all things me

I’m always thinking “now, where’s that page that looked like this and this and this” (or any info I need: “what did the text say under the picture on page so-and-so, on the right hand side corner below the title such-and-such” A slight case of photographic memory I guess. Only I don’t always *remember* the things I can see in my mind’s eye.)

WordPress references for me and you:

• Weblog Tools Collection
• Wordlog
• Blogging Pro
• WordPress Reference Centre

I installed a Breadcrumb plugin. I was going to add headers on the category pages but remembered this and thought it could be niftier. It doesn’t show on the main page but if you go to different archives or categories it shows where you are. On a single post’s page it shows all the categories the post belongs to in a comma separated list.

I also hacked a forget user info (from Scriptygoddess) option to the comments. I don’t like forms remembering my information and WordPress sets a cookie as a default.

Joined David Copperfield fanlisting. Today there was a “David Copperfield — Greatest escapes” on TV (Gawd, he’s cute! And funny). In 1997 I saw Copperfield in Finland (and he’s coming here again this December). After the show I’d written in my diary that I was feeling very unreal. It was a wonderful performance with his flying and getting-sawn-in-two and others that I can’t remember. In the tv show he said that after some outsider had shouted “move your feet” after the saw had cut Copperfield in two, they had a crew member shout the same thing in every show after that. I can’t remember if that was in the performance I saw.

The tour then was called Dreams and Nightmares and I started my dream diary soon after that. Named it “Dreams and Nightmares”.

Inspired by the idea presented at Digitus, Finger & Co. I installed MooKitty’s Show Categories plugin and modified it with the code in a comment by Paul.

“Static pages” are posts but hidden from the index page, archives, and category listing. They can be found by search, however. I “staticised” my booklog and the page about me already but I still have some more work to do. I decided to keep commenting on for the static pages. I removed “lots” of things, though. It’s easy: Just add

<?php if ($cat != x) { ?> HIDDEN STUFF HERE <?php } ?>

around the bits you want to hide (x being the ID number of the category you are hiding). That bit of code means “if the category number does NOT equal x, show the bit between { and }”.
I hid the date, time posted, and word count.

The breadcrumb code is located outside the WP loop so at first I didn’t know how to get the category info for if-clauses (for hiding the breadcrumb from static pages). I found a function in_category(x) where x is the number of the category. It returns true or false. So, I put a

<?php if ( !in_category(x) ) { ?> HIDDEN STUFF HERE <?php } ?>

around the breadcrumb code and now it’s gone from the static pages just as I like it.

Making static (or more like non-entry) pages this way makes it easier for them to keep up with the modifications I make to the index page. I used to have the static pages as php pages where I had copied the “header” and “footer” of each page.

I bought Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah today. Unfortunately I could only find Hodder & Stoughton’s copy. My sister got me the Grant copy of DT V for Christmas so I would’ve wanted to get a similar looking book. Oh well, H&S’s version is more beautiful (and it’s the same series than my DT I-IV box set).

That means I updated TGWLSK: there’s a picture of the spine of SoS in the Bookshelf.

Tomorrow is the enrolling to computer studies courses. I have to wake up before 9 am for that. Luckily I have to go no further than my computer because the enrolling is done via their website. Also, on Monday I have to enrol to Monako (translation stuff) courses and that too is computerized nowadays.

This autumn is very bad course-wise. There’s really not much to take. The spring however is packed and I probably have to give up on some of the courses I’m drooling over now. Oh well, I’ll do some book exams, and a silly computer course (mandatory) at home.

I don’t understand why there has to be so many courses to be done by book exams. I don’t want to read books and answer questions about them, I want to attend lectures!! That’s why I am at the university — for the lectures!

Last night (after being scared s***less by a moth that bumped into my bed lamp and flew crazily around only to be crushed between my sheet (ewww) and a magazine) I finished reading Douglas Adams’s The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. I started it gawd knows how long ago so I’ll probably read the Finnish version soon. The Ultimate guide includes the Hitchhiker trilogy (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy + The Restaurant at the End of the Universe + Life, the Universe, and Everything) and three other stories (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish + Young Zaphod Plays It Safe + Mostly Harmless). I enjoyed the book because of it’s crazy humour (nutty names) and of course the wonderful, and surprising, playing with language. I don’t know how on earth the Finnish translator has been able to transport the word plays to the translation — but I will find out soon.

I had removed the month abbreviation from the calendar (template-functions-general.php, line 385 fwd) but now it turned out that the long word ‘September’ causes the arrows (») to go to the next line. So, I put the abbreviation back. I still will have ‘June’ and ‘July’ in their full form cause I’m just used to it. Why abbreviate words that are so short already? (A bit like b for ‘be’, u for ‘you’, 4 for ‘for’ etc. etc. etc.)

Yesterday I noticed that my hostess Shirasade had changed from Movable Type to WordPress. YAY!

Finally I found out what the amazing intro song of Splinter Cell is: Name of the Game by Crystal Method. The title of this post is partly from it, excluded the bad language (m*****f***er, fill in the blanks if you want to).

Some updates. A friend of mine, Fritz, told me he had problems with the fancy JavaScript pop-up window thingamabob on LGM (my alien collection). So, I added normal links, too. The pictures will open in the frame and if you have a smart browser like Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox they’ll also resize if the pictures are too big.

Alas, I read in an article my Grandma sent me that Stephen King is retiring. I can’t see nothing on this on the official site, nothing apparent at least.

I was trying to get rid of subcategories in a parent category (annoying when a post is NOT assigned to the parent category but still shows in it) with the help of a post by Andrew Hall. No luck. I studied the code and dared to comment out another bit that looked “right” and now it seems to work:
in wp-blog-header.php (found in the WP root folder) around line 293 (under “Category stuff for nice URIs”), comment out (= add /* before the code and */ after it) the line

$whichcat .= get_category_children($cat, " OR category_id = ");

Also, updated wpPaginate plugin (by Scriptygoddess) to .1.1.

UPDATE
On WP1.5. this is found in wp-includes/classes.php, on line 413. Comment out

$whichcat .= get_category_children($q[‘cat’], ” OR category_id = “);

UPDATE
On WP1.5.1.(1) these are found in wp-includes/classes.php on lines 393, 396, 420; below Category Stuff and Category Stuff for Nice URIs. Comment out the lines starting with $whichcat .= get_category_children

Today I bought two new Kings: Salem’s Lot and Needful Things. (That means updates at TGWLSK.) I was supposed to buy hard-back Song of Susannah too but I got scroogy cause I’d bought soooooo much already (nothing interesting though).

Tomorrow I’m off to my grandparents’. I’m travelling by train, Pendolino, a super quick one if only it’d work this time. Last summer the mechanism that allows the train go fast was broken so it had to travel at normal speed. When the new trains first started running, a door was sucked off by the speed. Nice going. And tomorrow’s Friday 13th… Good thing I’m not superstitious. Let’s hope the person controlling the train isn’t either.

I’ll be gone for about a week, I’d imagine.

I haven’t started packing yet, and I have to wrap some books in book plastic (I don’t read paperback books (or in my case “backpack books” ) without the plastic) before I get too tired to do that.

@ 22:45
Joined Words fanlisting

Note to self: Adding a nicer search function a la Raena. I removed the counting of search results because I use pagination so if there are 10+ results it would show “There are 10 results…” even though there were more. Also, I changed the length ($excerpt_length) of “the_exceprt_rss” function in template-functions-post.php, line 194.

Added a Statistics hack for my own fun. Note to self: Doesn’t show private messages.

An observation: I don’t understand what the word count really counts… it always seems to be missing a few words. E.g. it claimed there was 18 words before this note here, and I counted 19…

I downloaded a lot of goldie oldie games from Pelit [Games] magazine’s site (you need to be a subscriber and registered to download): New Adventures of Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion Deluxe, and Mario Forever. I also downloaded Codename Gordon, a 2D game with a Halflife motif. I was looking for Space Quest: Replicated, a fan-made game, but didn’t find it.

*insert proper curse word here* I’m going crazy with these mad insects flying around. They’re attracted to my desk lamp. If only I could whack ’em.

I just installed a WordCount plugin I found at False Hopes. I’m tempted to put the total words in posts somewhere but that would require lots of queries to the database, I think, and I don’t want that. [edit]Oooh! It doesn’t add loading time nor queries considerably! I added it to the menu there, under Blog Archives[/edit]

On Tuesday I’m going to my aunt’s for the rest of the week. Had to change my WP configuration or I would’ve ended up with a blank index page by the end of the week. I had the setting “show posts from previous 7 days” and it’s not a smart one like on Greymatter but it’s actual, “physical” 7 days. I noticed that when I had only 4-5 entries on the front page (I’d been a lazy blogger!) and it seemed really short. Anyway, now I set it at “7 previous posts“. My behind’s covered.

I also deactivated the Condensed Content plugin after getting tired of having to view each post’s individual page when looking for quotes to decorate with a nice left hand side dotted line. Now it’s still paginated but posts are shown in full.

Thought of the Da…Night Every post categorised as something else than Miscellany is yet another victory!

Last night, around 1:50 I finally got to the Final Boss Fight in Beyond Good & Evil. I fought the darn thing for about half an hour and finally after a whole lotta K-Bups and going through the “choreography” over and over (I ended up playing with my eyes closed — hey, I was tired! ) I beat it! The end movie begins, good. And then, no voices, screen fades to white. The background music seems stuck. Nothing happens. I hit del, esc, any key. Nada. Ctrl + Alt + Del opens the program list, luckily. It was 2:20 then and I couldn’t stay awake anymore so I had to leave it at that.

This afternoon I decided to try it again. There had been a saving point just before the final battle but that was alright. <irony>I knew it by heart anyway…</irony> This time it took me 10 minutes to beat, not flawlessly though. And this time the end movie worked. *phew*

So, now I can say I beat Beyond Good & Evil.

I joined BG&E fanlisting, by the way.

I went to see Spiderman 2 today (hence the title). Tobey Maguire looks a bit silly when he wrinkles his face in strain, but what can I say, all that Spiderman acrobatics appeals to me I found this —> picture, but it’s a bit dark and the spiderman suit is all torn but it’s the closest I could find (crouched and one leg straight on the side — like Trinity in Matrix Reloaded when she jumps off the motorcycle and lands very coolly ). If anyone finds a better one, I’d be mooooore than happy to drool over it. Anyway, I go swoon now.

I “installed” a category image plugin for WordPress. You see those tiny images below a post’s title? That’s them. If you mouse-over the images you get an explanation on what they mean, but I’ll list them here:
Miscellany — very “clever” picture of two unknown variables
Books — a stack of books
Computer — string of zeros and ones, the binary
Dreams — a thought bubble, by dreams I mean the nightly kind, by the way
Games — a Pacman
University — a Greek-style column
Site — a home as in homepage, I know stupid, what else would describe a homepage though?
Fanlistings — a heart, I couldn’t think of anything else to depict fandom
Tweaks — tools are for tweaking
Updates — an idea light bulb
Language — a person speaking, although language means written too
Quote of the Day — quotemarks, hopefully not too close to the Finnish (or capital city area) library logo, no copyright infringement intended!
Word of the Day — ok, this might not be so clear, but there’s a page of a calendar and a W on it
(Odd) people — a bunch of people and a questionmark
I Don’t Understand — questionmarks
[edit: New categories]
— OT but not in the meaning of Off topic as usual. Posts that, as the name says, stay on one topic.
— WordPress
— Amadeus, our dog
[/edit]