Lovable Lyle » Blogging

WordPress Upgrade

Lyle — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:14:36 +0000

Just upgraded from WordPress 2.1.2 to 2.2.2. Please let me know if you notice anything weird.

Creating Passionate Users

Lyle — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:19:12 +0000

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has been receiving death threats (warning: it’s disturbing material). These threats have caused her to cancel speaking engagements and to consider giving up blogging altogether. As discussed in the article, these threats aren’t merely the anonymous trolling comments that most bloggers see from time to time, but comments made about her on other prominent blogs. With cleverly photoshopped pictures to help illustrate the threats.

Some of the accused parties are busy doing damage control this morning, and I think it’s probably true that none of the people she names were directly responsible for the threats. The problem is that those people helped to create an atmosphere where their readers felt free to post these kinds of misogynistic comments. It’s not news that the Internet provides a degree of anonymity that emboldens people to say things in e-mail messages, or in posts in online forums, that they would never say in real life — indeed, that practically unregulated level of free speech is one of the great things about the ‘net. I guess I’ve just been lucky enough, for the most part, to participate in online communities that are self-policing and don’t put up with or otherwise encourage this kind of crap.

As Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” No, not the wild rice guy — Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. I don’t know how to finish this post off other than to say, think about what you write and the power that your words have, even when — or especially when — they’re anonymous. And on the off chance that you’re a reader of one of the blogs that “hosted” these attacks on Kathy, maybe it’s time to unsubscribe from those feeds.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.1.2

Lyle — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:23:23 +0000

Just upgraded my WordPress installation from version 2.0 to 2.1.2. You shouldn’t see any problems, but please let me know if you do!

Track Blog Comments with co.mments

Lyle — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:20:55 +0000

You know, I’ve seen references to co.mments for awhile now, but for some reason my brain filtered it into the “look at later” pile.

co.mments is a service that assists you in tracking the conversations that take place in the comments for a blog post. If you are in the habit of reading blogs, I think you’ll agree that some of the most interesting information comes out of the responses from readers, and the back-and-forth between the author and readers. Some blogs of course provide RSS feeds for a posts’ comments — at least, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that before — but it’s not something I see universally. So co.mments provides you with a central place to track all of those conversations, and includes such niceties as a bookmarklet for tracking the post you’re currently viewing, an RSS feed for all of your tracked conversations, and e-mail notifications of changes to those conversations.

The Battle Against Comment Spam

Lyle — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:31:32 +0000

I’ve just installed James McKay’s Comment Timeout plugin for WordPress in an effort to thwart the occasional spammer that slips past Akismet. I’m a little concerned because a few comments on James’ blog suggest that it may not be working properly for some WordPress and/or PHP versions, but I guess I’ll just wait and see.

Live Comment Previews Now Enabled

Lyle — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:13:26 +0000

At the request of loyal reader Dan, I went in search of an option to turn on previews for comments. It looks like I have a few options to choose from, so the first one I’ve decided to experiment with is the “Live Comment Preview” plug-in. This one required almost no configuration (which is great), but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that it was in fact working (which is bad). It turns out that the “live preview” doesn’t actually appear until you start typing in the comment text area. Once you do start typing, however, the preview area magically appears immediately below the comment text box and updates itself as you type. It’s a nifty little trick, but I’m going to need to get used to it. Or, rather, my readers will.

Now I just need to figure out how to correct the placement of the “Add your comment” button on Safari.

Happy New Year

Lyle — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:47:57 +0000

How bad is it that the most exciting thing that’s happened in my life this week is the announcement of the iPhone?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m having a mid-life crisis. Is 36 (almost 37) years old too young to have a mid-life crisis? Is this as good as it gets, getting up and going to work and doing the same thing every day? When I think about the possibility that we’re never going to be matched for an adoption and that I’ll probably be childless for the rest of my life, I really worry about what happens next. Well, maybe “worry” isn’t the right word so much as “dread.” What is there to look forward to?

I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions, because like most people I don’t ever stick to them. So I guess I feel like I’m being more honest about it up-front by just not making them in the first place. But one of the changes that I want to make this year has to do with this blog: I either want to start writing a lot more, or just get rid of it. It’s definitely kind of pointless as-is, with sporadic posts about whatever happens to be interesting to me at the time. I’ve noticed that I’m especially bad about starting what should be a series of posts and then losing steam shortly after completing the first one. It’s also been almost exclusively technical in nature, and while I don’t want for it to turn into a cat blog I do intend to start writing more about what’s going on (or what isn’t) in real life.

The other change that I’d like to make this year is that, like everyone, I’d like to get in better physical shape. I don’t mean lose weight so much as start exercising more and eating more healthy. But that’s probably not going to happen. I think I will settle for “not getting any worse.”

Sorry for ending on a down note, but I’ve been sick for a couple of weeks now with a cough that won’t quite go away, and so that’s got me a little more discouraged than usual. Maybe I’ll have something more upbeat to tell after this weekend.

Blogging from the TX

Lyle — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 15:44:00 +0000

Plogit is an open source blogging client for PalmOS. If you can read this, it means that I got Plogit to work!

Edit (from the PC): Well, it sorta worked. The article’s title didn’t come through properly and instead ended up in the article body. I will have to investigate this a bit more…