Requires WordPress 2.2+. To use, download, change extension to “.php”, upload to plugins folder, activate, and configure.

To do: fix any bugs.

I’d tell you tonight was spent playing bocci ball and video games, but this isn’t Twitter. Burn.

We’re horribly mundane, aggressively mundane individuals. We’re the ninjas of the mundane, you might say.

Aaron’s line about Twitter didn’t just get me chuckling, it got me thinking. I’m so very torn between two poles: thinking Twitter, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. are really cool community driven things I’d love to make part of my everyday web life, and thinking that I don’t care to live my online life so publicly, that not all these things are even so useful or interesting, and that I would much rather have everything in one place, hosted on my own server.

Take Twitter for example. For some reason, I occasionally feel driven to sign up for an account. Thus far, I’ve resisted, mainly because the rational side of me asks why I’d sign up for a service based on replicating one tiny feature of IM clients/Facebook (ie, status.) And if I really wanted to pump that kind of information out there, why not do it here?

Why not? Because that sort of information, in and of itself, does not a post make–at least, not in my opinion. Oh, sure, I may be guilty of it from time to time, but it’s not what I want to make this site about. Not that this site is really about anything.

For example, I could have written a post yesterday like this: “Going running with Lucy.” Or this: “Just back from running with Lucy.” You might say the latter is what I did. But, no, not really. There was more to it than that, even if in a small package.

There’s a danger, perhaps, of the web making it too easy to put information out there, information that either should not be available for everybody to see or need not be available for everybody to see. The latter sort includes things that are just a little too mundane. So you made coffee today, as usual. That’s great. Does it need to be posted for the whole world to see? (Not that the whole world would read it.) If we’re the ninjas of the mundane, the web–especially web 2.0–is a powerful new weapon in our arsenal.

To do:

• Add option to either moderate non-user comments or not allow them at all.
• Set minimum user level.
• Fix whatever bugs are present.
• A few other things I have in mind.

Comments, bug reports, suggestions are of course welcome.

• being able to subscribe to your calendar would be a must
• being able to update your calendar from iCal compatible software would be really nice

The former would entice me to give said calendaring solution a try, the latter would ensure I stick around. Now, subscribing to a calendar would make any advertising more difficult, but I don’t think, say, putting one all-day event with an advertisement in the iCal version of the calendar would be so bad. As for the feasibility/difficulty of the second suggestion, I have to admit I’m in the dark, as I’m completely unfamiliar with webDAV.

I guess what I’m really looking for is a webDAV server that also has an online interface, rather than an online calendar with iCal support. That’s probably already out there, but I really haven’t looked at what’s available, and since I know a developer of said calendaring solution, I’ll start there.

Hopefully this post won’t draw in too much traffic from Googlers, since I didn’t use the ‘I’ word. You know, the opposite of outvite.

• to create a space where I can write what I want without worrying about who reads it (this site)
• to create a space where I can post information I want to be made public (my online CV)

Basically, I don’t want somebody to find this site based on a search for my full name. However, I’ve failed to realize that I can have that and still link to my CV, or link to things I’ve written elsewhere under my full name. My goal isn’t that people here not find out who I am, but rather that people who know me only find this site if I want them to. Once somebody is here they can find out who I am one way or another.

Of course, this isn’t foolproof. Somebody could stumble upon this site and then realize they know me, or any of a thousand other things could happen. And you’ll notice that I haven’t linked to my CV or what-have-you. I’m just saying that it’s not ruled out anymore.

Why the need for privacy? I don’t think it’s neccessarily a need. I don’t plan on writing things here that will get me in trouble if they are found out. Or things that would embarass me. I just like knowing that, for the most part, the average citizen of the internet looking for information about me won’t find this site unless they do a bit of digging.

This balance of anonymity (which I don’t really have on websites) and privacy is changing the way I use IM and email. Whereas before my screen names pretty clearly gave away my identity, now they don’t. Nor do they tie me to any of my websites. Somebody I know in real life can’t chat with me online unless I want them to be able to, and somebody I chat with can’t figure out who I am unless I want them to be able to. Again, not foolproof, but better. With unlimited mailboxes at various domains come similar options for email.

So, for those of you that know my new screen names, or know of other sites I have but don’t link between, now you understand a bit of the reasoning behind all of it.

But do they? At least, do they completely? After all, when a user decides to point their browser at any given site, they are inviting the designer of that site into their browser. Furthermore, while the image toolbar in IE, for example, is a part of standard browser behavior, the ability to disable it is just as much a feature of the browser. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean every feature should be taken advantage of; it’s a matter of choice.

For example, look at DVDs. There are a number of DVDs out there which disable the menu, fast forward, and chapter skip buttons until after the previews. Others let you skip the previews, while others just leave the decision to view the previews at all up to you by putting them in the menu. Now, if a viewer really dislikes not having the ability to skip the previews (having standard DVD player behavior changed) then they can choose not to purchase DVDs from companies that do that. Is disabling the image toolbar in IE the same as making somebody sit through movie trailers? That’s a judgement call.

Yes, the visitor does have an important say in things, because a visitor can always decide not to return. The browsing experience ultimately belongs to the visitor, but during his or her visit it is given to the designer for safe-keeping. Remember, possession is nine-tenths of the law. If the designer tries to go too far, though, the visitor can always steal the experience back by means of the back button.

The verdict? I’m not sure there can be a clear-cut rule as to whether this sort of things is ok or not. It depends on the designer and his or her intended audience. Just like so many other things.

1. Download wp-refer.phps
2. Rename it wp-refer.php
3. Upload it to /wp-content/plugins
4. Activate it in the WP admin panel

To use:

• <?php add_referer(); ?> must appear within ‘the loop‘ to add referers. Referers will only be added when an individual entry is being viewed.
• <?php the_referers(); ?> displays a list of referers. I put mine in my wp-comments.php file. It defaults to a list (<li>) of the last 5 referers. Possible arguments include (in this order, defaults indicated):
  • 5: the number of referers to display, 0 for all
  • "<li>": HTML/text to prepend to each referer
  • "</li>": HTML/text to append to each referer
  • "none yet": Text to display when there are no referers yet

To see it in action, scroll to the bottom of this page, under the comment form.

History:

• Version .5: First public release. Reversed sort of referers so most recent is first.
• Version .4: Made it possible to exclude domains.
• Version < .4: Getting it to work, squishing all sorts of bugs, etc.

Another day, another version of my Language Picker Plugin. New features in version .9:

• WordPress localization can be tied to user’s preferred language!
• List languages available for the current post.
• Provide translations for other text in your templates!

Getting started:

1. To begin with, download lang_picker.phps and rename it lang_picker.php
2. Change the default language in lang_picker.php, if neccessary, by replacing en with the appropriate language code
3. Upload the file to your plugins directory (/wp_content/plugins)
4. Then activate it in the Plugins section of the WP admin panel

Using the plugin:

• To write a post in more than one language, simply enclose everything not in the default language in these tags: and . Be sure to replace xx with the appropriate language code
• At first, only posts in the specified default language will be displayed. To temporarily view another language, append ?lp_lang_view=xx to any cruft-free URL, or &lp_lang_view=xx to any cruft-full URL, being sure to replace xx with the appropriate language code. For example, you can temporarily view the German version of this entry.
• To permanently view another language, use lp_lang_pref instead of lp_lang_view. This will set a cookie and display the new language preference whenever it is available. For example, you can set your preference to the German version of this site. (Or switch back to English.)
• To list languages available for a post, use this tag: < ?php lp_other_langs(’none’, ‘
  ‘, ‘

  ‘, ‘

• (’, ‘)
  • ‘none’: the string to display if there are no other languages
  • ‘
    ‘: the string to put in front of the list of other languages
  • ‘

‘);?>. The arguments are (defaults indicated in example code):

‘: the string to put at the end of the list of other languages

• ‘
• (’: the string to put in front of each language
• ‘)

‘: the string to put at the end of each language

• To provide a translation for any text in your template (like the menu on this site), use the < ?php lp(’arg’); ?> function.
  • Method 1: Set ‘arg’ to ’start’ to start the localization, and then call the function again with ’stop’ to stop the localization
  • Method 2: Alternately, you can just eliminate ‘arg’ completely, but this is less readable and makes it easier to forget a starting or stopping < ?php lp(); ?> call
  • Method 3: Set ‘arg’ to the text to be localized

  Examples:

  • Method 1: < ?php lp(’start’); ?>Hello!Guten Tag!< ?php lp(’stop’); ?>
  • Method 2: < ?php lp(); ?>Hello!Guten Tag!< ?php lp(); ?>
  • Method 3: < ?php lp(’Hello!Guten Tag!’); ?>

  In each of these cases, “Hello!” would be displayed unless the user’s preference was set to ‘de’, in which case “Guten Tag” would be displayed.

• Tying WP localization to a user’s language preference is a two step process:
  1. Comment out the line setting the language for localization in wp-config.php
  2. Rename .mo files to match the language codes used in your blog. For example, de_DE.mo might become de.mo. (Of course,if you only want to use this plugin to allow per user localization and do not want to write posts in other languages, there is no need to rename the .mo files. Just use the name of the file, without the .mo extension, when creating the links to set cookies.)
  • Version .9: Made it possible to tie preferred language to WP localization.
  • Version .8: Not released. Added ability to translate other text.
  • Version .7: Not released. Added ability to list languages in post.
  • Version .6: First public release
  • Version .5: Switched from my-hacks to plugin
  • < .5: Hacked together for personal use with WP 1.0
  • Optimize
  • Add other features from the old my-hacks version

Note: If you do not manually specify an excerpt (in one language), your RSS feed will generate one for you without running it through the Language Picker Plugin. Thus, both languages will be visible. History:

To do:

1. To begin with, download lang_picker.phps and rename it lang_picker.php
2. Change the default language in lang_picker.php, if neccessary, by replacing en with the appropriate language code
3. Upload the file to your plugins directory (/wp_content/plugins)
4. Then activate it in the Plugins section of the WP admin panel
5. To write a post in more than one language, simply enclose everything not in the default language in these tags: <lang_xx> and </lang_xx>. Be sure to replace xx with the appropriate language code
6. At first, only posts in the specified default language will be displayed. To temporarily view another language, append ?lp_lang_view=xx to any cruft-free URL, or &lp_lang_view=xx to any cruft-full URL, being sure to replace xx with the appropriate language code. For example, you can temporarily view the German version of this entry.
7. To permanently view another language, use lp_lang_pref instead of lp_lang_view. This will set a cookie and display the new language preference whenever it is available. For example, you can set your preference to the German version of this site. (Or switch back to English.)

Note: If you do not manually specify an excerpt (in one language), your RSS feed will generate one for you without running it through the Language Picker Plugin. Thus, both languages will be visible.

History:

• Version .6: First public release
• Version .5: Switched from my-hacks to plugin
• < .5: Hacked together for personal use with WP 1.0

To do:

• Optimize
• Add function to display list of available languages
• Add other features from the old my-hacks version