Sillybean

New WordPress plugin: No Place Like Home

For the last few versions, WordPress has allowed you to specify a page as the site’s home page, rather than the usual list of recent posts. However, in the list of pages, it doesn’t indicate which one is the home page. This annoys me.

So I wrote a plugin. Since it relies on CSS trickery, I tested in FF, IE7, Safari, and Opera. I might test in IE6 this evening, or I might do something more productive, like painting my toenails.

If you’ve seen the breakdown of modern web design, here’s the breakdown of WordPress plugin development:

Writing plugin: 30 minutes
Testing plugin: 5 minutes
Testing CSS in various browsers: 20 minutes
Searching for the source of the free icon set used so I can give them credit, because their included readme doesn’t include a URL: 30 minutes
Finding documentation on branching code for 2.3 vs. 2.5: 30 minutes — and the solution found is a) part of an article on a different subject entirely, and b) not the same one I remember seeing in the past (yay, Codex)
Fixing up readme and screenshots for submission to official repository: 45 minutes

Sick.

Plague? Why do I have a plague? I didn’t even get to go to WisCon!

Better.

The lost data was not recovered, but MAMP was persuaded to cough up its database connections, and Time Machine is now ticking merrily along — although, since it has over a month’s worth of stuff to back up, it’s taking a rather long time. If your Time Machine gets stuck near the end of its backup (e.g. “Backing Up: 3.7 GB of 3.7 GB”) and won’t ever finish, this 5-step process seems to unstick it.

Also, today was our anniversary. Four years without killing each other for the insurance money. Go us!

Argh.

For some time now, the laptop has been in the habit of shutting itself off without warning when the battery gets low. The meter will say it still has 20 or 30 minutes, and then ZAP: blackness. Various support technicians have assured me that this is normal behavior with Intel processors (!) and/or that they might ship me a replacement battery if I’ll please jump through these sixteen hoops, since it’s out of warranty. So far I haven’t had time to jump through the hoops, which involve things like running down the battery and letting it sit for six hours.

If I’m running MAMP when the battery shuts down, bad things occur. Tonight, the database for Sekrit Projekt #2 got fried. What’s worse, Time Machine doesn’t show any backups more recent than April 20, even though the laptop’s been plugged in to the drive for days at a time since then. Worse still, restoring config files and reinstalling MAMP hasn’t worked this time; all sites relying on MySQL dbs are now claiming that they can’t establish connections.

Apple’s stuff normally works so well. Right now I want to kick a puppy. Probably wiser to just call it a night, especially since we don’t have a dog.

Revisions. Oh joy, oh rapture.

I’ve figured out, more or less, what works and doesn’t work with the overall structure of the novel. The antagonist is barely there. The middle turning point is missing altogether, which I knew, but the first one’s pretty weak too, and the wrong secondary characters are in it. Stuff like that. I’ve also figured out a better backstory and some motivation for the heroine, which is nice.

I’ve gone through the first 60 pages, analyzing each scene. The first scene gets cut; no surprise there. The rest of the first chapter stays for now, but needs something new in front of it. Other things getting cut are the early vignettes that got me started with this book. They’re no longer necessary, and I won’t miss most of them. (Amazing, how letting the manuscript sit for a year drains whatever fondness you still had for it.)

What kills me? The number of sitting-and-thinking scenes. Three in the first 60 pages! As if I didn’t know better! No wonder I thought the first part of the book was a little flat. Good God. Self, internal monologue is all very well and good, but some damn conflict would be nice, mmmkay?

I still need to rename my hero. His first few scenes work better than I’d remembered, but he sort of drips his way through the second half of the book. Should’ve drowned him behind the woodshed ages ago, but if I had I probably wouldn’t have finished. Now I’m going to have to give him a makeover and hope it brings him to life. Argh.

.... in other words, revisions are going well.

Saints preserve me

I’m going in.

Trip photos

Posted every time we stop back at our room. Yeah, all we’ve done so far is eat and sleep. Great vacation, at that. However, we’re now off to do some more touristy things.

into the wild blue yonder

The semester from hell being over (FINALLY), we are commencing de-stressing procedures by hopping on a plane to Seattle. Back in a week.

Mail-sorting conversation at our house…

Me, upon finding yet another stack of unopened mail on the dining room table: NOOOOO!
Michael: I found a Playboy offer in mine.
Me: Why don’t I get Playboy offers? All my offers are from Publishers Weekly and book clubs.
Michael: That’s because you know how to read.

Iron Man (no spoilers)

Mike summed it up: Best superhero movie yet filmed.

Don’t forget to stay until after the credits.

squee.

stuff

My sciatic nerve is angry again. I do not like it when it’s angry.

It’s the Week of Birthdays around here. Happy birthday (in order): Mike, Ryan, David, Lisa, Wendy (UPDATE YER BLOG, GIRL), and Sarah. You are all far too damn old, but it’s better than the alternative.

This week on Shadow Unit: the WTF BBQ, part 3. Good. This week on Saltation: chapter 12. Double-plus good.

Last week, there was a meme going around LJ in which authors were posting lists of the novels they’d completed, including those that hadn’t sold. I thought about my own craptastic teenage writing — and I thank God that most of it was either lost or destroyed — and remembered that I still haven’t finished transcribing all my old notebooks. As I flipped through them looking for the story I wanted to type up, I found the long-lost opening chapter of another book — which has been lost for so long that I actually thought I’d hallucinated it. But no, it’s there, with a note in the margin telling me exactly when and where it was written. Thanks a bunch, Younger Me! You knew our memory would be complete shit by age 30, didn’t you?

Important note about the WordPress 2.5 media manager

If you don’t want your thumbnails to get distorted, you need to change WordPress 2.5’s default setting before you upload your photos into the media manager. Go to Settings > Miscellaneous and UNcheck the “Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)” box.

I really can’t believe they have that box checked by default. It says right there: “normally thumbnails are proportional.” So why did they make the abnormal setting the default? It is to weep.

In other news, the discussion over the 2.5 Write screen continues.

Listen to this

Jane Vain and the Dark Matter, C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang. (Also on MySpace, if you prefer.)

Pacific Northwest: tell us where to go

We’re thinking of visiting Portland, Seattle, and/or places in between next month. Where should we go? What should we do?

Possibilities already on my radar:
treehouse hotels
chocolate cafes
Powell’s (*rapturous sigh*)
ETA: and Seattle’s University Bookstore, home of many fine author events

What else?

A grocery shopper’s riddle

Does the Cadbury bar taste funny because it was on sale, or were the Cadbury bars on sale because they taste funny?

Out of town

Flying to South Dakota for a funeral. Cross your fingers that the blizzard moves out before we get there, and also that Denver is not overly backed up.

ETA: someone forgot to cross their fingers.