dannyman.toldme.com

Problem

I just spent a fair amount of time wrestling with Apache on my Macintosh. The problem is that it simply refused to read the .htaccess file in my user directory.

My First Approach

I took the “Unix Guy” approach and edited /etc/httpd/httpd.conf to ensure that Apache was configured to consult my user’s .htaccess file. I changed this bit:

<Directory /Users/*/Sites>
    AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
    Options MultiViews Indexes FollowSymLinks IncludesNoExec
    [ . . . ]

To read:

<Directory /Users/*/Sites>
    # AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
    AllowOverride All
    Options MultiViews Indexes FollowSymLinks IncludesNoExec
    [ . . . ]

But . . . nada. (more…)

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My WordPress plugin, Photos Flickr, now supports sets. I spent a little time crafting up a nice default template. I also set up a “demo blog” to give an online demonstration of the new default template.

I had planned to “ship” this version last Friday, but it was a little more adventure than I had anticipated.

Photos Flickr is an early version of a plugin that I am developing for WordPress blog software to display a user’s Flickr album within their blog. The result? Someone with a WordPress blog can now have a basic interface to let readers view their Flickr images, using their own web site and design.

Photos Flickr makes use of Dan Coulter‘s PHPFlickr library, which in turn accesses the Flickr API.

What is New? What Has Changed?

• New: Added rudimentary support for sets.
• Changed: Fixed the tag-listing function to drop the last comma.
• Changed: A bunch of internal work for functions to understand the current “context” appropriately when navigating through a photostream, versus a set …
• New: Added photos_photoset_title() and photos_photoset_description()
• Changed: is_photo() returns current photo ID.
• New: Added photos_photo_date_taken()–support date format manipulation.
• New: photos_photo_tag_list() and photos_photo_photoset_list() return lists of tags and photosets for a photo.
• Changed: Functions photos_photo_(next|prev)_(href|url|title) wrap around new private photos_private_getContext().
• New: New functions photos_photoset_(next|prev)_(href|url|title) wrap around new private photos_private_getContext().
• Changed: Disabled ALT and TITLE attributes on image links due to not-escaping-quotes issues.
• Changed: Renamed photos_index() to photos_photo_index() and
  photos_pageindex() to photos_photo_pageindex() with stub functions for
  backwards-compatibility.
• Added: New is_index() returns photo, tag, or photoset to tell us what index has been requested.
• New: Added photos_photoset_index() function to display a “pretty” index of photosets.
• New: Added photos_photo_index_href() and photos_photoset_index_href() functions to refer to photo index and photoset index pages.

There is plenty more work to make this an awesome plugin. You can track plans and progress on my “projects” page.

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From “The Week” for June 8, 2007:

Male baboons may be the biggest voyeurs of the animal kingdom–they love to listen in on other baboons copulating. Researchers at a game reserve in Botswana found that low-status single males in a community of baboons often skulk around the love nests of higher-ranked males and their female consorts. While a female is in heat, she will often pair off with a high-status male and engage in sex multiple times during the day. The female’s love cries–long, song-like calls–draw a crowd of male baboons. If the couple fights, or if the male leaves her for even a minute, the other baboons will step in for a chance at a hookup. Researchers tested their theory by playing female sex calls over a loudspeaker. Male baboons from miles away literally dropped what they were doing to home in on the noise. “For male baboons, copulation calls are the most interesting vocalizations,” study author Catharine Crockford tells Discovery News. “From the calls, they hear about who is doing what with whom.”

Man, where to start?

• This piece is beautifully written.
• “While a female is in heat, she will often pair off with a high-status male and engage in sex multiple times during the day.” (My idea of a good Saturday.)
• And, “the female’s love cries–long, song-like calls” . . . amen!
• I have found that a noisy sex partner can be very gratifying . . . unless you have company over.
• Even so, roommates and neighbors may be fascinated and gratified by your aural emanations.
• “Low-status single males . . . often skulk around the love nests of higher-ranked males . . . If the couple fights, or if the male leaves her for even a minute, the other baboons will step in for a chance at a hookup.” Ahem. Yup. I have noticed this within my own species . . .
• . . . it occurs to me that this may explain why high-status males might feel especially threatened around upstarts.
• If baboons truly are the biggest voyeurs in the animal kingdom, then multimedia technology, electronic commerce, and overall economic prosperity could be boosted if we got them Internet access and some disposable income.
• “For [males], copulation calls are the most interesting vocalizations.” Yeah, dudes are reputed to be poor listeners at other times.
• “From the [long, song-like calls], they hear about who is doing what with whom.” . . . and this is why opera can be enjoyed in a foreign language.

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I have had my sleeves rolled up . . . and I am having a blast! It is with some joy that I announce the release of the latest development version of my WordPress Flickr plugin, Photos Flickr 0.5:

Photos Flickr is an early version of a plugin that I am developing for WordPress blog software to display a user’s Flickr album within their blog. The result? Someone with a WordPress blog can now have a basic interface to let readers view their Flickr images, using their own web site and design.

Photos Flickr makes use of Dan Coulter‘s PHPFlickr library, which in turn accesses the Flickr API.

What’s new?

• Bundled PHPFlickr into the distribution
• Fixed some bugs caused by upgrading PHPFlickr
• Wrote more user-friendly setup instructions
• Built “sample template” for photos for WordPress Default theme
• Moved configuration settings, like API key, into WP Admin Panel
• Bundled API key into distribution
• Additional code cleanup and added private functions get_flickr_user(), and photos_init_phpFlickr() to keep things sane
• Flickr User ID can now be specified in the WordPress Admin panel–no more config file!
• Flickr User ID can be input as screen name, NSID, or e-mail address, and will default to the admin_email parameter

I also managed, despite myself, to release this (arguably) on-time! Yay me!

I would rate this release as cool-but-underwhelming or, “shows promise” . . .

Interested parties can check ongoing development plans / milestone on my projects page.

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If you enjoy listening to Internet-based radio stations like SOMA FM, please take a brief moment to lobby your legislators. The Internet Radio Equality Act needs co-sponsors in the Senate. The aim of the bill is to override a March decision by the Copyright Royalty Board, at the behest of the RIAA, to drastically increase the royalty fees for music streamed through the Internet.

What is really upsetting is that the $20 billion commercial radio industry is exempt from royalties! Meanwhile, over on the Internet:

The six largest Internet-only radio services anticipate combined revenue of only $37.5 million in 2006, but will pay a whopping 47% (or $17.6 million) in sound recording performance royalties under the new CRB ruling.

Since a lot of Internet broadcasters are small, independent operations with shallow pockets, it is feared that many will be forced to cease operations. There is substantial fear that this will bring the funky weird planet known as Internet Radio more towards the monotonous monopolistic drone usually heard on traditional commercial radio. I would rather that not happen, so I dropped the following missives on my Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and I’ll share it here with you, too, in case you’d like to spend a few minutes to make the Internet a better place: (more…)

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I wanted to print an article from my web site, but the printing was ugly. I had previously tried to fix up my printing by adding some @media print stuff to my stylesheet, but I found it wasn’t working. Since I have free time, I spent a bunch of it thrashing my head against the wall trying to figure out what’s up researching the correct approach. Finally, I found a wordpress.org article: “Styling for Print”.

To specify a “print” stylesheet for WordPress: (more…)

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I successfully upgraded WordPress to 2.2. I don’t bother with WordPress upgrades that often, because even the simple “Five Step” procedure can get a bit hairy. I’m still grinning at “Step 3: Overwrite Files” . . .

Step 3: Overwrite Files

Get the latest and greatest WordPress and upload it to the WordPress directory, overwriting all the files that exist there only after you have delete the old files, which is explained as follows (do not overwrite your wp-content directory or wp-config.php). Important: when upgrading from 2.0.x to 2.2, or from 2.1.x to 2.2, you will need to delete old files on the server, because several file names have changed. What if something goes wrong, you ask? Well, did you not create a backup of all files in Step 1? You can fall back upon them in the worst case scenario. Deleting your old files on the server and uploading the newer files from the new version you downloaded is an alternative which will ensure that the files on the server have been replaced for sure.

According to my “worklog” file, the process took 25 minutes: (more…)

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From an e-mail received from Grandma:

“It isn’t professionalism really, as much as it is your own integrity.”

Perhaps we might say that professionalism is applied integrity.

Different industries, companies, and people have their own standards of professionalism, and the surface details will vary. But I don’t think that I could ever accept an environment where professionalism is not built upon integrity.

But even more important is that I should regularly review my professional conduct and ensure that it squares with personal integrity. People get carried away with all that they must juggle day-to-day that they can sometimes stray from their ideals for the sake of short-term efficacy. (Or even short-term gratification.)

So, it is good to take some time off when we can.

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To achieve demands discovering personal motivations and learning to use them. The masters in all fields are foremost great self-manipulators, orchestrating their will to achieve what the rest of us can not. However, since our minds are the only ones we see from the inside out, there can be no true handbook for motivation: only a treasure map of landmarks and a handful of bones to roll.

And so Scott Berkun introduces us to his latest essay: How to stay Motivated. Given that I am in one of those special periods where I am the principal arbiter of how I spend my days, I find that his essay is especially timely. And given that he had the moxie to leave work some years back to devote his passion to writing, I am inclined to trust his advice. He’s got some zingers:

Crazy Necessity: “If you don’t ask, or never get crazy in any way, at any time, you’re the only one to blame: no one else can pull the pin out of the grenade in your soul.”

Fun: “Take time to listen to the little voice, the voice of your 8 year old self, the voice adults, including yourself, interrupt and speak over, and you’ll discover what you love. You might need long walks alone, or solo travel, long stretches of time where you make every single decision for 144 hours, before you’ll hear it, but it’s there. If you know how to have fun (by yourself if necessary) you’ll always be motivated to do something.”

Lately, I have been thinking to myself that, “I want to be a good parent to my inner child.” This means acknowledging and loving that child within, and then paying attention to his fancies, and giving myself some room to indulge. This, of course, must be tempered with some adult-style “Okay, that would be a lot of fun too, but we need to get these chores done and finish this other thing.”

The Discipline: Whenever you find yourself unmotivated, run the list of feelings and questions of likely motivations and see which ones get your heart rate going. It takes discipline to seek motivation when feeling unmotivated, but that’s the difference between commitment to a craft, and beer fueled fantasies.

Amen, Scott.

In my corner of the world, I have been reading up on Ruby on Rails and finishing (Berkun’s) “The Myths of Innovation” . . . and I have two slender books on the way, “The Rational Guide to IT Consulting” (recommended by Haidong) and its cousin, “The Rational Guide to IT Project Management” . . . I have some ideas of things I want to pursue, and a hope that I should have something more interesting to show before long, so that when I find a job opportunity I really really want, I will have something exciting to show for it.

I should soon act upon this advice:

Pride: Have no critics? Set a goal for yourself you’re not sure you can meet. Write it down, sign it, post it on your bedroom wall, showing it to friends and family so there’s no way to sneak out the back door.

Stay tuned . . .

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Passion stimulates initiative. You have to start somewhere and since initiative must vanquish inertia, you had better have a reason to expend so much energy.

Alas, it is a lot like falling in Love: passion begets a broken heart. It took years to overcome my first heartbreak and years to heal from the pain of disillusionment the first time I was laid off. Sometimes, to avoid pain, we limit our ambitions in work and love, and we refrain from committing ourselves to opportunities to create something wonderful. But that only leads to more profoundly tragic disappointments.

I think that if you have the good fortune to find yourself passionate about something, then perhaps what you need to do is to cultivate initiative; Passion is the why and initiative is the what. When you fail in the pursuit of your passion, initiative can sustain you: when you lack the why, at least you still have the what. With a faith in your initiative and a mind open to new opportunities, you should sooner find the next thing that captures your passion, and you can fall in love anew, backed by the strengths gained from previous endeavors.

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A quote presented at Scott Berkun’s presentation last week, which I copied down. Apparently I wasn’t the only person in attendance who dug the quote:

As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.

Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.

Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And its essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.

William McKnight, 3M Chairman, 1948

One thing I have enjoyed about working for smaller companies in the Silicon Valley is the degree to which employees must be trusted to take the initiative. This can mean a lot of hard work, of course. But it also allows one to exercise the passion that they feel for their work.

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I think it was last week that I attended a presentation at Adaptive Path, where Scott Berkun gave an engaging presentation based on the material he presents in his new book: The Myths of Innovation. He is a very engaging speaker and the presentation was a treat. He got me thinking about innovation, what it means to be innovative, and what to expect along the way.

Some ideas include:

• Innovation doesn’t just happen: apparently, Newton may never have been struck by an apple, but even if it did, it was just one of many inspirations along with a subsequent twenty years of work to describe the mathematical idea of gravity.
• History picks winners and heroes to remember, but the truth is that innovation is the product of taking many many new ideas and putting together something new. Standing on the backs of giants . . .
• . . . it takes more than just a great idea to produce the next innovation: without the resources to implement, promote, et cetera, and even more important: if the culture is not yet ready for a great idea, it will be remembered, if at all, as “ahead of its time.”

What I found more interesting is when he talked about what people have done with this improved understanding of how innovation really works. He spoke about the 3M corporation: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. After some false starts with mining they ended up making good money selling sandpaper. Then an engineer, noticing the difficulty a customer was having at trying to paint cars two different colors, asked his boss if he could work on an idea to solve that problem. The boss resisted, but the engineer couldn’t let the idea go, and he eventually figured out masking tape, which was an even better product than sand paper. Management realized that allowing for some creative exploration was within the company’s best long-term interests, and worked to develop a culture friendly to creative endeavor. Post-it notes are another famous example from 3M: they had developed an adhesive that was too weak, but after some time this led to a creative solution to the question of “I would really like to make notes in my research without marking up these books.” (Actually, I think Google was what happened when Larry and Sergei wanted to create an annotation tool for the web . . . and now they are famous for their “20% time”.)

I bought the hardcover for nearly $30, and Scott was good enough to sign it for me. I am nearly finished reading, and since Scott is not only very engaging, but he also left work some years back to devote his entire energy to writing, I thought it good to plug his work. It is not some weighty, serious tome: he has fun along the way, gets you thinking, and then lets you off where you were with perhaps a bit better insight. I will share the very first paragraph from the preface, which made me smile, and if you choose to read further, it is all on you:

“Prefaces are often like bad first dates: too much talk, too soon. Books, like future significant others, should know how much to say and when. Chapter 1 gets the first slot for a reason: if I’ve done my job, you can start with the first sentence and continue until you hit the back cover. That said, I offer you the choice of skipping the rest of the preface and digging in, or skimming around. It’s the only way to know if we’re right for each other. I hope we are, but if you don’t like what you find, it’s me, not you.”

If Scott’s words intrigue you, you can explore a bit further: read a sample chapter (pdf), check out a “teaser video” that Scott produced, or buy the book online from Amazon.com.

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