Category: Of Interest

Those miscellaneous things that just must be published.

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Knoxify’s Friday Five

Knoxify is an excellent example of hyperlocal group blogging. The site has a beautiful design with a pleasant balance of photos and words with easy navigation to relevant information. The topic matter is Knoxville, TN and the articles always well written. To make Knoxify even better, they’ve introduced First Friday Five to feature the wonderful non-profits in Knoxville and encourage the Knoxify readers to donate $5 to the organization.

For their first First Friday Five, Knoxify choose one of my favorite non-profits, FISH Hospitality Pantries. FISH provides food and basic staples to any person or family in Knoxville who needs it with no questions asked. People of all economic backgrounds can find themselves in tight economic positions and FISH exists to make sure that no one goes hungry. Well chosen Knoxify!

Chattanooga also has First Friday Five.

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From today’s Breaking News

I follow Breaking News on Twitter:

AP: A Cal. chopper pilot, who let a porn actress perform oral sex on him while flying, says he learned his lesson and wants his license back [Source, Twitter, @breakingnews]

I want to know how he got busted! um, I mean caught. Like, was there a 9-1-1 call? "Hello? 9-1-1? I have a hobby of watching helicopters with my telescope and I think you need to call this one into the FAA." or perhaps this was one of those bizarre Google Map/Google Earth things, "Now go to this longitude and latitude. See the helicopter? Right. Zoom in. That’s right! You’re seeing what you think you’re seeing. Now how is he supposed to safely land that thing with the inside of the windscreen like that?!"

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ShareThis WordPress Plugin Broken – Easy Fix!

I recently added a ShareThis link ShareThis.com to each of my posts. I chose ShareThis.com because it seems to be very robust while leaving a relatively small footprint on the blog and appears relatively unintrusiveness and benign. Of course, some folks will be quick to point out that the tracking features and having the icon linked back to sharethis.com is very intrusive and anything but benign. In this instance, I don’t see it as that big a deal. One of the attractions to ShareThis.com was its WordPress plugin making setup as easy as going to the website to generate the widget code, then inserting that code in the settings box on the admin screen in your WordPress blog. But it didn’t work.

At ShareThis.com, a publisher generates a script that looks like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345&amp;type=wordpress&amp;embeds=true&amp;post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&amp;headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!"></script>

After updating, the code will have a 2nd publisher id appended to the end. With two publisher ids, ShareThis will not register your site nor collect statistics.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345&amp;type=wordpress&amp;embeds=true&amp;post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&amp;headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!&amp;publisher=a1b2c3d4-ijkl-mnop-qrst-u4w2y10a2r4d"></script>

After reviewing the plugin code, I realized the way ShareThis generates the script must have changed overtime. Crowd Favorite wrote a great plug-in but it expects the publisher=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx to be at very end and if it does not find a publisher id at the end, it puts one there which is why you will end up with two publisher ids. To fix this, simply move the publisher id to the end of the script before pasting the code into the ShareThis settings box in the WordPress admin:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/sharethis.js#type=wordpress&amp;embeds=true&amp;post_services=facebook%2Cdigg%2Cdelicious%2Cybuzz%2Ctwitter%2Cstumbleupon%2Creddit%2Ctechnorati%2Cmixx%2Cblogger%2Ctypepad%2Cwordpress%2Cgoogle_bmarks%2Cwindows_live%2Cmyspace%2Cfark%2Cbus_exchange%2Cpropeller%2Cnewsvine%2Clinkedin%2Cfriendfeed&amp;headerTitle=Thank%20you%20for%20sharing!&amp;publisher=abcdefgh-ijkl-mnop-qrst-uvwxyz012345"></script>

Note: In the settings box, the &amp; will be converted to just & but the code correctly uses &amp; with the post. Your code will still be xhtml compliant.

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April 1st – the most worthless day on the Internet

How’s the saying go? "Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see" or did I get that backwards. The point is some inanely hugh amount of information on the Internet is inaccurate. I’ve always said 90%. This is why you should always confirm your sources! On April 1st I just assume 100% of the information is wrong. Of course, whose April 1st are we talking about? Darren Rouse of Problogger fame lives in Austrailia so for many people last year his April Fool’s Day joke came in on March 31st making people believe it was real. My first 30 seconds of looking at the Internet today:

TechCrunch beat me to the roundup. That said, Internet, I’m turning you off today. Even Redditers hate April 1st.

Update: When did April Fool’s Day begin?

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Justine Lai Does The Presidents

laijoinordie01thumbI clicked a link in one of my news readers today and was presented with a gallery where San Francisco artist Justine Lai has painted herself having sex with several presidents (NSFW). She’s a good oil painter. A bit of an odd subject. Definitely not safe for work. And I think Ol’ Abe is going to shoot her in the head.

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Knoxville Overground Social Mixer Tomorrow!

Tomorrow night let’s all get together in Market Square to checkout Knoxville Overground’s latest and have some real life social time.

Tomorrow on Wednesday March 25th at 7pm, Knoxville Overground will host a social mixer at 35 Market Square as well as provide tours of the 5,000 sq. ft. facility it hopes to convert into a micro-enterprise development center within the next few months.

Remember, downtown parking garages are free at 6pm (although someone recently commented that had changed to 7pm..unverified). For for information about the social mixer and tour, e-mail knoxvilleoverground@gmail.com. See more at KnoxViews.

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My wife has left me for Steve Jobs

At least today she’s Gone Gone Gone. See, while the US military and universities struggle to invent the invisibility cloak (getting closer), Steve Jobs and AT&T achieved invisibility years ago. Pay close attention the next time you are in public. Our social rules keep us from even making eye contact with a person on the phone. We don’t want to breach their privacy so we turn off our ears and physically turn away from them. Trying to recall the details of a person talking on the phone in public is more difficult than recalling the details of a person not speaking on the phone. I have no scientific study to back up that statement. It is just my own assertion but try it. Take a friend to the mall. Make mental notes about various people then stop and ask your friend to describe them 45 seconds later. The people talking on their phones are invisible! Even Girl Scouts selling cookies choose to skip their sales pitch to people speaking on the phone.

Now, setting is important. The person discussing private business dealings at the topic of their lungs in a quiet restaurant draws attention to themselves and is far from invisible. The loud talking, me, me, me, attention gather is trying to draw eyes to themselves and is the opposite of invisible.

iPods, MP3 players of all types, and anything that requires we plug wires into our ears also make us invisible. Our body language says, "Don’t talk to me!" Speaking to a person with earphone plugged into their ears might be a waste of time. They may not hear you and the frustration of raising your voice, getting their attention, and repeating yourself multiple times just isn’t worth it. To simply avoid talking to them is less physically exerting and less stressful. So we avoid interrupting people listening to their music or podcasts and they too become invisible. Today my wife joins the invisible people as she listens to loud music and gets things done around the house.

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Seeking Next Project

I am coming to the end of a project and have an opening in my schedule. My strengths are programming in PHP, ColdFusion, JavaScript and jQuery, CSS, and HTML. I most frequently work with MySQL or MS SQL but can work on most database platforms. Code I write validates and is W3C compliant. I can also write Section 508 compliant code. I carry a project from concept to production as project manager, independent developer, and/or project team member. In addition to custom original code, I work well with open source projects and APIs. I usually telecommute but am not adverse to working onsite or traveling. I am not an artist and typically hire a graphic artist to provide the design for each project. I enjoy WordPress customizations (but have not done custom work to either Reality Me or Domestic Psychology). Please send referrals or inquiries to jugger@gmail.com or call +1-865-898-7189. Thank you!

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Latest Internet Nuisance

This morning I received an email from two people who don’t normally send me email. Both emails were almost identical and inexplicable. One was sent to me while the other revealed the 87 or so email addresses it was sent to and appears to have been sent through gmail. I presume a worm, trojan or virus is sending this message to people’s complete address books. If you get one of these, you may want to let the send (not the entire mailing list) know that they need to scan their computer. Click more to see the email. Continue reading Latest Internet Nuisance