Ryan Prins' Blog

I’ve finally upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.7 today after I got an e-mail from Google. Apparently, somebody or something got onto my site and placed some links to a third party site in my footer. The links were not visible on my site, but were hard coded into my footer and were visible to Google and other search engines. My site will be removed from Google for 30 days. I have since removed the content from my site and have added to be resubmitted to Google. It’s just a pain that this happened in the first place as I have no idea when or how this happened. Guess it pays to keep your passwords updated.

WordPress 2.6 was just recently released and has a few new features and quite a few bug fixes. Probably a worthwhile upgrade if you are running WordPress. Plus, it has a nifty “Press This!” bookmarklet that you can quickly blog with (such as I am doing now for this entry).

From WordPress.org:

WordPress 2.0.4, the latest stable release in our Duke series, is available for immediate download. This release contains several important security fixes, so it’s highly recommended for all users. We’ve also rolled in a number of bug fixes (over 50!), so it’s a pretty solid release across the board.

I recently got a comment asking me how I made my badge on the sidebar of my blog. Instead of responding directly to the e-mail, I figured that I might as well just write it up for future reference.

Step 1: Get your badge made

The first thing you’ll need to do, is head over to Flickr’s Make a Badge page. At the time of this writing, there are five steps that you need to do. Here is what I did on each step:

Step 1
Pick the HTML badge.

Step 2
I chose all of my public photos, but choose whatever fits your fancy.

Step 3
I chose to not display my buddy icon or my user name. I also selected to pick 5 photos (we’ll change this later) that were random and were of the square size. I also selected that I would style this badge myself later.

Step 4
I un-checked the boxes for no background and no border.

Step 5
We’re done… almost. Copy the badge code into your favorite text editor.

Step 2: Edit Output

OK, now we need to play with the code Flickr gave us and we’ll be on our merry way.

The first thing we’ll do is change the number of pictures to be displayed from 5 to 8. To do this look for:
?count=5
and change that to
?count=8
This will be within the script tags (since we’re changing the Javascript). Now, we’ll have 8 pictures displaying in our badge. Of course, you can really pick any number you want to… up to a limit.

Now, Flickr also includes a link back to Flickr.com at the top of the badge. I didn’t really want that, so I deleted it from the produced code. If you’re familiar with HTML, this is an easy find. Basically, you want to remove the a tags and everything inside of it.

Step 3: Personalize

Next, you’ll want to style it. The badge comes with some default styles that you can play with, but if you like the look that I have, I’ve provided the CSS and HTML I used here for your reference.

The WordPress development team has been hard at work and they have released a stellar new release to their blogging software. Currently, this blog is running it, but I bet you can’t tell the difference. But, when you get a look at the admin panel, that’s where all the great additions have occured.

Gone is the tired and old interface, and in comes a brand new look and feel to the admin UI. In addition, many more modern techniques are used to show/hide different aspects of the admin panel. This is the most noticeable change that users will see, and that many will enjoy.

As for post writing goes, now there is an embedded text editor. So, gone are the days of hand coding entries in HTML (but, you still can if you want). Overall, it’s a great update and many props to to Matt and the WordPress development team.

As a side note, do NOT use the Google Toolbar’s spell check with the text editor enabled, it will embed all the html into the text editor. But, if you disable the text editor, you might be able to get around it.

Today I spent some time revamping my classes portion of this site. Yes, all of my class data is still online, but now it is protected by the power of a .htaccess file. So, unless you have my file names memorized, you’re left with the files that I have listed on each of the respective class pages. Not much has really changed, but I cut out all of the little deliverables and exteranous code that doesn’t really provide much academic value. But, I’ve included all lecture notes, assignments, presentations, handouts, etc… What I didn’t include was source code in some situations, all lecutre slides, and any in class handouts. Instructor provided class materials (bascially anything I had zero part in creating/working on) aren’t mine to share and therefore aren’t displayed. We pay tuition for a reason, right? But, if you’re in dire need of code examples or help, use Google. I’m sure an answer can be found there.

Now, there is a caveat that I need to explain. This work was completed by project teams as well as on my own. I don’t mind you looking at it, borrowing ideas, and being nice with it. However, do not plagiarize, steal, copy any of this work. I know that some professors are very diligent on varying up their course material, assignments, and tests yearly, but some don’t. So, you could run along an assignment I did in a class that is exactly like one that you are doing right now. If this happens, please use your better judgement.

I plan to keep all of this online as an archive of my experience in the Information School. So, treat it nicely. Enjoy!

Ok, what’s going on Dreamhost, you keep doubling my disk space, now I have 5.3GB. What am I going to do with all of that space? Oh, and on top of that, I get an additional 40MB/week. Ya, if you ever wondered why people loved Dreamhost, this is why.