Skip under construction message
Under construction

Under Construction

Building in public 👉 github repo / changelog

Category: posts

flickrRSS 4.0

flickrRSS 4.0 Settings Panel

There’s a new version of flickrRSS available for download now. In short, the interface has been updated for WordPress 2.5 and you can display set and favourite feeds.

A longer list of the changes that have been made. If you’re really interested, you can check out the exact changes via trac.

  • Revamped interface for WordPress 2.5
  • Support for sets and favourites (RSS limits to last 20 items)
  • Added set_id to arguments list (in 8th position)
  • Added place for code before and after images in the widget
  • Changed $userid to $id_number to reflect ability to use group ids
  • Naming consistency in source
  • Settings panel now uses one button to save instead of two
  • Brought back html readme, easier on the eyes
  • Tested to make sure it works with video

I also released flickrRSS 3.5 for older versions of WordPress, it just adds support for sets and favourites. One caveat, it hasn’t been thoroughly tested. If you’re having any problems with either version drop a note in the forum.

Mixtape madness

Muxtape, like mixtapes of yore, a good way to discover new music. Here’s mine, featuring a portion of one of my iTunes playlists. The current playlist:

  1. The National — 90-Mile Water Wall
  2. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club — Ain’t No Easy Way
  3. The Killers — When You Were Young
  4. MGMT — Time to Pretend
  5. Reverend and the Makers — Heavyweight Champion of the World
  6. Justice — D.A.N.C.E. (Mstrkrft Remix)
  7. Tiga — Louder Than A Bomb
  8. Kanye West — Stronger
  9. Hot Chip — Over And Over
  10. Tokyo Police Club — Nature of the Experiment
  11. Of Montreal — Gronlandic Edit
  12. Okkervil River — Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe

This would also be a good place to mention the mixes over at Yewknee, some of my favourites. Drop a comment if you’ve got one to listen to, I’m always up for discovering new music.

Empty

Empty Inbox

For the first time in more than ten years, my email inbox is empty. It’s the beginning of an attempt to be more proactive with my correspondence. Zeroing out means that it’ll be a lot tougher for mail to slip through the cracks, something that I’ll admit has happened many times in the past.

I’ve been routing all of my accounts through Gmail for the last few years to combat spam, so messages can drop off the front page rather quickly (even when showing a hundred items at a time). From now on, any message that comes in will be responded to immediately, flagged for followup or deleted. This isn’t a complete solution, but it’s a decent starting point that will evolve over time. For more advanced techniques, check out Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero, a compilation of strategies for dealing with large quantities of email.

New Glasses

New glasses

These are the new glasses, that I picked up on Friday afternoon. The frames are by Oxydo, an Italian company with very little in terms of a website.

I needed something to replace my previous pair, they were about six years old and rather mangled. I wear contacts most of the time, but use glasses at night or when my eyes are tired.

ffffound plugin for WordPress

ffffoundRSS 1.0 for WordPress

ffffoundRSS, a WordPress plugin that lets you pull in images from your account or the community feed and display them on your site. Features easy configuration via an options panel, widget support and a cache to store images on your server.

Something I hacked together quickly over last day or so, mostly a basic rewrite of my similar plugin for Flickr. Thanks to Antonio at AisleOne for the idea, and a shiny new account to play with.

My media consumption in 2007

2007 A Year in Lists

After reading Nicholas Felton’s annual report last year, I decided to keep track of a few things myself. We already saw the list of visited cities pop-up, now it’s time for more. So, without further ado, I present: 2007 A Year in Lists.

I kept track of a number of different things, but decided to limit this presentation to my mass media consumption (minus television). My book list doesn’t include non-fiction, because most of my readings were for school and I might not have necessarily read the whole book. My movie viewing took a slight hit during my travels in October and November, but I still managed to view a decent number over the year.

It was quickly approaching that point in the new year, where you can no longer post recaps, etc. from the previous year, so it needed to get out the door. The lists comprise 16 books, 52 movies and my 15 top artists for the year.

My Year in Cities, 2007

Here’s a roughly chronological list of the places that I visited last year. It was by the most well-travelled year of my life, living abroad and exploring Europe by rail probably didn’t hurt.

  • Kingston, ON, Canada
  • Brockville, ON, Canada*
  • London, England*
  • Reading, England*
  • Rome, Italy*
  • Florence, Italy
  • Bristol, England*
  • Dublin, Ireland
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands*
  • Münster, Germany
  • Trier, Germany
  • Mainz, Germany
  • Bad Homburg, Germany
  • Berlin, Germany
  • Prague, Czech Republic
  • Vienna, Austria
  • Barcelona, Spain
  • Geneva, Switzerland*
  • Grenoble, France
  • Brussels, Belgium
  • Bruges, Belgium
  • Toronto, ON, Canada*
  • Mississauga, ON, Canada*
  • Oxford, England

One or more nights were spent in each of the cities listed. Places with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive nights. The majority of my time was divided between London and Reading, where Alanah and I were studying respectively. There were also a number of other places that I visited on day trips, including: Ottawa, Winchester, Salisbury, Bray and Ypres. The post idea was gratuitously stolen from kottke.

The Elements of Typographic Style

The Elements of Typographic Style

My copy of The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst arrived with the mail yesterday. It came rather quickly, just ordered it online a few nights ago.

I used a gift card that my parents gave me for finishing the masters degree, figured it was only fitting to pick up a type related book. I splurged and spent a few extra bucks for the hardcover edition, complete with a little red bookmark ribbon sewn in.

Time to go

About this time last week, I finished up my dissertation and handed it in. That explains the complete lack of internet presence this month. I’ve been down in Bristol for the last few days, hanging out and catching up.

As of this afternoon, I’m off to the contintent to bum around Europe for a month and a half. If you’ve got a spare bed or a couch, drop me a line and I’ll stop by. Posts may be sporadic, they may be much more frequent than usual. Onward, I’ve got a plane to catch.

Get better at pleasing yourself

Notes from a discussion with Derek Birdsall on book design, part of an essay found in TypoGraphic Writing. The comments are circa 1978, but still entirely relevant today. A few choice bits from the end of the essay:

The whole satisfaction with designing is to get better at pleasing yourself — to get better at developing your own taste so that your own taste is more demanding. I just don’t agree with the philosophy that the solution has got to be self-evident. That would make it meaningless — a cliché.

What really matters is how you think it should be, and how good you are at getting it right and convincing others by your conviction and professionalism that it is right.

One of the most original things today is to produce work beautifully. Most people seem to have forgotten how to do it.

It applies to writing, design and artwork — create beautiful work that will make you happy. If you’re passionate about what you produce, it shouldn’t be too hard to bring people around. As artists, we have the tendency to be our own worst critics. It’s not worth it, the effort can be better applied elsewhere.

If you get the chance, flip through a copy of Birdsall’s Notes on Book Design. He explains his grid systems and methods for proportional representation of artwork. When you see how the various pieces relate to each other, you get a better sense of scale and scope.

Sheep in wolf’s clothing

Tankbooks are the same size and format as cigarette packs. Marketed under the banner, “Tales to take your breath away,” they arrive fresh on the heels of the recent UK smoking ban.

Tankbooks are similar in shape and format to a pack of cigarettes

It’s hard to say what sort of readability these things are going to have, considering the small form factor. They are pretty cool as objects, but I’d probably feel a bit poncy reading such a tiny little book in public. That said, if you can pick ’em up for a few quid, it would be worth considering. Especially if they’re available from a cigarette machine.