bobafred

I turned on Gravatar support for comments last night. I had actually been messing around with writing a plugin for Gravatars about a year ago, but never really finished it. And, it seems that there are a bunch of plugins already written, so there’s really no need for me to finish it now. Some of the plugins will actually locally cache the images so that page load is faster. This seems like a nice feature, but now that Gravatar is part of Automattic, and seemingly running on their servers, retrieval is pretty zippy.

So, for now, I’m just using the WP 2.5 function get_avatar. Read about it’s usage here. There’s also lots of other great info on that page, including pre-2.5 implementations.

The get_avatar function returns an image tag with a class named avatar. So, it’s easy to style as needed. I’m using:

.avatar {
	float: right;
	padding: 2px;
	border-left: 1px solid #c0c0c0;
	border-bottom: 1px solid #c0c0c0;
}

All you need to do is create an account with the email address you leave on blog comments and upload an image to have your very own globally recognized avatar. It’s really a pretty nice service.

Tags: gravatar, wordpress

I read the latest installment of Jahnke’s Electric Theater this morning, because I like to read. In it Mr. Jahnke posted about The Strangers (warning: non-turnoffable audio), a new horror flick due this May. I was previously unaware of this one, and have to say that it looks creepy and good. I would consider seeing this in a movie theater establishment.

Watch the trailer here.

Tags: horror, jhanke's electric theater, movie, summer, the strangers

First, I upgraded to the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.04 - Hardy Heron, from 7.04 - Feisty Fawn 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon. Everything went smoothly and it actually fixed a bunch of broken shit on my machine. Gotta love when that happens. The only real complaint so far is that it ships with Firefox 3.0b5, which isn’t really a problem, but a lot of themes and extensions are not yet compatible with the latest version. I could probably figure out a solution to this, but that sounds like extra work.

Second, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1. I like the new admin screens, although it’ll probably take a little while to remember where everything is. Again, smooth upgrade with no problems. For the most part, I like the layout of the new Write Post page, but the Categories section falls below the fold on my crap monitor. It was better when that was in a small box to the right of the post area. I think older versions of WP admin allowed you to set the height of the post box, that might help. Also, Fluency Admin looks nice — more greys, less blues. Maybe I’ll check that out at some point.

Finally, I upgraded the yard with less weeds and junk. Thanks, Troy-Bilt.

Tags: feisty fawn, firefox, fluency admin, hardy heron, troy-bilt, ubuntu, upgrade, wordpress

Yesterday, I bought this. Tomorrow, I’ll be cleaning up some of this. Should be a good time.

Tags: troy-bilt, weekend, yard work

I was all excited to go see Clutch last night, but when we got there we discovered that the show had been sort of canceled. Thankfully, we weren’t the group of people that drove six hours to be there. It seems the lead singer was having vocal issues, so they performed as their instrumental alter-ego The Bakerton Group. The security guards had a sign that laid out our options:

1. Enter the venue and enjoy The Bakerton Group.
2. Get a refund from the point of purchase.

We went with option 2. Hopefully Ticketmaster will be awesome and getting a refund will be a piece of cake. I know, not likely.

But, the night wasn’t a total loss. We decided to head over to The Highlander for drinks and some Women of Ninja Warrior. That show makes me laugh.

Tags: bakerton group, center stage, clutch, highlander, music, ninja warrior

We were making a giant salad last night, and wanted to add hard boiled eggs. Since I’ve never made hard boiled eggs before, I figured some Internet research was appropriate. But, what I found was that there are many different “perfect” methods. One thing I read even said you could bake them in the oven for 30 minutes. Hard baked eggs? Whatever. Here’s what worked for me.

1. Place the eggs into a pan and fill it with water, covering the eggs by 1 inch(ish).
2. Put the pan over the heat and bring it to a full boil. I did this with the lid on.
3. When you achieve the boil, turn the heat off and let the eggs sit in the pan with the hot ass water for 12 minutes, covered.
4. After the time is up, run cold water over the eggs until they are coolish.
5. Eat. Enjoy.

The yolks were bright yellow, not green/grey at all and the whites were soft and not rubbery. Delicious.

Tags: cooking, dinner, egg, food, hard boiled