ClickComments on Feed

Db0

I’ve hacked the clickcomments plugin in order to make it display only in the feed (since my layout places the script on the single post’s sidebar).

However I’ve been trying to see it and it is failing for some reason. It just won’t display in my feedburner human-readable feed. I’m not certain if feedburner prevents scripts from running or if the script is malfunctioning but I can see the correct code in the source of the feedburner page.

Can any of me feed readers else see the clickcomments panel under the content? If so I’d appreciate to hear from you.

Just in case you want to do the same with your own blog, in order to make the plugin display the panel only in the feed, you need to edit the plugin in your wordpress installation and just after the function begins, insert:

if(is_feed()) {

and close the bracket just before the return $content; part

In case you want to place the panel in your sidebar (in a widget for example) I’ve found that the folllowing code works just fine

<div class="postreachclickcomments"><script src="http://www.postreach.com/ccengine/display_iframe?perlink=<?php the_permalink(); ?><!-- &url=<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>" type="text/javascript">
// --></script></div>

And this doesn’t even need the plugin to be installed (but you do need a postreach account)
Hmmm…perhaps I should wrap this in a widget…

As an aside, I’ve figured out why clickcomments stops loading for me eventually. Initially I thought it stopped loading from my specific IP (which is why it kept working from anonymouse) but it’s not that. Apparentlythe script saves a cookie on your browser which stops loading the panel after you’ve voted 3 times.

Unfortunately this created some problems for me as a web designer as I could not actually check if the clickcomments panel is working or not with the changes I made on the layout (I could only see that the source existed). By clearing out all cookies under the Postreach name, the pannel appears again and you can vote once more.

The problem is that this is prone to abuse. Anyone who wished to get a higher rank could just clear his comments and vote his posts once more. Since postreach does not require an account before you vote and it does not check the IP (or so it seems) it is bound to be played by any unscrupulous blogger who dreams of more visitor hits and tries to achieve it through the showcase.

I just hope that Postreach has not implemented a simple security through obscurity method to avoid it and they actually have some checkpoints that I have not seen.

New Camera

Db0

Finally, after quite a long time of using my crappy mobile phone’s camera, I’ve decided to buy one that can take a picture worth a damn.

True, part of that decision was my girlfriend finally getting too exasperated with me always complaining about the crappy pictures I took with my mobile.

Anyway, generally I am pretty ignorant about digital photography or photography in general. I’ve never actually owned a camera and before I came to Frankfurt and bought a new mobile, most of the pictures I had where from one-use disposable cameras who’s quality just might have been worse than my mobile.

Not knowing anything though, all those features and option just confused me. I just wanted something that is good at taking pictures at low light and I don’t really care about the Megapixels provided (Mostly because I’ve read that Megapixels do not necessarily equal with quality)

Fortunately, Planet atheism came to the rescue and I happened upon the blogpost of Geoff Arnold who was impressed with a specific model. Fujitsu FinePix f50fd. Now even though I didn’t plan to buy a camera back in July when I read it, I was wise enough to save a bookmark for the time when I would want to buy it.

The time came this week so this was the first thing I researched. Turns out that it was exatly what I was looking for as this specific model series are actually praised for their ability to take low light pictures. Seeing that the price had dropped to almost 200€ I decided to just bite the bullet and get it.

So I did. And now I’m gleefully playing with my new shiny gadget 😀

Here’s some samples I took in my gf house 😀

2348232723302357

Comment Quickly

Db01 Comment

I’ve just discovered a neat little service that allows readers who want to rate an article to quickly rate it.

I’ve now spent the last hour hacking it so that it integrates nicely with my site so currently you should see it on the single post page, on the sidebar. Hopefully this will allow people who don’t have anything specific to say on the post to simply press a button and label it as cool, insightful or fun (or on the opposite, boring, bad or just dissagree).

It should also embed itself into my feed but for some reason I doubt it will work. Oh well, we’ll just have to see 😉

Unofrtunately from the limited time I’ve used it, it seems that their servers are severely overloaded so the script most often than not does not appear at all, and when it does, it tends to appear last (after all the items in the page have loaded).

I’m still wondering where to place it as it is. By placing it on the sidebar, it means that you might miss it after you finish reading. By placing it on the bottom of the post, it’s very easy to see but it also does not merge as well as I would have liked with my site :-/

Opinions appreciated.

OOXML Irony

Db0

This particular phrase over at Groklaw made my day

ECMA decided not to wait for the ISO official announcement either. That made it possible to announce on April Fool’s Day. Perfection.

After such barefaced corruption of the ISO approval process, this is most appropriate.

No OpenID for you

Db01 Comment

I’ve given up trying to make the WP-OpenID plugin work with my theme. It seems it just doesn’t want to. Watever I do, it either tries to always authenticate on the url (even if it isn’t a provider) or never. I can’t get to it actually check the site.

Also, even if I do use a url that provides openid auth, the comment is rejected as spam (probably by bcspamblock) and I can’t be bollocksed to troubleshoot that.

So for now, unfortunately, I’m disabling OpenID functionality on this site. Let’s hope this can be fixed in the future.

My 3Dyssey

Db0

I have finally managed to make the display drivers on my girlfriend’s laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400) work with the propriertary ATI drivers.

It took me about a week and a lot of research but I finally managed to make it work. To make a long story short, the problem was that before I tried to install the propriertary drivers, I had installed the xserver-xgl package as it is necessary to have 3d acceleration with Ubuntu’s restricted drivers. Unfortunately, as the propriertary drivers can finally work with AIGLX, XGL is not needed anymore. Also unfortunately, this is not mentioned anywhere and not are you warned about it at all. As a result, I didn’t even think of that this might be the cause.

Furthemore, the ATI installation wiki, does not even mention this in the verification section either. I have now added it just to save other the same frustration I went through.

Hopefully, once I uninstalled the xserver-xgl driver, ATI became the default renderer. Unfortunately since compiz is used to work with XGL, it refused to activate. Fortunately the envy script is setup to configure compiz to use AIGLX so all I needed to do to fix this was run the script and have it reinstall the ATI drivers.

Finally I have normal 2D and 3D Capabilities. I especially hated not being able to see a fullscreen movie.

Lesson for the future learned: Ignore manual installations and just run the goddamn Envy

Now, all I need to do is figure out why power management is not working :-/

Creative foot

Db0

OMG! I’ve never seen such a spectacular shot in the foot statement by a company before.

Dear Creative Labs, please do yourself a favour an fire mr. Phil O’Shaughnessy or whichever person was responsible for this decision. Hire Daniel instead.

Also be aware that you have now lost a loyal customer. Even though I had never used Vista or had problems with your cards, I am so disgusted by the way you treat your customers that I believe it is in my best interests never to purchase your products again. I will also make sure to inform all my acquaintances that come to me for advice (as the resident PC Geek) never to buy a Creative Labs product again.

Well done. At least we know now whhom to avoid.