Month: September 2005

(sniff)

 

A few hours after I called in sick on Friday, Kathleen came home, too, with a problem with her tonsils. We were pretty useless all day; she slept, I mostly sneezed uncontrollably, but I managed to install the new CPU in my recording computer and find it defective. I took what I thought was 12-hr medicine, but it turned out to be 4-hr, so the last half of the day I felt particularly terrible thinking that I had to wait to take more. Before bed I did the generic version of Thera-flu, which had no perceivable impact. I woke up dehydrated probably a half-dozen times. Before breakfast Kathleen gave me an Advil Cold & Sinus and fnially something seems to be working. She’s been super patient with me, I dunno how she does it.

Reorder WordPress Link Categories

 

Update 1/14/2011: According to Dustin Gurley, this still works in WP3 w/ minor modification. Thanks, Dustin.

Update 1/30/06: a plug-in now exists to handle this.

WordPress lacks the ability to specify the exact order that link categories appear in the sidebar. The get_links_list() function can only order categories by name or id, and this limitation becomes annoying when you create your categories out of order (you can no longer order by id) or want to rename your categories (“Junk” has to appear before “My Favorite Links”).

Here’s how to completely customize the order of your link categories:

  1. Open up your WP database with a database admin tool (eg. MySQL Query Browser or phpMyAdmin).
  2. Find the wp_linkcategories table and the row of the category you’d like to appear first.
  3. Update the cat_name field of that row, prefixing the existing name with the HTML comment: <!--01--> (eg. My Stuff becomes: <!--01-->My Stuff)
  4. Update the rest of the rows in the order you want those categories to appear, prefixing each name with <!--02-->, <!--03-->, et.al.

Now when get_links_list() orders categories by name, they’ll be in order by the numbers in the comments, which will be hidden by the browser.

Note that you can’t simply enter the comment within WP because it will escape the greater/less than characters, breaking the format of the comment. For the same reason you won’t be able to change the edited category names within WP without breaking the comments, though you can remove the comments and go back to ordering by name or id.

Maybe someone will make a plug-in to do this from within the WP interface.

Bookmarklet manager bookmarklet?

 

In the redundancy file. Someone needs to create a bookmarklet that loads into the current page an interface for executing pre-saved bookmarklets. I’ve already seen several examples of this with pre-defined sets of bookmarklets (notably Favelet Suite) but why limit the user to one set? I’m already keeping my regular bookmarks and RSS subscriptions online, why not bookmarklets as well? This might be a good side project for the Del.icio.us developers since (I think) that site can’t really handle javascript: URLs. Just a thought.

Hana’s First Show

 

I posted on Gainesvillebands.com:

This is Hana’s first show and you should be there. They’re writing the most beautiful mellow songs you’ve never heard…songs that you’ll come to treasure and nestle in your mixCDs and playlists around Low and MBV and the Clientele for years to come, but you get to enjoy them NOW out in the loveliest weather Gainesville has seen for months.

I just got back from it and was not disappointed. This was one of my favorite shows of the year. I’d never been to Tim & Terry’s for a show; I didn’t even know they had the back patio area where bands play, so it was a really nice surprise to walk back there and find Hana setting up in the corner. After some PA setup they started and everything sounded pristine and at a perfect volume. Two clean, reverb-drenched guitars and a solid, tasteful rhythm section.

And the songs… Around every corner of a Hana song is something unexpected: Classic pop progressions twisted around; vocal melodies that refreshingly do a little more or less than you’d expect; subtle key changes (the kind the Kinks did so well); arpeggiated guitars that recall the Clientele or a more mellow Pinback; lyrics that sketch the everyday (like having your apartment broken into) and ring with simple truths and quiet realizations. “Tragically, you might be one of the few left out.”

This was the kind of experience—a great band’s first show—that makes me feel guilty for not forcing my friends to attend.