I've Been Thinking About This…

Upgraded the blog to WordPress version 2.7 today.

I checked for auto-updaters, in the hope that this would be a no-brainer. Version 2.7 apparently now has one built in, but I had to get to that version first. There is an automatic upgrader plugin (‘wpau’) that is now retired. It officially supported versions from 1.5.2 up to 2.6.1; it unofficially supports through 2.7 … sometimes. Of the 16 comments I looked at: 7 people loved the wpau (although one of them subsequently failed when using 2.7’s updater, and another succeeded by skipping the backup step). 8 people failed with wpau and one person said to do the upgrade manually. It’s hard to see the group being more evenly split!

In the end, I took the painful safe route – I backed up the DB, then the other files, and then followed the steps in the detailed documentation. One minor note: The list of compatible plugins is a long way short of complete. This wasn’t a problem though; I turned on all the other plugins one by one and they all worked fine. I came out all right in the end, with one minor problem: There are three new security variables to be placed in the config file. Installing these meant that I couldn’t log on as the admin, even when I deleted my cookies. So I took the variables back out and everything was OK. There are no instructions for how to get around this issue; stay tuned for the resolution.

Running a quick cross-platform test, I also noticed that Outbrain doesn’t work in Opera, although it is fine in Firefox 3.0 and IE7. Running the error console on Opera showed a lot of width, height and null errors from the page, 3 or 4 of which were from Outbrain (and another 3 or 4 from Amazon) and none of which looked significant. (Interestingly, turning on the FF error console showed a completely different set of errors.)

So: not too bad a trip; nothing major encountered, and the blog is up and running on the latest platform version. And henceforth – automatic updates.

[Update Jan 12, 2009: Found out that Twitter Updater doesn't work anymore, so I have to put out the Twitters by hand. On the good side, I've successfully followed the instructions to set up threaded comments - not that I have that many comments to begin with...]

[Update Jan 13, 2009: Bumped into TwitterPress which supposedly does the auto-notification thingy, so I was going to try that with the next post. However, when I saved this comment, it sent out a tweet. Turns out it works by sending out a Twitter not for the initial publishing of a post but for any update, as long as it hasn't twittered about the post before. So if I update a post (like this one), it Twitters about it (once). Also, although it says it will put out the permalink, it actually puts out the deprecated post ID. So that had to go. I've installed Birdfeeder instead - that seems to be working properly.]

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I’ve just installed the new version of Xobni – 1.6.3 – for Outlook. Xobni sits inside Outlook and acts as a helper, reading emails, indexing the content for searches and putting info about your contacts into a sidebar. I’ve used it quite a bit, although I have to say it puts a load on the system at Outlook startup time. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the new release:

• The download required me to uninstall the old version before I could install the new one. Not the best of approaches, but I did that. Then it re-indexed my email – again, not the most convenient approach.
• The new version links into Facebook to get certain pieces of information. I like the feature up to a point – problem is, a lot of my contacts have fairly common names, so I have to select the person I’m connecting to from a list – and there’s very little info about them, so often it’s just not possible to determine who this is. Not everyone on Facebook has a photo. When I do get a positive hit, though, it’s a winner.
• The LinkedIn connection from the previous incarnation is still there, and that’s a winner too. This time they’ve added Hoovers, which will go over ‘big’ with business-oriented users, and Skype contact support, which will go over big with a mostly different audience.
• There are some nice feature tweaks from the old version that I appreciate – the drop-down menu approach to the LinkedIn, Facebook & Hoover buttons; the new ‘Start over’ button (needed that!). I also like the more detailed aproach to the profile editing. The ability to pull info into the profile from verious sources available – photo from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook or Xobni; position & company info from Outlook, LinkedIn or Xobni – these are good additions. Behind the scenes there seem to have been a few adjustments – a little faster, I think, and the logic is definitely improved – it no longer confuses me with another Steve when it begins to build the indexes (it used to take about 30 minutes to figure out my correct name).
• Ranking still seems to be wrong based on the numbers – someone with 365 emails total is being ranked higher than someone with 366, and one friend with 3 total is ranked at 10, while another with 110 is ranked at 12! I don’t get that, but it’s not keeping me up at night.

At this point, the only confusion I have is – how do I merge profiles? It used to be that by giving 2 email addresses the same name, the profiles were merged. Now this doesn’t seem to happen. I liked the old approach, because it meant that I had all their current (and past) emails in one place (and it also merged their ranks); now if I click on someone I may not get the email I want.

My wishlist – include Twitter addresses, and allow me to send/receive my Twitters through the Xobni addon. I’m already using OutTwit for this – it has a few flaws, but combining products would be sweet. You could write the Twitter in the area currently used as the drop-down menu (hint, hint).

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I’ve been looking at blog maps for one that does what I want. It doesn’t seem to be too much to ask…

1. Free!
2. Shows the visits on the map
3. Tracks visits for at least a month
4. Counts the total visits
5. Zooms in or identifies towns clearly
6. Widget thumbnail image scales well in the sidebar
7. Doesn’t distract the user from the blog post

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Wrote a little php program last year to scrape and parse a couple of pages in another site…

I’ve been involved in Tres Dias since 1989 here in Connecticut (CCTD #17, to be exact). Tres Dias is a type of community built around what is commonly called a “3-day weekend”. It started with a Catholic Cursillo in Spain in the mid 1940′s and has been growing and branching ever since. In 1981 my local Tres Dias started a teen group called Aventura. I was asked to be the music director for #8, and I’ve been involved with the teens ever since (we’re on weekend #26 now, holding one weekend a year). I wear several hats; one of them is that I write the newsletter for the group.

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I got all excited about 3 months ago and decided to write a verse-of-the-day Twitter-bot. I had just bumped into Twitter a few days earlier (we don’t have a lot of this techy-stuff out here in New England), and I thought ‘just the thing’. Then the trouble started.

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