San Francisco touring suggestions

Posted on 2007-09-01 by Jim Vanderveen

We had a great time when we took [Claire](http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/08/31/claires-visit/) to San Francisco, but there were a few things we could have done to improve the trip. I’m documenting all this Continue reading →

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Claire’s visit

Posted on 2007-08-31 by Jim Vanderveen

Several months ago, Barb signed us up to host a French foreign exchange student. We were hoping to have our [remodeling project](http://sonicchicken.net/remodel) finished before that time came, but unfortunately we were still living in a house under construction when Claire arrived. The poor girl spent three weeks living with us in less-than-ideal conditions. We took a few weeks off from remodeling and Continue reading →

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Markdown formatting broken

Posted on 2007-08-28 by Jim Vanderveen

Pair upgraded our web server last night, and in spite of all the work I did to get the blog software updated in advance, it still got broken. All of my Markdown-formatted posts are displaying the following message:

Warning: preg_replace_callback() [function.preg-replace-callback]: Unknown modifier ‘|’ in /usr/www/users/vanderve/sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/text-control Folder/text-control/markdown.php on line 766

The old server was running a modified version of FreeBSD 4.8 and PHP 4. The new server is FreeBSD 6.2-based and running PHP 5. I’m guessing that the upgraded PHP and something in WordPress 2.2 aren’t getting along…

Update: Disabling the Text Control plugin (which I’m using to provide Markdown support on a per-post basis) takes care of the nasty error message above, so at least my Markdown posts are showing up. And fortunately bare Markdown is relatively easy to read.

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Nutella

Posted on 2007-08-28 by Jim Vanderveen

Jar of Nutella

We went looking for a source for Nutella here in Sacramento last week. Neither Barb nor I had seen it in “regular” grocery stores, so we checked all the specialty (read “expensive”) stores: Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, etc. Barb finally found it at Corti Bros., but of course it was a bit pricey–about $4 for a 13 oz jar.

I did a web search for “nutella sacramento” and stumbled across a post on BeckyJSacto’s blog. (She’s got a lot of good suggestions in that article as well as others on her blog–check her out!) She told us to check the peanut butter section at Raley’s: lo and behold, there it was, and about $.30 cheaper than Corti’s.

But I found the ultimate deal last night. CostCo is selling a 2-pack of monster jars (750 g, just over twice the size of the regular jars) for about $8. That works out to less than $2 per (13 oz.) jar. w00t!

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Afrofunk

Posted on 2007-08-20 by Jim Vanderveen

While we were visiting San Francisco yesterday, we heard a band playing out in front of Pier 39. They sounded pretty good, so I picked up their CD on the spot: “[Funkiest Man in Africa][]” by [AfroFunk][]. (The band is actually named “Sila and the AfroFunk Experience”, but that’s a mouthful. Besides, the back of the dude’s jacket is labeled “AfroFunk”.) With 10 guys, it’s a big band, and they were puttin’ on the full effect yesterday–a lot of texture to their music, and a helluva lot of soul. I’m looking forward to more from this group.

> Dance like no one’s watching,
>
Sing like no one’s listening!
>
— “Got No Money, Get No Respect”

![“Funkiest Man in Africa” cover](http://www.victorsila.com/images/album_art.jpg)

Added bonus: when I searched the ‘net for these guys this morning, I found that the front man, [Sila, has a blog](http://victorsila.com/afrofunk/index.php). (WordPress-powered, even!) He’s not writing much lately, which is a shame because it looks like he’s got a lot of important stuff to say.

[Funkiest Man in Africa]: http://cdbaby.com/cd/sila2
[AfroFunk]: http://www.victorsila.com/home.htm

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Tags are back

Posted on 2007-08-17 by Jim Vanderveen

Took a bit of work, but tags are back up! I was originally (2005) using Felix Wong’s plugin, but it hasn’t been updated yet. So I installed the latest (and *final*, sob!) version of [Ultimate Tag Warrior](http://www.neato.co.nz/archives/2007/06/30/ultimate-tag-warrior-fin-the-end/) by Christine Davis. UTW looks awesome from what I’ve seen so far.

So now I’ve got several hundred old posts with obsolete tags, and a fancy new tag engine. I took a look at some of Felix’s tag code, had a look at the database table(s) he was using, and figured out how he was storing tags. UTW has a slick little import/export feature for tags, but it only writes/saves tags in custom fields. (Edit one of your posts and look down near the bottom of the page for the “Custom Fields” section.) After figuring out how WordPress stores these custom fields in the database, I was ready to try and copy my old tags into “custom fields”, from which I would be able to import them into UTW.

The only difficulty I had was gathering multiple tags into a single custom field–Felix’s system created a separate row in the database for each tag on each post, whereas UTW’s import process wants *all* tags for one post in a single custom field. A little digging in the [MySQL 4.1 manual](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/index.html) gave me the answer: the [GROUP\_CONCAT](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/group-by-functions.html#function_group-concat) aggregating function. I wrote the following query to gather all the old tags (from table ‘sc\_tags\_items’) and place them as a comma-separated list into a ‘UTW\_tags’ custom field for each post:

insert into sc_postmeta (post_id,meta_key,meta_value)
select post_id
, ‘UTW_tags’
, group_concat(tag_name separator ‘,’)
from sc_tags_items
group by post_id;

After that, all I needed to do was tell UTW (on the admin interface go to Manage / Tags) the name of the custom field and what the separator was, then click the “Import from Custom Field” button. I got a few errors, probably from odd characters in some of my old tags, but it looks like all (or nearly all) of my tags are back. I fiddled around trying to find what might have caused the errors, but after an hour or so I’ve given that up as a bad job. So as soon as I finish this post, I’ll restore my “/remodel” link to redirect as it was intended to.

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Remodel URL broken

Posted on 2007-08-17 by Jim Vanderveen

Nuts! The URL I’ve been using for our remodeling project was broken by the recent WordPress upgrade. (Well, technically it was the old tagging system that broke.) So I’ve temporarily changed the remodel URL to point to all blog posts. Once I get tagging fixed, I’ll change it back.

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New themes

Posted on 2007-08-16 by Jim Vanderveen

My old theme, [Journalized Blue][], didn’t *quite* survive yesterday’s [WordPress upgrade](http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/2007/08/15/wordpress-upgrade/). I’ve downloaded [Journalized v2][] (beta), but while I was at it I decided to go “theme shopping”. I was looking for a 2- or 3-column *fluid* layout–<rant>I **hate** it when web pages don’t display properly merely because my browser window’s geometry isn’t what the author expects!</rant> Anyway…

I found [Srini G](http://srinig.com/)’s [Fluid Blue][] theme. Nearly a perfect fit, it’s a two-column theme that’s truly fluid! (Lots of the “fluid width” themes on the [WordPress Theme Viewer][] are merely fixed-width themes that center themselves in wider-than-expected browser windows and pop up horizontal scroll bars in “narrow” windows. Oops! Ranting again…) It also supports sidebar widgets, which I’d like to fiddle with. Added bonus: version 1.1 is ultra-fresh, having been released a mere three days ago.

Now, in spite of the above rants, I found a fixed-width theme that I just can’t do without: [Dean J. Robinson](http://www.deanjrobinson.com/)’s [Redoable][] is *gorgeous*! I’m gonna have to see if I can hack that into a fluid layout. Even if I can’t fluidize it, I’ll keep the theme around just so I can gawk at it once in a while with a theme switcher.

Speaking of theme switchers, I stumbled across an excellent how-to for Ryan’s [theme previewer](http://boren.nu/archives/2005/03/08/preview-theme-plugin/) over on YGG: [How to work on your blog without anyone having the slightest clue](http://www.younggogetter.com/2007/05/24/how-to-work-on-your-blog-without-anyone-having-the-slightest-clue/). Granted, installing a WordPress plugin is easy: Upload to your wp-content/plugins directory, then activate via the Plugins tab on the admin interface. (Still, it would have been good to include those instructions in the plugin.) The thing I found very cool about Travis’ post on YGG was how he’s using the theme previewer to tweak/debug themes and/or plugins *without exposing the code-in-progress* to his viewers. Great thinking!

So now I’ve got some new themes to play with. I had to disable the old theme switcher, since it wasn’t working quite right under WP 2.2.2. “Fluid Blue” is the theme du jour, at least for the time being…

[Journalized Blue]: http://zed1.com/journalized/themes/journalized-blue/
[Journalized v2]: http://zed1.com/journalized/themes/journalized-theme-version-2/
[Fluid Blue]: http://srinig.com/wordpress-themes/fluid-blue/
[WordPress Theme Viewer]: http://themes.wordpress.net/
[Redoable]: http://deanjrobinson.com/wordpress/redoable

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WordPress upgrade

Posted on 2007-08-15 by Jim Vanderveen

My web host, [pair networks][], is upgrading my server tomorrow, so it looks like a good time for me to [upgrade WordPress](http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress). Hopefully I’ll be posting a comment on this article in a few moments saying how easy everything went…

[pair networks]: http://www.pair.com/

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Dodgy network wiring

Posted on 2007-08-07 by Jim Vanderveen

The network connection at our house is still pretty wonky. 🙁 Some days it’ll work (at least for a few hours), and some days all I see is a flashing red “DSL” light on the modem. It’s put a bit of a crimp in my blogging.

I wasn’t able to find underground-rated cable at Home Depot, but I managed to get a 100′ spool of indoor-outdoor cable. I’m going to pull this through the conduit (hopefully tonight!) and see if that fixes the network connection.

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