Tech Tok

Looks like I’ll have to edit the links over there.

engadgetHD.com

I’ve found a nice, local way to handle the RSS feeds in various sidebars. I downloaded Feed2JS, a Free Software PHP script that does the job, and now I run it locally.

Please let me know if this affects the speed with which pages load. I know it does locally, but I think that’s because of my long-running http issues.

It seems to take a VERY long time for my own web server to respond when I use fully-qualified names like tech.tnir.org. What I end up doing is creating local shortnames for everything like “tech”, which alias to the internal IP of 192.168.1.1 (and I’ve configured Apache on tnir to respond to these short names) and everything is nice and zippy.

I’ll figure it out one day. But for now that means this change really slows down page loads for anyone inside our firewall. But not outside.

You can access my copy of the script, and use it even to build your own RSS feed list.

<a href=”http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink()) ?>”>Digg this</a>

That’s it. This seems to work in at least versions 1.5 and 2.0.

Most of this is from an article on Pierre Far’s ekstreme.com. I just put in the WordPress-specific stuff.

He has a nice Javascript bookmarklet that can be dragged to the bookmark bar to digg any site you visit: Digg this

The bad thing about the bookmarklet is that if you are just reading on the main page, it won’t point to the specific story’s permanent link. So be sure to click down into the story before using the bookmarklet.

Typo, a blog publishing app similar to WordPress (which I’m currently using for all my blogs) is undergoing a website facelift, and is being seen more often.

Typo is based on Rails, of course. I am hoping to take it and turn it into the blog software I’ve always wanted. One wherein everyone posts to a single database, and “sites” are determined by filtering that pool. Personal sites take all posts by that person, tech sites take all the “tech” postings, etc. I think it sucks that I have to decide to either post in ReidNews or Tech Tok.

I am playing around with Google AdSense, so you will see ads at the bottom of the sidebar to the right. Let me know if they are annoying. I would be very surprised if they generated any real money at all.

Let me know if you find them annoying, or are horrified at my attempt to monetize this site.

I’ve been meaning to upgrade to the completely released version of WordPress 1.5 for quite a while. It’s done now, and as you can see, I’ve copied over the theme from my home page with minor tweaks. I’d like to go back to the white-on-black look at some point, and use this logo: But I won’t have time for a while; maybe in May.

Hopefully comments will work correctly now instead of being attached to the post before or after. I’ll post one on this entry and the previous one to test it out.

So I took the “classic” WordPress style and started tweaking it a bit. I renamed it “techtok” so we still have the orginal “classic” around. I don’t like how it is now — too much like ReidNews. But at least “classic” was what’s called a “liquid” layout, where the width of the main text is not fixed to 400 pixels or something. That really bothers me, as you may know.

Btw, Jeff and Iain, I think you both have enough privs to modify the layout too. Poke around, and feel free to play with the “Presentation/Theme Editor” and stuff.

Well, as you can see, the site has moved to WordPress. And, in keeping with being a leading-edge — nay, BLEEDING edge — site, we are running last night’s CVS version of WordPress (a.k.a. almost-but-not-quite-yet WordPress 1.5).

I am not happy with the fixed-width format, but don’t have time to delve into all the CSS etc. If you are Iain or Jeff, log in and look around. Everyone else, feel free to create an account and see what’s what.

MaxMind is an interesting site that has a service whereby you can map IP addresses to geographic locations. They say their API is open source, but I’m not sure about their database.

I’m guessing it’s not..

I have a link on my favorites toolbar now that takes whatever site I’m looking at and creates a new Tech Tok posting with the info in it (page name, URL). Here’s what the MT doc says about them:

Setting up a bookmarklet to post to Movable Type allows you to perform one-click posting and publishing without ever entering through the main Movable Type interface.

Movable Type’s bookmarklet structure allows you to customize the layout and fields on your bookmarklet page. For example, you may wish to add the ability to add excerpts through the bookmarklet window. By default, a bookmarklet window will always have: a pulldown menu for the weblog to post to; a pulldown menu to select the Post Status (Draft or Publish) of the new entry; a text entry box for the Title of the entry; and a text entry box for the entry body.

I’ll be using it to post here more frequently I think.