Author: isaac

I like cats and compost.

Categories
General

flickpress 1.0

This update just adds some options to the widget, so if you don’t use the widget there’s no need to update. @susansoaps asked how to display images horizontally with the widget, which wasn’t easy to do because the widget was wrapping images in <p> tags. So, the widget now offers options to specify exactly what you want displayed before and after each image. The plugin checks and cleans a few things, but it does NOT check to be sure your tags match or even close properly – check your tags if your site looks broken. Some quick hints:

  • For a horizontal row of images, just leave before and after blank. Put a space in after if you want space between your images.
  • For a vertical presentation, use <p> before and </p> after or just <br /> after.

Get flickpress 1.0 from the WordPress Plugins Directory.

…or right here: flickpress_1.0.zip

Categories
General

OrgPress Theme 0.3

This version fixes a few problems I found with navigation – sometimes I was using the wrong template tags, sometimes I just didn’t have the navigation stuff in the right place. Hopefully it’s all fixed now.

Next, as I noted in the previous post, I think it makes sense to link to fancy author pages whenever possible. So, I added code to the comment function to link to logged-in commenters’ author pages.

In addition to refining the author template a bit, I added some code to display links to Facebook and Twitter if the user has entered those. You’ll need a separate plugin to add those fields to their profile, such as Twitter Profile Field or Profilo.

Download OrgPress 0.3: orgpress_0.3.zip

Categories
General

Linking to a commenter’s author page

Normally, when a logged-in user leaves a comment, a link pointing to the URL in their profile is added to the comment. This is fine, but what if you’ve set up an author template to serve up fancy author pages? Wouldn’t it be better to link there instead? If your theme already has a replacement wp_list_comments function, it’s pretty easy.

Add something like this to the top of your comment callback function in your theme’s functions.php:

$comment_author = get_comment_author();
$comment_author_link = get_comment_author_link();
if (!empty($comment->user_id)){
  if ($author_url = get_author_posts_url($comment->user_id)) {
    $comment_author_link = '<a href="' . $author_url . '">' . $comment_author . '</a>';
  }
}

Now you can echo out $comment_author_link  wherever you had the standard author link. If the commenter is a logged-in user, the link will point to their fancy author page – otherwise it’ll just point to the commenter’s URL as usual.

Categories
General

Playing with c2g in Gimp

I learned about the very cryptically named c2g GEGL operation in Gimp from this post at the Linux Photography blog. I like to convert soft wide-open photos to black and white, but I’m not always happy with the results – when I increase the contrast to get the black parts like I want the transitions between black and white often get weird and eroded. c2g doesn’t always work well, but I especially like it when I blend a c2g’d layer back into the original image – the results remind me of colorized Civil War era photos. Here’s a before-after, the first with just a levels adjust and the latter c2g’d and blended back in.

Monument & ChannelChannel & Monument

I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing this to every photo, but I’ll probably at least give it a try now and then.

Categories
General

Grilled beef short ribs

Grilled short ribs

I love braised beef short ribs, but in the middle of summer I hate using the oven. It’s not as if it makes the house a lot warmer, but it sure feels like it. So, I grilled these lovely specimens after rubbing them down with some creole seasoning. They did end up a little tough, but that was easily overcome by slicing them thinly.