Posted on

WordPress: Order Link Categories manually?

Now that the semester is over I’m going to devote some more of my time to my blog and also developing software. One of the first things I was going to do on my blog is add more links over on the right and realized it is a major pain in the butt to order not only the links but also the link categories themselves. WordPress has no facility for manually ordering the link categories so I changed that. My quick fix was adding a column to the database and then editing the select query to order by “my_order” instead of whatever it was doing.

My plan is to develop a plugin to add this functionality because it is sorely missing and the weakest point of WordPress that I have found. I’ll update as I work on that and hopefully I can get it released to the WP community for others to use.

Posted on

Space Cadets – The latest showcase of human imbecility from the BBC

“Earth Orbiter 1 to CAPCOM Krimsk, I can see Rambo and the Fonz doing a high-five” – Space Cadet PaulI’ve always enjoyed British comedy and TV and the latest show I’ve been catching off the Internet is “Space Cadets”. It is a reality TV show where a group of people are going to be tourists, at least that’s what they think. When the went through and interviewed the people for selection, they used psychology tests to see who would be the most gullable and it turned out they are not so bright young people. The quote above is from them practicing radio transmission from the card the lecturer is holding. It takes a special kind of person to think they are going to be blasted into space and this how they would be prepared for it, I haven’t seen anything on reality TV since Joe Millionaire. Survivor? Apprentice? Big Brother? Trading Spouses? Supernanny? Bah, fabricating such an elaborate facade is way more difficult and seeing them actually pull it off is very enjoyable even if it is at the expense of the dimwitted participants. They are eventually told there will be gravity in the “spaceship” because “gravity generators” in the floor that have only been developed in the past month, but they will never be leaving the ground. 3 episodes down so it should get a little more comical as the time for “blast off” approaches.

Posted on

My Goals for Winter Break

With one final left tomorrow (I would categorize the two from yesterday as “almost easy”) I’m looking forward to getting some stuff done over the break. In no particular order here we go:

  • Overhaul computer to dual core Athlon 64
  • Finish Christmas shopping
  • Help finish off kitchen remodel
  • Watch Kung Fu DVDs I have not yet viewed
  • Get down and dirty with ASP.NET 2.0
  • Start planning what I will be doing after graduation
  • Start looking for possible employment opportunities
  • Spend more time with Sarah who has been slightly neglected this semester
  • Spend more time with Nikon D70 who has been slightly neglected this semester
  • Prepare for my last semester in the comfy world of academia
  • Get Christmas tree before Christmas
  • Maybe put up some Christmas light before Christmas
  • Get resume up to date in XML format using standardized DTD

If I accomplish anything, I really want to get some more programming and dotNet knowledge. It won’t be long until I’m interviewing for jobs and I want to make sure my skillset is up to date and competitive.

So what are you going to be doing with any vacation time you get?

Posted on

Defiant return from the black hole called school

Well I’m not completely free yet but I’m getting closer. Thanks to Denise and Amy for noticing my absence. Finishing up my labs and papers this week with 3 finals next week. They shouldn’t be too hard and I probably won’t study like crazy, who knows I might pull of another 4.0 semester (I’m a quarter of the way there for sure). When winter break rolls around and I have nothing to do I will definitely be posting here and on other sites more. Who knows I might actually create a post that is somewhat geeky and …weekly.

Posted on

A Non-Geek Friendly Introduction to AJAX

Just like the Internet, Al Gore didn’t invent it. Some of you might not be terribly nerdy/geeky/techie people, but since you are here looking at this site you are using the Internet, this should be of interest to you. If anything it will make you smarter and in a few years you can impress your friends by saying “Eh whatever, I heard about AJAX back in 2005, big deal.”

AJAX stands for (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), this may be gibberish but it will change (you may have already unknowingly experienced it) the way you interact with your computer and the Internet. With the current state of the net, you are presented with a static page that loads in your browser and you read it or make some changes and refresh the page or submit a form, etc… Nothing very exciting.

AJAX uses technology behind the scenes to communicate with a server and returns information to the page you are looking at without refreshing the page, allowing it to become truly dynamic and interactive. The best way to further explain is to see it in action and decide for yourself the cool factor.

Google Maps, Google Suggest, Meebo

More information on AJAX