Published on
2009-07-02 in
/etc.
So I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up WordPress to syndicate content from other sites I contribute to. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug in the FeedWordPress plugin that prevents you from using feed URLs containing ampersands. Doing so results in an error like this:
Diagnostic information
HTTP request failure
400: Bad Request
HTTP Transports available:
1. WP_Http_FsockopenApparently, I’m not the only one who has encountered this issue, but I did discover a workaround. Just change all the ampersands in your feed URL to the HTML entity equivalent. Example:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/whatever/uploads?orderby=published&safeSearch=none
Becomes…
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/whatever/uploads?orderby=published&safeSearch=none
Published on
2009-06-24 in
/etc.
For various reasons (mostly to correct past mistakes), I decided I needed to start re-ripping my CD collection. Unfortunately, the default settings in K3b are not to my liking, and I’m sick of having to look things up to re-configure this, so I’m going to document my preferred settings here once and for all:
K3b Ripped files pattern
LAME command
Advice taken from Hydrogenaudio’s recommended encoder settings:
lame -V0 --tt %t --ta %a --tl %m --ty %y --tc %c --tn %n - %f
K3b external audio encoder settings for LAME
On my machine, LAME will not encode properly unless I enable this option:
Published on
2009-01-25 in
/etc.
I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 this morning, and since Sandbox (which my old theme was built on) hasn’t been updated in forever and has known deficiencies with WordPress 2.7, I also installed K2. Before switching themes, I poked around a little to see what else is out there in the world of “blank” or “reset” themes, and that lead me to discover that apparently, I was way ahead of the curve with this whole “child theme” thing. Do a google search on “wordpress child theme,” and you’ll find a lot of very recent posts from prominent WordPress people talking about how this is the future of theming in WordPress, with tons of comments from people who didn’t even know the functionality existed. Weird.
I just wish WordPress would start shipping with an officially supported “blank” or “reset” theme by default, because I can’t stand any of the themes I’ve come across so far. Just look at the header on this one. That thing takes up 1/3 of my screen for a page title and a menu. What a waste. I could easily fit that information into something 15px high! See, this is what I mean by nobody having any taste. It’s as if all the web designers out there are designing for wide screen plasma TVs lately.
Anyway, here’s a list of some new “parent” or “framework” themes I came across today, just in case I decide to make a new minimalist theme for my website:
My current employer has a new blog, and I’m on the blogging committee. That means I get a cool cartoon-character avatar of my likeness, and I’ll be making regular posts there. I encourage you to read (and comment) on my first post; In the World of IT, Laziness is a Virtue.
Published on
2008-08-26 in
/etc.
Has anyone else noticed that problem where you view the comments for a post, and it shows an RSS feed for a completely different post? This only happens the first time you load the page. If you refresh, the correct page comes up from then on. I have been noticing this problem for months now (from versions 2.4 through 2.6), and I have no idea what’s causing it. I thought maybe it was related to the WP Super Cache plugin, but I disabled it, and it’s still happening.
PS: The website will be down this weekend, because I’m moving.