After many months waiting by the WordPress community and multitudes of others looking to convert to the popular blogging system, version 1.5 (dubbed “Strayhorn”) has finally been released. Among the new features worth mentioning are multiple themes support, a better admin interface, static pages and additional plugin hooks. There are some helpful instructions for upgrading from version 1.2 and transfering from other blogging systems.

Alright, I’m a little behind on the technology I guess, but I just saw some incredible footage of on-the-fly augmented reality that will blow your mind. I just wonder what kind of horsepower is required to render it all. Check them out: here and here.

This is how I’d imagine playing a FPS with this technology: You’d wear VR goggles attached to your gaming system, then targets would appear in your actual room, hiding behind the couch or crashing through your window. Look down at your hands, and it looks like you’re holding a gun. Fire away at the intruders. Just make sure you explain yourself to your roommate when you’re firing at him with an invisible firearm.

I’m not going to bother posting this as a downloadable plugin because it’s not worth it, but here’s a simple Wordpress plugin you can use to add Google’s “nofollow” relative attribute to all links within comments:

< ?php
/*
Plugin Name: NoFollow
Plugin URI: http://www.gudlyf.com/archives/2005/01/19/wordpress-plugin-nofollow/
Description: Adds the "nofollow" relative attribute to links left in comments (See http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/01/preventing-comment-spam.html)
Version: 1.0
Author: Keith McDuffee
Author URI: http://www.gudlyf.com
*/

function nofollow($text) {

        $text = preg_replace('/<a /i','<a rel="nofollow" ',$text);
        return $text;
}

add_filter('comment_text', 'nofollow');
?>

I also recommend editing the comment_author_link() and comment_author_url_link() functions in the wp-includes/template-functions-comment.php file to read:

function comment_author_link() {
        global $comment;
        $url = apply_filters('comment_url', $comment->comment_author_url);
        $author = apply_filters('comment_author', $comment->comment_author);
        if (!$author) $author = 'Anonymous';

        if (empty($url)) :
                echo $author;
        else:
                echo "<a href='$url' rel='external' rel='nofollow'>$author</a>";
        endif;
}
function comment_author_url_link($linktext='', $before='', $after='') {
        global $comment;
        $url = apply_filters('comment_url', $comment->comment_author_url);

        if ((!empty($url)) && ($url != 'http://') && ($url != 'http://url')) {
        $display = ($linktext != '') ? $linktext : stripslashes($url);
                echo "$before<a href='$url' rel='external' rel='nofollow'>$display</a>$after";
        }
}

Apologies to anyone who may have already done this plugin. This simple Wordpress plugin allows Technorati tags within <ttag> </ttag> inside posts and comments (see previous “Wordpress” link as an example). Use <ttag word=”tag word”> to use a different tag word than what’s between the tags. This plugin will also allow adding ‘ttag’ custom values for the post for listing at the end of each post (see below for an example of what it will look like).

Right now you can grab it here.

I used to go through the trouble of building custom systems for employees at my job, but for the past year or so I’ve been buying Dells. Originally I didn’t go with Dell because one was usually forced into buying an OS and Office suite with theit desktop systems, which drove the price up considerably. Since most people I work with use some variation of Linux, getting MS Windows pre-installed was just silly. Then I discovered Dell’s desktop server line, which you can order barebones — no software installed.

These server systems were certainly cheaper, but for that you get a lackluster on-board video port and usually no AGP slot. For most people the on-board video was fine, but lately we’ve been getting people really nice 21″ LCD screens, which require a bit more horsepower behind them. With no AGP slot, I’d resort to PCI cards, which was fine for what we were doing. The latest systems, though, have a PCIe slot, which what you’ll start seeing taking over for AGP. Normally this is fantastic news for the Dell server systems, but not necessarily as in the case of the PowerEdge SC420, at least.

See the “PCIe x8″ slot in the image above? Most PCIe cards, as I’ve just learned, have only one groove in the connector. That means the connector should look something like this. Notice there’s one divider in each example? Now look at Dell’s picture above. That’s right — there are two dividers. And some systems, as I’ve seen first-hand at work, have three dividers! The worse thing of all is, beyond the second divider, there aren’t any actual metal pins. That means the dividers are really only in place to make your life miserable. In fact, the stamp on the motherboard itself says the slot is a “PCIe x16″, yet there’s no way you’re getting one of them in that slot.

I wound up finding this thread on the subject. The solution, in short, is to take a dremel and carefully cut the dividers off. I can now confirm that this worked for me, but it still sucks that I had to do so, most certainly voiding the warranty on the system in the process.

Count yourself forewarned on purchasing these cheaper Dell server systems as a desktop system if you think a snazzy PCIe x16 will work in it without a hastle.

I was having problems syncing my PDA with Fedora Core 3 and was able to quickly find a page with helpful information on the subject. However, the instructions there didn’t completely work with my Handspring Treo. I tried to post my resolution on that page but it seems to be bugged, so I’ll post it here for crawlers to grab.

I noticed that my Handspring Treo was not working with this configuration, and later figured out it was due to no “product” file existing for it! I was able to find a line that related to the device that worked, though:

# udevinfo -a -p `udevinfo -q path -n /dev/ttyUSB0`

udevinfo starts with the device the node belongs to and then walks up the
device chain, to print for every device found, all possibly useful attributes
in the udev key format.
Only attributes within one device section may be used together in one rule,
to match the device for which the node will be created.

 looking at class device '/sys/class/tty/ttyUSB0':
    SYSFS{dev}="188:0"

follow the class device's "device"
  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/usb1/1-2/1-2.2/1-2.2:1.0/ttyUSB0':
    BUS="usb-serial"
    ID="ttyUSB0"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"

  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/usb1/1-2/1-2.2/1-2.2:1.0':
    BUS="usb"
    ID="1-2.2:1.0"
    SYSFS{bAlternateSetting}=" 0"
    SYSFS{bInterfaceClass}="ff"
    SYSFS{bInterfaceNumber}="00"
    SYSFS{bInterfaceProtocol}="00"
    SYSFS{bInterfaceSubClass}="00"
    SYSFS{bNumEndpoints}="04"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"
    SYSFS{iInterface}="00"

  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/usb1/1-2/1-2.2':
    BUS="usb"
    ID="1-2.2"
    SYSFS{bConfigurationValue}="1"
    SYSFS{bDeviceClass}="00"
    SYSFS{bDeviceProtocol}="00"
    SYSFS{bDeviceSubClass}="00"
    SYSFS{bMaxPower}="  2mA"
    SYSFS{bNumConfigurations}="1"
    SYSFS{bNumInterfaces}=" 1"
    SYSFS{bcdDevice}="0100"
    SYSFS{bmAttributes}="a0"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"
    SYSFS{devnum}="14"
    SYSFS{idProduct}="0200"
    SYSFS{idVendor}="082d"
    SYSFS{maxchild}="0"
    SYSFS{speed}="12"
    SYSFS{version}=" 1.00"

  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/usb1/1-2':
    BUS="usb"
    ID="1-2"
    SYSFS{bConfigurationValue}="1"
    SYSFS{bDeviceClass}="09"
    SYSFS{bDeviceProtocol}="00"
    SYSFS{bDeviceSubClass}="00"
    SYSFS{bMaxPower}="100mA"
    SYSFS{bNumConfigurations}="1"
    SYSFS{bNumInterfaces}=" 1"
    SYSFS{bcdDevice}="0110"
    SYSFS{bmAttributes}="e0"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"
    SYSFS{devnum}="3"
    SYSFS{idProduct}="1446"
    SYSFS{idVendor}="0451"
    SYSFS{maxchild}="4"
    SYSFS{speed}="12"
    SYSFS{version}=" 1.10"

  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/usb1':
    BUS="usb"
    ID="usb1"
    SYSFS{bConfigurationValue}="1"
    SYSFS{bDeviceClass}="09"
    SYSFS{bDeviceProtocol}="00"
    SYSFS{bDeviceSubClass}="00"
    SYSFS{bMaxPower}="  0mA"
    SYSFS{bNumConfigurations}="1"
    SYSFS{bNumInterfaces}=" 1"
    SYSFS{bcdDevice}="0206"
    SYSFS{bmAttributes}="e0"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"
    SYSFS{devnum}="1"
    SYSFS{idProduct}="0000"
    SYSFS{idVendor}="0000"
    SYSFS{manufacturer}="Linux 2.6.9-1.724_FC3 ohci_hcd"
    SYSFS{maxchild}="3"
    SYSFS{product}="OHCI Host Controller"
    SYSFS{serial}="0000:00:02.0"
    SYSFS{speed}="12"
    SYSFS{version}=" 1.10"

  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0':
    BUS="pci"
    ID="0000:00:02.0"
    SYSFS{class}="0x0c0310"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"
    SYSFS{device}="0x01c2"
    SYSFS{irq}="10"
    SYSFS{subsystem_device}="0x0c11"
    SYSFS{subsystem_vendor}="0x10de"
    SYSFS{vendor}="0x10de"

  looking at the device chain at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00':
    BUS=""
    ID="pci0000:00"
    SYSFS{detach_state}="0"

You can see above there’s a field for “idVendor” of “0451″. So I just used that instead of “product”:

BUS="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}="082d", KERNEL="ttyUSB*", SYMLINK="pilot"

I noticed on Newsgator they have this funky rating system that you can add to your own blog. Since the best use for this in Wordpress is as a plugin, I did just that.

A really simple plugin, this will put up the neat rating thingy after the time on each of your entries. Edit the plugin as you like to change the format of the output and/or where it gets displayed. In this case I put it after the time. The ratings for each post even show up in your edit.php list!

You can grab version 1.0.1 here (NOTE: Yes, I moved development to wp-plugins.org)

Maybe he was just tired from doing lots of sales stuff all day, but here’s a conversation I had with a co-worker over the phone today:

Sales guy: I can’t dial out with my new laptop. It says I don’t have a dialtone. (Note: He was calling me on his cellphone)
Me: Did you plug in the phone cord into the smaller jack in the back of the laptop?
Sales guy: Oh I need to plug that in? I thought you said I had wireless!
Me: Do you have a wireless router at home?
Sales guy: ….well, no.
Me (playing nice): OK, you can’t use wireless without a wireless router, so use your phoneline like you always have.
Sales guy: ….oh. (shuffling around) Um…
His wife (in the background): Yadda yadda…so anyway…yadda yadda…
Sales guy: Well something’s not right because I can hear someone talking on the line when I try to dial!
Me: Is someone using the phone?
His wife (in the background): Yadda yadda…yeah really, so…yadda yadda…
Sales guy: Um…oh wait…I…oh let me just…um…OK that should fix it.
Me (wanting him to admit he’s an idiot): Is it working?
Sales guy: ….yeah.
Me: Go ahead and dial so I know it’s working.
Sales guy: ….oh…um…
His wife (in the background): Yadda yadda…
Sales guy: Nah you’ve done enough, I’m sure it’ll work now.
Me: You’re SURE now?
Sales guy: Yeah Thanks! *click*
Me (slurping coffee): *snicker*

I realize not many people are using their iPod for reading audiobooks, but the touted features of bookmarking and “speed reading” with audiobooks on the iPod definitely sounded worth at least trying them out.

I hopped on over to the local library and grabbed a few books-on-CD, then iTuned them over. Well, the newly downloaded books did not show up under the audiobooks category. To cure this (at least on Windows), I had to rename all of the audiobook files from the “.m4a” extension to “.m4b”, delete the old files from the iPod, then upload the newly renamed files. Sucks that it takes doing that to get it to work, but it does work nonetheless. Now I can bookmark my place in any of the audiobook files, then go listen to music and come back to the place where I left off in the book. C’mon, that’s friggin’ cool.

The speedy reader is really nice, too. It doesn’t increase the pitch of the narrator at all, just speeds it up somehow without being overly fast. Someone’s probably timed the differences in Normal vs. Fast. (UPDATE: It seems it’s 25% faster, so for the math deficient that means you can read an hour’s worth of book in 45 minutes.)

UPDATE: Found more information on this here, but I didn’t notice an issue with needing to use a space at the end or caps.

UPDATE 2: Another thing I wanted to be sure to mention here. I’ve noticed several times already that if you have a rather large audibook file (larger than 1 CD worth, that is), you may run into problems with the bookmark feature when leaving the book and playing music. At least with two audiobooks so far, which I had combined into one huge file totaling maybe 10-16 hours, I would pause the book to listen to music. When I came back to the audiobook, my bookmark was there and I was able to continue playing from that point, but about ten seconds or so into the book, it would stop and dump me to the main iPod menu. When I went back to the audiobook, my bookmark was gone and I had to start over. Once I did start over and fast-forward to my old spot (which I luckily caught a glimpse of before starting), it would continue fine. This only happened when I left the book to listen to music; if I simply paused or turned the iPod off while listening to the audiobook, I could go back without a problem. Again, this only seems to occur with very large files.

UPDATE 3: Here’s a handy shell command I use on my .m4a files to convert many to .m4b files:

ls *m4a | cut -d . -f1 | awk '{print "mv ""$0".m4a" ./""$0".m4b""}' | bash

Works like a champ.

ThinkGeek.com has a new “Wristwatch Television” they just put up for sale. Yeah, you’ve seen them here and there before, but check out the last item on the list of features:

• Watch function

<sarcasm>Yowza! Who’s the braniac behind that idea?! Order me one up pronto!</sarcasm>