership dues to this year’s increase. The STC is concentrating on video casting their presentations, and offered a gold membership package that includes seven webinars and a certificate course. Members can elect to pay their membership dues in equal installments over three months.

Great things are happening in the field as a whole, and the STC is working hard to react appropriately. My gut reaction at first was, “too little, too late”, and that the people in charge don’t really have the best interests of the group at heart. But the more I look at it, it’s because of the connections I made through the STC that I’ve been able to break from 9-to-5 office worker to independent communications consultant in only two years. I consider many of my associates my close friends, and count on them for their insight and advice, and the occasional job or two.

So the STC has me for another year. My wife/bookkeeper helped me to realize that I do have a company to pay for my membership.

I am my company.

Don, I’m truly touched,  man. See you on tour! Click the ad to see the write-up.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, co-authored by Tony Chung

Links

• Official link to CCM Magazine ad: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
• Amazon.ca link (needs updating): A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
• Official book site: A Million Miles on Tour

While this could be true, even though my computer’s built-in SD card reader claimed to support the SDHC format, I encountered similar problems.

In this post I talk about a couple of free and commercial tools that helped me recover lost space when my card reader mysteriously stopped supporting my SDHC card, and recover lost photos from corrupt Compact Flash cards.

HTC TyTN II and 1GB Micro-SDHC card

My HTC TyTN II came with a 1GB Micro-SD card, formatted to 512MB capacity and filled with programs I’d never use. Fortunately for me this card came with a standard SD sized sleeve. I put the microSD card into the SD sleeve, put the SD sleeve into my Toshiba M400 laptop, and ran the Toshiba SD format utility. Bingo! 1GB space. Just like that.

Toshiba M400 problems

Later I purchased a couple of 8GB MicroSDHC cards from an eBay seller. My M400 laptop wouldn’t recognize them until I upgraded the card slot driver. This worked well, and I copied files between  my laptop and my phone memory card to my heart’s content. At least, until the laptop stopped recognizing the SDHC card again.

Apparently, a Windows XP update killed my laptop’s support for high-capacity SD cards. When I reformatted my Micro-SDHC card I found that 8GB was reduced to 113KB of usable space.

Calling all Google

A quick search for “lost SDHC memory card” lead me to the Philippines Asus EEE user group discussion forum, which led me to download the Panasonic free SD formatting tool. In the blink of an eye, the 113KB became 8GB once again.

Panasonic free SD Formatter tool

Of course, this only formatted the card back to the proper capacity. However, there are other utilities that would have recovered data as well.

Problems with Compact Flash too

Just so you Compact Flash aficionados don’t get too cocky, I’ll let you in on a problem we had with my dad’s Nikon D300 camera’s 4GB Compact Flash card. After a really important birthday party, we tried to copy the files using a multi-card reader, but the files wouldn’t load. Somehow the data on the card must have gotten corrupted while still in the camera.

More searches found the DataRescue PhotoRescue commercial recovery tool. It was inexpensive, and besides, the birthday pictures were so important, money was no object. This little bit of magic not only recovered the lost files, but repaired the corrupt data and returned the card to full working shape. I’ll bet this utility also works with SDHC cards.

Datarescue Photorescue commercial recovery tool

Calling all memory card geeks

Have you ever had problems like these with any of your memory cards? What did you do to solve them? I invite you to leave comments about other tools that helped you get your photos, music, and other important data back. I’m interested in hearing what worked for you.