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Category Archives: Software

Using, hacking and discussing software.

WordPress 2.2 came out this week. I did a local test, and at first glance it looks like it'd go quickly. So far the only tweaks needed will be updating vars.php (or the appropriate file in WP 2.2) for my smiley customizations (oh so critical, tee hee), and a weird ...
When I started using WordPress last year, one aspect took me a while to understand and refine: blog comments. What's more, commenting is the most obvious form of interaction on this site. But I wanted to avoid spam. How badly I wanted to avoid any kind of junk ad, specious link, ...
Already a new feature! I added a random thumbnail image from my gallery to the sidebar in this site. This might seem odd, considering my preference for design that emphasizes text. But I'm aiming for a little bit of imagery, to occasionally but not disruptively vary the appearance. You would see ...
After over three weeks of tweaking and testing, I've upgraded the WordPress theme for this site. As mentioned earlier, the theme is a customized variant of Scott Wallick's excellent veryplaintxt v3.0. The theme hacking took up much of my time for the past few weeks, hence the infrequent posts. (Fortunately faster ...
There are several helpful Mac OS X applications which I don't use frequently. Sometimes I end up not needing to use them often, or I haven't found the time to play with them much. Why bother mentioning these applications at all? Because they have potential to become essential tools on the ...
WordPress has recently been upgraded to 2.1. I've been testing it on my local setup (thanks to MAMP) for the past few weeks, and found that upgrading from 2.0.x is rather easy. I found hitches with only a couple of my plugins, Antileech and Link Library. Even the theme used, ...
I've had earlier editions Flanagan's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly) sitting on my bookshelf for years. But I rarely cracked it open. When I did, I often became frustrated with not being able to find succinct or coherent information. Not too surprisingly, I rarely used JavaScript. Then came Jeremy Keith's book ...
Some non-Apple applications ought to be singled out, in my opinion, if they've become necessary evils. Not because one would pay money for them, or because they're commercially produced, but because they've become an essential part of one's computer habits. Yet at the same time frustration reigns during actual use. ...
I've had my MacBook Pro for about half a year. Never satisfied with limiting myself to what came out of the box, I thought it'd be useful to document what third party (non-Apple) applications I found useful, if not indispensable. Update (10 January 2007): Thanks to SjG for mentioning MAMP, which ...
The annual MacWorld Expo San Francisco will take place next week. Unfortunately, I think my Perusal-Research List is pretty much the same as last year's. It's unfortunate because I have yet to find these items: Car stereo integration for the iPod at a reasonable cost. I've never liked FM transmitters, and ...