Pixel Pushing Monkey

I still can't find what's wrong with AJAXed WordPress. After a few back & forth on the author's forum here, he offered a few things that I could look into, but nothing I did or could look into solved the problem. The only thing either of us can point to seems to be some weird error thrown by the newest version of WordPress:

Warning: htmlspecialchars_decode() expects parameter 1 to be string, NULL given in /home2

/pixelpu1/public_html/blog/wp-includes/compat.php on line 105

I can't figure out what that means... there are nothing in the configuration that even points to that directory. Comparing the old "compat.php" in WP 2.7 and WP 2.7.1 revealed that the new compat.php file is incredibly huge compared to the old one, seemingly with a lot more error checking routine than before.

The only thing I can do for now, is revert back to WP 2.7. I'm also considering a new blog layout that will probably make AJAxed WordPress unnecessary anyway.... Things to ponder...

AJAXed WP is still broken, but I've reactivated it in hopes that the author can come take a look and try to figure out what's going on. I've tried several things, including:

• Disabling all addons other than AJAXed WP.
• Re-uploading all the files from WP 2.7.1.
• Re-uploading AJAXed WP files manually.
• Changing back to default theme.

Nothing's worked so far... I'm gonna try a database repair or something next.

Update:

Performed some database maintenance routines... optimizing and removing overhead. It's not having any effects.

I upgraded to WP 2.7.1 today, and it broke some functionality in the "AJAXed Wordpress" plugin. So if you click all the "click to continue reading..." links, they won't work.  I'm too lazy to deactivate the plugin right now, since it'll make my "wall of text" look even more daunting than ever. You can still read the full blog post by clicking on the title.

Hope they fix it soon.

Update: Temporarily disabled the addon and inserted old school ---more--- tags on the more recent posts.

There are many places that I would never volunteer as my destination, any countries with political instability, any countries without consistent supply hot water on demand, and any countries without reliable internet connections. On the other hand, there are places that are unavoidable, despite the harsh conditions. For example, the public bathroom.

The perils of the public bathroom is often absent in the recess of our minds, which I suspect is a form of primitive self preservation technique. Denial is obviously the most effective tool for curbing one's natural instinct to avoid dangerous situations. Despite my brain's better effort to mask the dangers, thus disallowing any confrontations of the public bathroom, I will put my own life on risk to address this series of life-threatening issues today.

(more...)

In my younger days, I used to mock my father about how far he is behind the time, the fact that he can't touch-type (he's a classic two-finger, and on occassions where he's striving for productivity, three-finger, typist) or really grasp any idea of what this whole internet deal really is. Occassionally, he still asked me whether sending me email across the ocean, from Taiwan, would cost me any extra fees (naturally, he's more worried about me having to pay for receiving the email, than the fact that he might have to pay to send email... I love my dad).

It's an old, used, beat-up cliché, but I never thought I would one day consider myself closer to my dad's category rather than being one of the hip kids that's ingrained with all of the happenings in the tech world. The fact remains that I'm moving towards being one of the old geezer of the internet. Even though I'm still a notch below thirty, I have been in this tech bubble for nearly a decade.

(more...)

Last night, my best friend informed me that she thinks one of my best talent (at least I hope it's not my only talent) is being a critic. I think her exact words were something like:

"you are a very good critic, b/c you are able to articulate your likes and dislikes very very clearly... especially the dislikes"
"If you don't like something, you will find the best words to say it... and say it in different ways 200 times"

I guess nothing illustrates this better, than a recent email that I had to send off to my housemates. I hate to admit this is almost the best writing I've done in ... a long time:

Hey gang,

I noticed that the lint filter is sometimes being left full of lint after a load. Please take the small bit of time to clean after your lint. I don't really mind cleaning out the lint before using the dryer; but it's just a nice common courtesy to clean after your own lint, rather than having your lint being cleaned after.

Another issue of mine, is the amount of time that's been taken up to do laundry. IMO:

1. It really shouldn't take multiple days to do laundry, unless you're doing laundry for a family of four or five (I do remember the good ol' days when my aunt always seemed to be doing laundry.. but that was a family of five).
2. Even if you separated all your colors & whites & delicates & whatever, it really shouldn't take more than half a day.
3. I see laundry being left out there for days at a time, this creates a few problems:
   • I'm not sure when someone's laundry is "done". Sure, I can open up the washing machine and take a peek, but that's almost an invasion of privacy. I don't want anyone to look at my underwear & such, and I certainly don't want to look at anyone else's underwear & such. Which brings me to the next point...
   • I could remove your clothes from the premise, but I really don't want to touch your underwear & such, just as I would like it if no one touched my underwear and such.
   • The only situation at which I would feel comfortable with seeing your laundry out in public display, or having to touch any part of your laundry while it is in public display is:
     • I happen to be your mother, and I'm doing your laundry for you.
     • We are in a physically intimate relationship where I feel comfortable with that.
   • Given that neither of the situation above applies to any of us (unless I've been ignoring obvious signals? If so, I apologize, I'm a bit of a dimwit when it comes to intimacy), I think it's safe to say that I really shouldn't be seeing someone's laundry just "hanging out".

Anyway, depending on the time of the day, the mood which you're in, this email may come across as 1) Bitchy & whiny or 2) Hilariously entertaining. Whatever the interpretation, I hope we can all respect each other's laundry rights and perform the aforementioned duty quickly & respectfully.

I can be such a bitch.

I can't take credit for the title of this post, it's really just a part of the discussion on one of the TWIT podcast this past week (or was it the week before? I can't remember). Last week Google announced an astonishingly underwhelming software platform. I mean, it's not horrible or anything, it's just disappointing that a lot of people were expecting Google to throw their hat in a complete consumer product, rather than a half-assed promise to deliver some sort of product nine months from now which may or may not be any good.

Well, Google released the Android SDK today. The SDK was pretty impressive, giving us a good preview of the the OS user interface (via Engadget). However, one can't help notice how much the "mockup" looks like a Palm Centro, or any myriad of Palm or Windows Mobile device that's been available so far. One also can't help but notice how the UI takes many lessons from iPhone's UI. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose, but didn't everyone expect a *lot* more from Google than just another software platform that looks just like any other software platform?

I listen to podcasts when I bike to work every morning (my form of reading the newspaper while having breakfast?), and one of the panelist on TWIT made a lot of sense, although I can't recall it verbatim (and I'm too lazy to listen through a one-hour long podcast to find the exact quote). Whenever Google can't conquer a market, they fragment.

Take for example, the "OpenSocial" initiative that Google just started. Google had their own social networking property (www.orkut.com), which was almost completely forgotten as a footnote to all their other services. Facebook became the monstrosity that overtook MySpace, which long before had overtaken Friendster. Orkut, however, was nowhere in anyone's distant memory. By introducing OpenSocial, Google is undoing Facebook's dominance in building web applets specifically for their service. In away, it seems like a move that benefits every developer, who can now develop for every social networking site (other than Facebook) and support many "platforms" at once. Of course, the "side" benefit is that Google has planted the seed that could possibly unseat Facebook from its dominance at the top, and also insert themselves as the tour-de-force of any social networking site that may eventually take the throne.

Taking a look at what they've done with Android, they've essentially fragmented any previous mobile Linux development, again inserted themselves at the helm of the movement. Furthermore, they've even fragmented the Java development community as well. CNet's Crave blog has a great post on this, which touches on some of the issues with Android's SDK and overall Java development. Of course this isn't all bad, since Java in itself is a platform that has failed to satisfy anyone. However, once again it shows Google as a very shrewd company at being able to project themselves as a kind, gentle company that can do no evil; and at the same time, position themselves as the titan that is able to undermine an entire industry in one fell swoop.

Who does that sound like? You know it, it's on the tip of your tongue, you know exactly who I'm talking about.

Yup, Apple.

Since I got my iPhone, I've been buying a lot of TV shows on iTunes, so I can carry them with me and watch them wherever I am. Most of the time that watching is done when I'm in my room, right before bed (I don't have a TV in the bedroom right now). However, the freedom of watching a TV show or a movie when I'm out eating dinner (by myself, of course, that would just be rude in the face of other company), or waiting in line at some place, is quite priceless.

So I was a little disappointed when NBC decided to have a bit spat with iTunes, and decided to pull all of their shows off of iTunes by the end of the year. What really gets to me, is how senseless the arguments the media companies are raising against Apple. This doesn't pertain to just NBC, but all media companies dealing with iTunes as a whole.

Think back to when Universal was negotiating with Apple for their new music agreement. Their argument was that they're not making enough money from iTunes Music Store, they want more control over pricing. Similar arguments has been brought up over the years with Apple multiple times, and they're all along the lines of more control over DRM, more control over pricing, more profit for the record labels. Time and time again they insist that they can't make enough money from iTunes Music Store alone.

Yet, look what happened these past few months. EMI started selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes, and doesn't seem to be hurt by it as much as bolstered by it. All the other studios started offering completely DRM-free tracks on Amazon MP3 that sold for as little as $0.89 per track, depending on albums (although the misconception is all tracks are available at $0.89, they are not. Most out-of-print album tracks are $0.99, similar to how such albums costs more than new releases at record stores). They have agreed to sell less restrictive & less expensive music on Amazon, meanwhile telling Apple this is precisely what they cannot ever afford to do.

Now with this NBC deal, they're complaining about revenue, about not making enough money. Same arguments as the record labels had with iTunes. At the same time, they're going to be bringing out their own video service that allows you to watch entire shows for free (albeit with advertisements) and even embed videos on other sites in a very web 2.0-friendly fashion. So now they're just serving up bandwidth and going back to relying on advertisement-based revenue models. Do they really make that much more money from webcasts compared to selling the shows? I'm sure the studios makes a huge amount of money from DVD sales of TV shows. Meanwhile iTunes' sheer volume may not be as much as DVD sales now, it is a developing market that will probably grow bigger over time as we steer away from solid-state mediums for media delivery.

Furthermore, NBC's little tirade about how much they've helped the iPod, and how they should get a share of that iPod sales revenue, is utterly ridiculous. Has RCA, Sony, Sharp and other TV manufacturers been sending part of their revenue to television stations? Obviously TV as a delivery medium wouldn't work without the TV stations. So why isn't NBC charging TV makers a fee for delivering their shows to millions of homes everyday?

We'll see how this whole thing plays out. In the end, AmazonMP3 might take over iTunes Music Store, but that's only because iTMS was there to pave the way first. Maybe Hulu.com will succeed, or maybe it'll be a massive failure. Whatever happens, the end result probably wouldn't impact iPod sales a slight bit. After all, no one's stopped buying TV's because NBC doesn't have any interesting shows on Wednesday nights, right?

During the tedium of the work day grind, I have all sorts of weird IM conversation with my friends. While we're talking about what we had for lunch today, I brought up one of my minor annoyances with... I'm not even sure to whom this one would be directed.

Why do we have asian/chinese "chicken" salad? Our cuisine covered an entire spectrum of all sorts of dead animals, why "chicken"? Is there a perception that Asian people only eat chicken, or somehow the only ingredient that you can mash into a salad from the entire range of Asian cuisine is chicken? Why isn't there Asian barbecue pork salad? Asian fish salad? Well, if you really need to stay within the realm of poultry, how about Asian duck salad?

Of course, the mere fact that we have a certain salad created to cater to our culture is funny. I mean, growing up in Taiwan and all, Chinese people don't eat salad, ever. Salad is clearly not a part of our traditional palette. So first we have our named tagged onto a type of food we don't make, then have it limited to only one type of meat.

There is one possibility I have yet to consider though, maybe all Asian chicken salad strictly forbid the use of any other type of chicken excepted the ones imported from Asia...

Wow, that's a whole 'nother mess of complications.

It took me a few hours to upgrade to WordPress 2.3 last night. I don't have the coding prowess of some out there, so it wasn't exactly unexpected that it would've been a painful undertaking. However, upgrading to WP 2.3 was even more difficult than I had expected due to the new tagging mechanism built into WP 2.3 (which I had known about beforehand, but wasn't expecting any issues).

Upon installing WP 2.3, I immediately was being fed errors due to the use of Simple Tagging plugin that I had before to manage tags. I had to disable Simple Tagging, then import the tags into WP's new format. The import process was pretty easy and smooth. However I immediately found that there are no tag management UI built into WP 2.3 at all. Good thing that someone had already wrote a plugin to help manage tags, but it's perplexing that you would have a blog that supports tags without any UI that help manage tags.

Furthermore, the tag cloud display that shipped with WP has no options whatsoever. It just displays a cloud, it doesn't give you any customization capabilities. You can't display a list view that I had before (although arguably I may stick with the cloud view anyway). Although there are a few early plugins that can help you customize the tag cloud display just a little bit, none of them had the flexibility of the Simple Tagging Widget.

Of course, retaining Simple Tagging isn't possible, because the database structure that Simple Tagging used before is completely invalid with WP 2.3. So even though now there's an "official" tagging structure in place, overall it is much less effective and usable than previous third party implementations. Over time, there will be third party enhancments to the built-in tagging mechanism for WP 2.3, but I'm really disappointed in how bad the out-of-the-box experience is.