hack

Will Norris put together a nice WordPress plugin to place Open Graph metadata on the page. Today I patched it to address a few bugs I and others have found.

The patch switches functions that depended on globalizing $post to use $wp_query->queried_object and similar.

opengraph_default_url() is changed to try get_permalink() only when is_singlular() is true. Otherwise it uses the blog’s base URL. This isn’t perfect, but it’s better than having the front page and all tag/category/archive pages report their og:url as being the permalink for the first post on the page.

As suggested here, I changed the opengraph_default_description() to use the post’s excerpt if is_singular() and the post includes an excerpt.

I changed opengraph_default_image() to test if the theme supports post thumbnails before calling has_post_thumbnail() to avoid the Fatal error: Call to undefined function has_post_thumbnail() errors.

I submitted it as a bug report in the plugins Trac, but I don’t check there for tickets on my own plugins, so you might apply the patch yourself.

Those kwazy kids will quack anything now. Stream ciphers may never have been expected to be that secure, but Adi Shamir’s cube attack breaks them like so many, um, bits of data.

You’ve got the hardware, you’ve got the skills, go build a multi-touch electronic whiteboard with your Wiimote and a data projector.

I’ve whittled things down to the point where the only baseline change from WordPress 2.0.2 is in the next_posts_link function of the wp-includes/template-functions-links.php file. The change is necessary because WPopac rewrites the SQL search queries in a way that’s incompatible with a piece of this function, but necessary for performance reasons.

Here’s how my version reads:

`

function next_posts_link($label='Next Page »', $max_page=0) {
	global $paged, $result, $request, $posts_per_page, $wpdb, $max_num_pages;
	if ( !$max_page ) {
			if ( isset($max_num_pages) ) {
				$max_page = $max_num_pages;
			} else {
				preg_match('#FROM\s(.*)\sGROUP BY#siU', $request, $matches);

				// added April 5 2006 by Casey Bisson to support WPopac
				// necessary because the preg_match above fails with some queries
				if(!$fromwhere)
					$fromwhere = $wpdb->posts;
				
				// changed April 5 2006 by Casey Bisson to speed the query by eliminating
				// the slow DISTINCT clause
				//$numposts = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT ID) FROM $fromwhere”);
				$numposts = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $fromwhere”);
				$max_page = $max_num_pages = ceil($numposts / $posts_per_page);
			}
	}
	if ( !$paged )
		$paged = 1;
	$nextpage = intval($paged) + 1;
	if ( (! is_single()) && (empty($paged) || $nextpage < = $max_page) ) {
		echo '<a href=“';
		next_posts($max_page);
		echo '”>'. preg_replace('/&([^#])(?![a-z]{1,8};)/', '&$1', $label) .'</a>';
	}
}

`

Via an IM from Ryan Eby: a pointer to Andrew Escobar‘s directions on how to install Apple’s Front Row.

First, Josh Porter, the first speaker of the day has a blog where he’s posted his presentation notes and some key points. Josh spoke about Web 2.0, and ended with the conclusion that successful online technologies are those that best model user behavior. “I think Web 2.0 is about modeling something that already exists in our offline worlds, mostly in the spoken words and minds of humankind.”

Interestingly, in findability terms, it was Josh’s post that clued me in that the event podcast was online because he linked to my blog in his post. Lesson: links make things findable.

Like Josh, I found my voice a little unfamiliar, but you can listen here (51MB) if that’s your thing.

Also, I demoed some features I’d like to see in a future OPAC, but to help people visualize them, I finally put together a graphical mockup of them here.

I’m here at the NEASIS&T Buy, Hack or Build event today at MIT’s Media Lab. On the list are Joshua Porter, Director of Web Development for User Interface Engineering, Pete Bell [corrected], co-founder of Endeca Solutions, and me.

I’m posting my slides here now, but I’m told we’ll see a podcast of the proceedings soon after the conclusion. Be aware that the slides are full of links. I won’t be able to explore them all during the presentation, but they might add value later.

MIRTs turn red lights green, but merely having one will probably get you in a pile of trouble. More info at i-hacked.com{#176}.