pacificpelican.us

espresso cup and saucer

Dan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:28:17 +0000

(I took an espresso cup photo too, with a different cup.)

A new theme on this blog

Dan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:27:09 +0000

Seeking to bend, if only slightly, to the web design trends of the last three years, I have put new themes on the three flagship blogs here on the pacificpelican.us–this front page blog, the podcast, and the photo-blog.
I am (at this moment–though these things change over time) using the Kirby theme from Ian Stewart, the Wordpress theme designer behind Thematic. If you use Wordpress and don’t know about Thematic, you should visit its web site. In my opinion, Ian Stewart is not only one of the best theme designers, but he also is one of the most influential as he makes clear, usable and GPL-compatible frameworks that anyone can use or modify. The Kirby theme is very flexible, and emphasizes readability and accessibility. And it makes it easy to add your own header graphic–I’ve used photos by Jessica and me for the artwork at the top of the blogs.
I want to make the site readable for users with smartphones, and I am somewhat skeptical of the idea of constantly maintaining a parallel web site for mobile users, and would rather make a site that is hopefully usable for a vast majority of users and devices. [I find this site pretty good with my iPod Touch 2nd generation, although I do use the pinch-to-zoom a bit.]
Anyway my view on the new look is that the theme works very well for the podcast blog, and overall pretty well for this front page blog. It might be my choice of themes for a while on those sites.
But the way it works with the posts on the photo-blog leaves too many spaces between photo and description [one of the things that I updated the theme to Kirby for was the ability to read photo captions, but hence all the posts up to this date have used the body of the post after the embedded photo and a space so it leaves too much room].
Anyway I am interested to know what readers think about the new looks (for now) for the blogs.

Lebron James and Jawad Williams (with the ball) at the Q Arena in Cleveland

Dan — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:06:07 +0000

Jessica went to a Cleveland Cavaliers game on Feb. 9 when they played the New Jersey Nets. She took this shot, and also took a photo in which Lebron James faces the camera with the ball.

Security problems, wrong priorities plague Wordpress

Dan — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:08:25 +0000

A new Wordpress security vulnerability has been discovered, in 2.9 and 2.9.1. It has to do with the newly (and badly) implemented “trash can” feature. (Instead of just deleting posts when told to, Wordpress now routes them through a convoluted trash system.) You can read about the new 2.9.2 version over at the Wordpress Tavern blog.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever upgrade from Wordpress 2.8.6. And I wonder now if my skepticism is logical as well as cranky.

I don’t think the project has a very good direction–the Wordpress MU merge is a fake crisis, a make-work waste of time and–obviously–unnecessary code bloat for 95%+ of users. (How many coders really care about those netroots geeks’ desire for a “user diaries” feature? Most of the installs that that turn on multi-user and allow user blogs for the public will become spam farms anyway.) The trash feature is of marginal, even debatable value–and is now probably a net negative with this security problem. (This problem is eerily similar to previously fixed problems regarding logged-in user permissions by the way.) The media handling features in WP have never worked especially well, and probably never will–the current implementation that I’ve seen in 2.9.1 is much worse than having nothing.

While stuff like merging WP and WPMU, adding more outgoing HTML so api.wordpress.org can get even more information about the user without their explicit knowledge, and trash cans (can we add a dock and Magic Mouse support too?) will keep people busy, it’s possible that no compelling feature will ever be added to Wordpress from here on out–just stuff like me-too features, “support” for a few more pointless acronyms (like FOAF), fixing stuff that isn’t broken on the backend, and UI toys that should be done with plugins anyway. A new forthcoming default theme is a great idea that came at least 2 years too late, after thousands of crap themes were built (and are still being built) on the foundation of the Kubrick theme’s shaky markup and design–but savvy users have all moved to better themes by now anyway.

Of course there are still practically billions of bugs that may be fixed over time, but as 2.9.2 has shown us the worst bugs will probably be in the badly implemented new features–in fact, the new added features are probably adding bugs [reported and not] at a faster rate than old ones are being squashed. Anyway the priority of the bugfixing workflow right now is based on who reported the bug, not how serious it is. Also I know that WP relies on lots of libraries, but those can usually be upgraded independently piece by piece, and anyway some of the versions of libraries built in to WP like MagpieRSS [it's still there, SimplePie or not], are ancient.

I’ve complained before that the inability or unwillingness of Wordpress to maintain even one legacy branch for security and plugin compatibility is a poor decision, and I’ve read posts on this blog that deal with that issue as well. Maybe it’s time to get my forks out. I’m thinking of dropping WP 2.8.6 into Git, changing the name (while giving credit where it’s due, following GPL), ripping out the spyware “features,” and maintaining it for security. But probably on my own private sever, for my own blogs only–I’m not trying to compete with the official version, just dispirited about the code in its current form.

A bird-themed Christmas tree

Dan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:50:47 +0000

Jessica and I had a wonderful Christmas together–our first as a married couple–and given our love of birds, we decided to add plenty of bird ornaments to our tree.

But our parakeets decided to enhance the tree even more by flying around and taking a peek at the decorative birds, including the wedding birds ornament we used to top the tree.

San Francisco mini-trip

Dan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:01:53 +0000

On our way to our honeymoon in Maui in September, Jessica and I stopped in San Francisco. Our brief stay was memorable because of all the old memories that we have together in that city–and for the new ones that we made there!

The Convalidation

Dan — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:15:38 +0000

(photo by Patrick McKeown)

After getting married in Cleveland on September 6th, Jessica and I had our marriage blessed at St. Emily’s in Mount Prospect, Illinois on October 3, 2009. After that we had an enjoyable reception at the Wellington in Arlington Heights, which was well attended by family and friends.

Jessica and I got married

Dan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:26:00 +0000

(Jessica and Dan at the wedding ceremony; photo by Les Shu)

We had a beautiful day (which was nice, as it was an outdoor ceremony and reception) for our celebration of love in Cleveland on September 6, 2009. It was an amazing and joyful occasion. You can read more about it at the wedding blog.

me and Jessica on our honeymoon in Maui

Dan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:51:14 +0000

Lahaina, Hawaii
September 16, 2009

tomato from the garden

Dan — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:33:49 +0000

August 22, 2009