Between bouts of testing LightPress and customizing a fork of the WordPress admin interface, I found some time to work on that old favourite, Jerome’s Keywords. The latest version of this keywords + tagging plugin features some bug fixes and a few tweaks:
- Fixed the nefarious uksort() bug (which should never have seen the light of day)
- Fixed a minor bug in the tag cosmos scaling
- The local keyword search now includes results for tagged pages
- You can now generate Flickr- and del.icio.us-style links in your cosmos or top-X lists by using
%flickr% and %delicious% respectively. I’ll post an example shortly on the cosmos howto page.
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback about the above, especially to Denis de Bernardy who suggested fixes to the first three items.
After finishing this update, I think it’s time for some serious refactoring of the plugin code. It has grown very organically — perhaps too much even — thanks to all of the suggestions I’ve received. The time is right to finally add an administration page. I’d like to aim for simpler WP template tags, with most of the customization done within the admin interface. If you’re lucky, maybe you won’t have to use any template tags at all. mailliw has also sent me some intriguing ideas that would really push the tagging aspect to a new level. The next update should be a big one (barring any new bugs), so please hold tight.
The weather was pretty lousy on Sunday so I had to cancel plans to hike some of the trails in Brown County. Rapidly running out of reading material for this trip and anticipating some long flights later this week, I instead spent the afternoon browsing the local Barnes & Noble. Buying books south of the border is a great deal with the current exchange on the Canadian dollar. The price printed on the jacket is usually close to 50% higher on the Canadian dollar, which is nowhere close to the current rate. So I decided to stock up!
Joel recently linked to his Programmer’s Bookshelf and I noted a few books in there worth picking up (that I didn’t have already). By way of coincidence, the bookstore had a “Computer Classics” display showcasing a number of books from his list. So I snagged a few (20% off!) and now have enough to last me for the trip home.
I was especially excited to find Robin Williams‘ “The Non-Designer’s Design Book”. Anyone reading this site will immediately note my poor design talent and total lack of colour sense. I’ve already finished this book and it has really helped me identify why I prefer certain designs over others. I also understand why I prefer to format reports a certain way (I make a mean report, if I may say so myself) and my newfound knowledge can only help to improve on that.
So if you’re clueless about design like me and need a few pointers on the basics and a good treatment of fonts, I highly recommend this one. Maybe I’ll write up a review of the others once I finish them. That is, if I can find room in my bag to bring them all home!
For those following along at home, the reason that I haven’t written in so long is that I simply haven’t had the time. I’ve been home barely 5 days in over a month! This week finds me in Kokomo, Indiana, a nice enough town about an hour’s drive north of Indianapolis. Sadly not the Kokomo of the Beach Boys’ song…
With the weekend to kill, I spent a few hours today walking around downtown Indianapolis and then took to the trails in Eagle Creek
State Park. It was pretty hot today, but overcast and threatening to rain all afternoon. At least it was cooler than earlier this week.
Indianapolis is smaller than I expected, but pleasant and sprinkled liberally with historical buildings. Most of my time in the city was spent wandering past the various war monuments near the city centre. I also drove past the Indy track but there wasn’t much to see, save some massive bleachers.
Eagle Creek was a nice getaway, just what I needed to recharge my batteries. All of my fellow park-goers were either picnicking (what’s the proper spelling there, Yogi?) or fishing. I couldn’t help thinking that only the amateur fishers come here, all vying for the same undersized fish, if any exist here at all. At least they were outside and seemed to be having fun. The trails were wide and gently rolling, only challenging due to the heat.
See more pictures on Flickr.
I just wrote a quick plugin to help someone solve a WordPress performance issue. There’s definitely something wrong with this picture. I mean, I’ve been supporting LightPress and made the switch precisely because of performance issues (the templates are nifty too), didn’t I?
Granted I only found out about the problem because of Ludo’s outraged post on LightPress.org. Blaming MySQL is certainly a new twist on resolving performance problems, even if it’s utterly wrong in this case. My position on database queries: design them properly (that includes the underlying tables too) and they will work like a charm no matter database engine you use; write them poorly and thou shalt get bitten. MySQL and Oracle will both grind to a standstill with an unoptimized query that joins poorly designed tables.
It will be interesting to see what comes out in the end. Is it a plugin? Is it a WordPress query that scales badly? In any case, I know I don’t have to worry about the same problem over here in LightPress-land.