More Link Modifier…now in Danish!
It has been about two years ago when I decided to give php a go and write a WordPress plugin. This plugin was what I called "More Link Modifier" and it came about because I didn't like the behaviour of the default 'more' link, which basically was fixed text and jumped to the section where the more link was within that post (usually somewhere in the middle). It seems like many people also don't quite like the default more link since there has been over 1400 downloads as of today!
I must admit that after finishing the initial release of the plugin I never really got back to add more to it (though I do think it has enough 'features' as is, don't want feature creep!). In fact, I don't think I've touched it ever since submitting the first version (shame on me 
).
However, in the past few weeks I was contacted by Georg Adamsen who had very kindly translated the admin settings into Danish - thanks Georg 
So now armed with the files edited by Georg that enabled the Danish translation, I looked at code that I had written some two years ago (yay for comments) and reviewed the comments on More Link Modifier download page to see if any changes were needed. Surprisingly I didn't make any drastic changes, only a few small cosmetic changes. Having said all that, there are some possibilities of a few small additions to the plugin, in particular use of 'the_content_more_link' filter available from WordPress 2.8 that allows adding extra attributes to the more link.
A very belated post…
It seems like between thesis, holidays and starting workthe previous blog post was more than half a year ago!
So, thesis is all done (yeah!), holiday was awesome (see below) and starting to work full time is definitely a different experience but a good one
Won't go too much into my holiday, but there is one thing I have to point out - Japan has heaps of cool and wonderful things. One which I thought was very cool is in some stations, the platform numbers start at zero! Probably looked like a silly tourist taking a photo of the inside of the station, but definitely worth it - how often do you see Platform 0?
In more 'blog-related' news, I am planning to make some major changes to the blog, the most significant being completely re-skinning it. Due to the changes the blog will most likely look very bare and default-y for a period of time - hoping that it won't be too long! Also, aiming to blog on a slightly more regular basis!
Email Addiction in the Workplace
Earlier this year I had to choose a topic for my honours/thesis. Of the few ideas I had floating around many of them would have been implausible (or maybe even impossible) to do as part of honours, so I settled on one of my more do-able ideas – Email Addiction.
The main reason I chose email addiction was because I felt to a certain degree I was “addicted” to email. The first thing I did when upon getting online was check my email – regardless if I was expecting an email or not. My email was set to refresh every minute and display a message box if any new emails came in so I would be notified when a new email arrived. Anyone else in the same boat as me?
Interestingly enough, there is heaps discussion related to email addiction online – Googling “email addiction” gives you a whole heap of results, all mainly on how to cure/deal with email addiction. However, running the same search in Google Scholar gives you close to nothing; the majority of research focuses on Internet addiction and not email addiction.
So, after many months of reading a lot of literature, changing my topic to "Email Addiction in the Workplace" so it is more focussed, writing up Thesis A, creating a survey and conducting a pilot study I’ve finally reached the next milestone – conducting my actual survey! You may be wondering why I’m telling you this, well it’s because it is an online survey and I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me out and fill out the survey - it should take you no more than 10 minutes. Thanks in advance
Unfortunately, there is no incentive to fill out the survey other than the warm fuzzy feeling that you've helped me in my thesis For those who are interested, I plan on posting up a summary of my results/findings after finishing my thesis which should be around late October/early November.
creating a time capsule
Quite some time ago (about late 2007) I saw this documentary called "21 Up Japan" which is similar to the "Up Series". The idea of the documentary is the follow a group of children from when they were 7 years old, and then every 7 years they go back to them and see how they are going. The interviewers had a set of semi-structured questions which they asked, and it was very interesting to see how everyone's answers changed from when they were 7, 14, and 21.
After seeing this documentary I decided I wanted to do something similar - make my own time capsule However it wasn't until a few months later in early 2008 when I found an old exercise book which had some short stories that I had written in 1995 that really got me started. Reading those stories made me realise how much can change in a few years (and how much we can forget!). My time capsule is bit different to 21 Up Japan - it does have a set of questions which I plan on answering once every year or so, but the majority of entries are more diary-like entries of times when I feel like something important has happened.
upgraded to WordPress 2.5
On March 18th when I saw the sneak peak for WordPress 2.5 I was amazed and couldn't wait till the release date. Not long after, comes March 30th when WordPress 2.5 was finally released Unfortunately, the first week of April was a super busy week, so haven't yet had a chance to upgrade until now.
So here it is - the new and shiny WordPress 2.5 with K2 RC5. This time the upgrade went much smoother than upgrading to 2.3, no more drama with file permissions - FileZilla is wonderful. Though this time, since K2 wasn't quite ready for WordPress 2.5, there have been a few minor bugs (though so far easy to fix).
For those who are still unsure if they should upgrade to 2.5, I strongly recommend you do! The upgrading process is simple (I recommend you use FileZilla), and even though the Dashboard (in admin) looks a bit foreign to begin with it soon becomes very nice and easy to use - especially when writing posts
For those who are also using 2.5 and K2 RC5, here are the two small fixes that I've found so far after the upgrade.
theloop.php (line 12)
original:
require_once( preg_replace( '/wp-content.*/', '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] ) . 'wp-config.php' );
change to:
require_once( preg_replace( '/wp-content.*/', '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] ) . '/wp-config.php' );
rollingarchive.php (line 10)
original:
require_once( preg_replace( '/wp-content.*/', '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] ) . 'wp-config.php' );
change to:
require_once( preg_replace( '/wp-content.*/', '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] ) . '/wp-config.php' );
The other bug which I am still looking at is with the plugin dDeviantArt which doesn't seem to quite work with version 2.5, hopefully it'll be a relatively simple fix.
As the adversary is always out there to get us, I'm sure there are more hidden bugs/broken pages etc. So if you do find something that is broken please tell me! Thanks
ps. not a bug, but I'm definitely going to have to find a plugin for formatting code - the above 4 lines look horrible! anyone have good suggestions?
blutack pig
On Sunday I decided to make a small pig out of blutack Probably sounds very random, but it was because earlier in the weekend I had saw similar small pigs at Paddy's Market and they just looked so cute! Here is the result of my procrastination:
The pig itself is actually quite small - about 1cm in diameter, though I think that is what makes it cute. At first I was worried that using blutack would be very hard since blutack sticks to itself (and your fingers!), but in the end it wasn't that bad. A toothpick is a must though - not just to poke the holes for the eyes/nose but also to push and shape the ears.
Since the pig was quite small it was rather hard to take a nice close-up photo, so as usual I took several shots. However, this time while flipping through all the blurred photos I remembered a Stop Motion Video tutorial I had read on Photojojo few months back - so alas, more procrastination...my first stop motion video attempt!
happy chinese new year!
Just wishing everyone a Happy Chinese New Year
Hope the year of the rat is nice to everyone - and as I saw in a powerpoint slide...
Year year got fish,
New year faster happy!
Yes, it is a literal translation from Chinese: 年年有魚(餘), 新年快樂!
motivation and time
It's probably safe to say that pretty much everyone has problems with motivation and time - if not, I certainly do! This problem has meant there are many things I want to do (and should do) end up not getting done. A simple example...the last time I blogged was November 16th 2007! A few months ago while uni was still on I would've blamed it on lack of time, however I now blame it on lack of motivation.
It probably sounds weird that I have no motivation to blog as it is something that I want to do. However, over the holidays I've discovered something that is annoying me. For many things (especially those you want to do) when you are tight on time your motivation levels are quite high - it's just that there isn't time to do it. While given the same objective if you have plenty of time motivation levels seem to drop so low that it just gets put on the back burner again. Of course there are exceptions, but to me it feels like a good majority of things that I want to and need to do are neglected because of this.
To me, the most logical reason for this is when you are short on time, chances are it's because there is something you don't really want to do, but have to do is taking up your time - so anything that is slightly more attractive will be high on your "must do" list. On the other hand when you have heaps of time it is probably just easier being lazy. While the other things you've always wanted to do seemed super-interesting and you'll do it just when you get some spare time, doing nothing is even better, so nothing ends up getting done.
Having said all this, I think the main problem of the two is motivation. The problem for me is finding a way to get motivated. Given enough motivation and determination, it should be possible to get pretty much anything done. Last year, I was having a conversation with someone and complained that I had no time - he replied with "We all have the same amount of time, it's just how we use it."
Apologies for the rather mashed up, nonsensical and late blog post, but I'd like to see what other's think about this problem.
Who Moved My Cheese?
On Monday my family and I arrived at the airport nice and early to be sure that I would not miss my plane, only to find that the flight had been delayed by an hour. So what was there to do in that hour? Visit the newsagent and read books of course!
Unlike most times where I just randomly pick up books that look interesting and read snippets, a particular book caught my attention: "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Being one of the books on my 'To Read' list, I was happy to see that it was only about 100 pages with nice big font. The blurb claimed that it would only take half an hour to read, so with one hour to kill, I decided to stand there and finish the book.
If you haven't heard of this book, it is one of the best selling motivation books. In my opinion, a quick and simple summary is:
Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese
upgraded to WordPress 2.3
As some of you may or may not know, WordPress 2.3 was released about a week ago on Monday 24th September. So since I had a bit of time, decided I should upgrade from 2.2.2. After some drama with the incorrect file permissions of the uploaded files I finally managed to get everything working (I hope!) so now I'm using the brand new WordPress 2.3 release
With this upgrade I've also upgraded to K2 RC1 as on their page it is suggested to use RC1 with 2.3. The front-end should look relatively similar, with the exception that tags are now only shown when you view the full post - since I've disabled Ultimate Tag Warrior and now using the inbuilt tagging system that comes with 2.3.
If you do find any problems with my blog, please send me an email and I'll go and try to fix it up!