DISQUS

Even given the choice between McCain running Bush's third term and Obama running around in circles clueless, I'll still take Obama.

I'm not saying he's perfect, nor that I agree with everything he says, but he's already proven himself a hell of a lot better than McCain at uniting the American people.

The bottom line, to me, is that the Republicans (damn near all of them) have, in my opinion, screwed us in too many ways to even count. If nothing else, I'd like to get screwed by the nanny state for a decade instead of by the paranoid police state we've grown into over the last one.

Using email to SMS is generally most valuable for notifications only (I've used it before for flight information notifications).

I doubt there's any standardized method for two-way communication, but in my test with my AT&T; phone, I was able to reply (SMS to email) simply by replying to the original text message I recieved. AT&T;'s system was smart enough to identify the original sender and send them an email back with my SMS contents.

There's no point in using the plugin, it's default functionality now.

Hmm, looks like I was pretty much right - it's being scraped, by itself.

I still say it's a very odd way of passing the data around, but I guess it does get points for using existing functionality to implement, rather than creating its own little proprietary method.

Tumblr isn't really a social network in my mind, just a light-weight hosted blogging service meets Twitter (ie: shorter, randomer posts). Anyhoo, thanks for the info!

It doesn't throw any errors on the validator, since you can stick anything you like in a meta tag. I've still yet to find anyone that has any idea what it's used for.

The only thing I can think of is that they have something else that's scraping the page and needs to know which colors they're using... Seems like the worst possible way to implement something if you've got access to the system itself, but if they're doing it for third parties I suppose it makes sense.

I'm frankly surprised Kucinich would actually do an interview with him. I mean, going on Fox News to talk about impeaching their idol? You know what the interview is going to be like...

As far as the actual interview... O'Reilly, while talking about what his radio listeners are asking him, amazes me. How can there be people who actually believe what he's saying? It's also convenient that he only "skimmed" the report containing hard, factual, damning evidence to contradict his opinion and dismisses it as apparently too long for anyone to read - while Kucinich is holding the document, ready to quote from it.

Also, the whole "if you go after Bush, you have to go after x, y, and z too" attitude seems very kindergarten to me. I'm more than happy to go after them as well, but we can only impeach one person (well, maybe Cheney too), and any investigation has to start somewhere.

I'm frankly surprised Kucinich would actually do an interview with him. I mean, going on Fox News to talk about impeaching their idol? You know what the interview is going to be like...

As far as the actual interview... O'Reilly, while talking about what his radio listeners are asking him, amazes me. How can there be people who actually believe what he's saying? It's also convenient that he only "skimmed" the report containing hard, factual, damning evidence to contradict his opinion and dismisses it as apparently too long for anyone to read - while Kucinich is holding the document, ready to quote from it.

Also, the whole "if you go after Bush, you have to go after x, y, and z too" attitude seems very kindergarten to me. I'm more than happy to go after them as well, but we can only impeach one person (well, maybe Cheney too), and any investigation has to start somewhere.

Ray: You're quite correct. In his Yes We Can speech, he fails to target and specific goals that we can achieve. Rather, he puts forward the idea that we can unite and accomplish anything we put our minds to - and that's important to me.

Think about elections in general. All these candidates throwing around huge ideas, claiming they'll do this, this, and this if they're put in office. In reality, they don't have the power to unilaterally do any of those things - what they really mean is that they'll try to introduce bills to get those things done and play the politics game toward that end.

Then, once they get in office, how often do they back-peddle on the very issues they campaigned on? Tax cuts is a big one here. How many times have you heard campaigning on lower taxes, only to get the person elected and find that your taxes don't go down at all (and, often times, go up)? There are any number of similar instances, but money is one that sticks with people, so it's a good example.

All that said, my point is this: His positive can-do attitude is refreshing. While all the other candidates are into smear campaigns and talking about the things we've screwed up or that other candidates would screw up, Obama is pursuing a positive can-do attitude. In effect, it doesn't matter what goals he may put forward, because we can achieve any of them as long as we dedicate ourselves to that purpose.

Does he have all the answers? Of course not, and I don't think he's saying he does either. But he is saying that, as long as we work together, we can find the answers to any problem as one united forward-moving country. And that's very important to me.

For anyone looking for a working link to download Garland that didn't see the updated post above, you can download it here.

I've tested on the latest copy of trunk and on WP 2.3.2, but please let me know if you run into any problems.

plonut: Looks like Dreamhost somehow axed my entire 'uploads' directory on that account. I'll try to rectify the situation later tonight and post an update. I'll also drop you an email to the address you commented with...

Jon: I'm afraid I still don't see this being a market-breaking product. Your example scenario would be one in which it's more usable than similar products, true, but it's still not exactly the magical solution we'd all hope it to be. It's not as if your TV has a USB port you can simply plug the device into - you still need to carry around the "cradle" and an a/v cable of some sorts to plug it into. You still have to climb around behind the TV to find the proper type of a dozen different ports to plug it into, etc.

While the Take.TV is certainly still more portable than an Apple TV, even with its cradle, I still think having to move a USB device with an undoubtably limited storage amount (it's still just a flash drive, so we're probably talking 4 GB tops without breaking the bank, given SanDisk's other products) back and forth is a step backwards.

Take.TV and Apple TV both have to have cables connected to the television - that's just a given until we develop a new standard for media. I think Take.TV could have made a better entrance into the market had they taken the same set-top box method Apple had, while championing the desktop software side of things.

The true limitation to Apple's product has always been the ability to get media onto the device properly. If you haven't used their software to download TV shows from the iTMS, you've been pretty much out of luck. Take.TV could have easily trounced Apple by investing more time and money into methods for loading all your existing media onto the device.

While slightly more plausible in your scenario, I still don't think Take.TV is going to be convenient enough as a mobile TV transport device, given the A/V conversion overhead any solution will require, to actually "revolutionize" the market as it claims. The limited size a USB-based thumbdrive device can contain is also likely going to be a factor, as high-def media booms in popularity. Regardless of your particular opinion, I think all these factors are going to be contributors to the Take.TV downfall...

John: Where did you get this information? I only yesterday moved my final email account off of the (mt) grid because of their limiting.

The real question here is whether you can continue to call yourself a Crazy Canuck...

We all know I'm the last one to be understanding about downtime, particularly when it comes to Media Temple's supposedly superior grid service, but this time I at least understand their pain. It's never pleasant when routine maintenance takes a bad turn and stretches on endlessly.

Just remember, this time it wasn't their fault: it was actually one of their storage vendors. They couldn't have foreseen these problems coming. Sure it doesn't make any difference: downtime is downtime, regardless, but try to give them a little leeway in this case. At least they were communicative about the problem and didn't just ignore their customers while they were busy working on a solution.

And to top it off, the eventual response I got from Media Temple was

a suitable alternative would be to either get a (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server or find a third-party mail host such as Google-hosted email.

So in order to get all my email, I should pay you guys twice as much a month so I can get a higher plan? Sounds vaguely like extortion to me...

Gary: I refer again to my example: Wordpress. How many millions of blogs out there are sending out automated messages on a regular basis from a wordpress@domain.com email address that no one ever thought to actually setup?

How many times have you gotten an email from a company, confirming an order, support request, etc. that told you not to respond, as it was from an un-monitored account? Granted most companies actually setup those accounts, but the point still remains: it does happen.

In principle, I agree with you - there should always be a way for me to respond to an email I receive. In practice, however, the internet has not followed such trends, and that's the issue. Maybe we *shouldn't* have this problem, but we most certainly do.

Simply stating that it helps increase security for your dumb users and discarding the potential consequences is not the way to operate on today's internet. Spammers certainly have no problem getting their messages through to user accounts en masse, and this is not going to significantly reduce the number of messages I receive - the majority of them are from spoofed legitimate email addresses (like myself) anyway.

So you're inconveniencing a ton of people while not significantly accomplishing anything... To me, that's the definition of a bad idea.

How does the fact that Sprint is CDMA have anything to do with their phone dying unexpectedly or requiring a service contract? Every provider I know of has an early termination fee, and phones are hardly their fault - it's not like Sprint manufactured it.

Check the link... It has something to do with Ewoks and margaritas.

Give me a little credit, that's as long as this box has been alive. :)

Taking a survey of my boxes at work, we've got:

09:12:46 up 149 days, 21:53, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00

and

09:26:31 up 243 days, 17:34, 1 user, load average: 0.11, 0.03, 0.01

Glad I could help, Nic!

Wow, I have to say I'm a bit surprised at the response I've gotten - although considering the experiences I've had with NewsGator in the past, I suppose I shouldn't be.

First off, thanks to all three of you for taking the time to comment and letting me know that I'm actually effecting change (scary thought...). Like I said, despite the gripes I may have about the API implementation, NG has some great people working for it (and, well, formerly working for it). I really can't tell you how much this kind of response means to me.

Nick:
Thanks for so quickly stopping by and offering to help out. I meant to get back to you last night, but I'm afraid I just didn't get around to it. I'm sure everyone knows about FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, but I particularly enjoy getting to know the people behind lesser-known products, so it's nice to meet you.

I'm all too familiar with the ways in which documentation can so rapidly become dated, particularly during heavy development. I suspected this was actually the case behind the missing parameters, since I didn't recall having seen them in my previous brief experiences with the API. Thanks for confirming my suspicion, and especially for the apology - it really means a lot when you get something like that from someone you've just brutally criticized.

Should I encounter any further problems that I can't figure out in a timely manner, I'll be sure to drop you an email. As Greg noted, the majority of my problems have been documentation related. Even if I'm still working off old documentation, at least now I'm familiar with some of the potential pitfalls I can encounter, so I hope to be able to work through everything else I need on my own. Again, thanks for the offer!

By the way, a quick way to disable NewsGator Desktop (like from the context menu of the notification icon) would be convenient for those times when you're heavily involved in something. Basically a faster way to get to the 'Disable / Enable' button in Notifier Options. With FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, Desktop is a bit redundant (and, you know, has ads stuck in from time to time), but I love the overall functionality (quickly hammering through a list of feeds is really nice) and it's a great freebie for those who may want more than the web interface, but aren't ready to go up to a full app yet. Screensaver also gets bonus points for being utterly unique... I look forward to more cool tools in the future!

Gordon:
Hello again! Sorry to hear you're not with NewsGator anymore, but thanks for stopping by anyway.

I checked out the REST examples, but I have to admit I'm not the best at reading Python (in fact, probably about as far as you can get from 'best'), so unfortunately they weren't of the most help. That and the real lack of documentation is what lead me to return to the SOAP API (since mixing and matching the two really seemed like redundant work from the basic setup perspective).

I agree that NuSoap (and the PHP5 Soap client as well) is lacking in some of the finer points of the process. I couldn't find the post you mentioned on your blog (at least not the one linked in your comment), and there's no search (the Google search didn't find anything), but I'd be interested to read some more of your thoughts on the topic, if you've got a minute to track it down. I've also read Shelley's experience with it, which did help with some of the basics, but unfortunately there was never any more detailed analysis of the process...

Greg:
You're right, my problems were mostly centered around the lack of documentation. The inconsistencies are annoying, but are easy to spot once you realize they do crop up from time to time. Fixing those in current versions of each call would be a major pain, but I agree that it'd be nice to see them disappear in future versions.

Fresh documentation would be great (thanks again, Nick)! I'll be eagerly awaiting the updates.

A wiki sounds like a good idea, as long as it doesn't get out of control over time. Difficult to navigate and consume documentation can often times be more annoying than no documentation at all. I'm not sure what the best format for such a wiki would be, but public assistance in updating it and contributing insight / examples / recommendations would certainly be a welcome addition. I'll be looking forward to seeing this in the near future as well.

Things like the intended use behind two similar calls and the intended performance benefits of different calls would also be great subject matter for the wiki (although a time-consuming process to compile). Understanding why a certain call was added in the first place and why one might want to use it over another call would certainly help anyone developing on top of the API create better applications (better both for them and for NG).

Thanks again to all three of you for the incredibly wonderful positive response I've gotten after thoroughly bashing several points of your API, it really is great to see. I'll be watching for new documentation and try to follow up on the progress of the wiki idea in the future.

Thanks!

Hey David,

Sorry it took a while to get back to you, but it's been one of those months at work...

In case you haven't already found it, there is nothing defining a style for blockquotes in style.css. They're indented based on the browser's default interpretation of them, and display with the regular style applied to the body tag. Just tack on:


blockquote {
<styles here>
}


Anywhere in your style.css file and you should be good to go.

The only other option I see would be a modification of what I suggested earlier. You basically substitute the portion where you check to see if there's a custom field with your skip value with the part where you check to see what the other contents of the post are... Either way, the rest of the brutal hack remains...

Looking back, I realize that I wasn't paying enough attention when I wrote that earlier comment. Obviously a lack of caffeine if I've ever seen one. That should be:


remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wpautop');


I just saw the first wpautop and snagged it, not bothering to look and see that it was for comment text, not post text... Doh!

Anyway...

Can something be written? I'm sure it can... Would it be feasible to do so? That depends...

Only thing I can envision:

You add your own hook for the_excerpt that runs with a high priority (like first, 0: add_filter('the_excerpt', 'custom_excerpt_no_autop', 0);).

In that function, essentially, you want to check and see if this post has a custom field you set on that individual post. If that custom field has the value you set (whatever you wanted to use to indicate not to auto-p this post), you run your remove_filter('the_excerpt', 'wpautop'); and the post is left alone.

In actual practice, I'm not sure how well this would work out, or how it would affect any excerpts coming after this post. You may actually need to hook again with very low priority and re-add the default wpautop rule.

I'd probably try to find another way... Like fixing the actual issue: that auto-p'ing is causing that big of a problem.

Garry: All the

tags in WordPress are handled by another of the default filters:


add_filter('comment_text', 'wpautop', 30);


In order to remove that tag, you'll need to drop another line in your functions.php file:


remove_filter('comment_text', 'wpautop');


But be forewarned - that'll remove absolutely all of your auto-paragraph formatting. You'll need to handle all that yourself.