Currently browsing: Geek

Updated WordPress Theme: Black Hat

This update contains several fixes and enhancements.

Details

Black Hat is a dark minimalist theme based on Adrian Diaconescu’s Corporate Sandbox, which is of course based on the Sandbox framework. It is has been built specifically with WordPress 2.7 in mind, but is also backwards compatible for version 2.6. (Sorry, I will no longer be supporting version 2.5 or older.)

Stickers icons courtesy of DryIcons. Favicon by Brian Brasher.

Features

Theme option for changing sidebar location – Pretty self-explanatory, there’s a theme option so that the sidebar can easily be moved from left to right and back again from within the WordPress admin panel. The sidebar can also be removed altogether using this option.

Sitemap template – If desired, you can create a sitemap for your blog by simply using this template.

Links page template – If desired, you can create a links page by simply using this template.

Printer-friendly stylesheet – Something I think a lot of users don’t think about until someone tries to print a post. Personally, I think all blogs should have these!

Admin & Login links – Many WordPress-savvy users don’t need a link to get to the Admin panel, but it’s nice for those of us who can’t remember the exact URL for it!

Favicon & “web clip” icon – Something else I think a lot of users don’t think about. Personally, I hope all my users replace these files with their own. A favicon helps your blog stand out, IMO. Web clip icons are used by iPhone and iPod touch users when adding a bookmark to the Home Screen.

Visual sticky post indicator – With the introduction of sticky posts in WordPress 2.7, I’ve noticed that it’s hard to tell if a post is sticky or not. I like visual aids, and this is one.

Easy to implement Feedburner links – By default, Black Hat features a feed icon linked to the blog’s RSS feed. This can be changed to a Feedburner RSS feed by simply updating the Theme Options page. Additionally, you can also add the Feedburner email subscription link for your feed.

Default and conditional feed options – By default, Black Hat includes the coding for the following feed types: RDF/RSS 1.0, RSS .92, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3. The RSS feed for all comments for your blog is also included. (note: these are overwritten if using the Feedburner option instead)

Conditional feeds: If viewing a single post, the comment feed for that post is available. If viewing a category, the feed for all posts in that category is available. If viewing a tag, the feed for all posts with that tag is available.

Additional/SEO meta tags – When developing my themes, I take the liberty of adding many commonly used meta tags. Most of the information is automatically filled in via various WordPress commands and can easily be modified by the user.

Twitter integration – In the post footer (when you click on a post, not viewing the index or archive page), there is a “Share on Twitter” link. You can also display your latest Tweet in the sidebar by updating the Theme Options with your Twitter username.

Related Posts feature – This function looks at the tags for a post and finds all posts matching those tags. If no tags are specified for a post, this function will not show up. This function can be disabled via the Theme Options.

Customized default avatar (Gravatar) to match theme design – Black Hat includes an avatar to match the theme style. To use, you would simply login to the WordPress Admin panel and set the custom avatar as default.

More detailed information on these and other features can be found in the theme’s readme file!

Fixes

• Comments displaying improperly (or not at all)

• Related Posts function now matches all tags, not just the first one listed.
  • If a tag has been used only once, it is not included in the search.
  • If only one tag is used, and it has only been used once, Related Posts function will not show.

• Comments and trackbacks now separated.
  • If both trackbacks and comments exists, comments count corrected.

• Favicon corrected for backend (WP Admin).

• Navigation links added to post single view.

Availability

Demo | Download

Taking Humpdays a step further

I’ve been working my way down my various “to do” lists for this site and finally finished something I had meant to do a while back: create separate feed and email subscription options for the Humpday Hilarities. Fueled by Feedburner, it took a little re-coding to get things arranged the way I wanted them, but now everything seems to be in order.

From now on, anyone who wishes to subscribe only to the Humpday Hilarities can do so via RSS or Email. Of course, I welcome everyone to hang around the whole feeds, but understand completely for those who don’t.

All Humpday Hilarities posts (as well as the corresponding tags and category) will display the following invitation:

Did you know you can get these weekly funnies sent directly to your email? Click here and fill out the email subscription link. Mailing frequency is once per week, with the rare exception of extra funnies posted for special occasions.

Your email address will never sold or given out to anyone!

Please let me know if any part of the site looks funny or acts up. And of course, submissions are always welcome. (Read: send me your funnies!)

I like Safari, but …

For a while, I’ve been following the progress of Mozilla’s mobile browser project, codenamed Fennec. As the Mozilla team’s efforts push the project forward, I can’t help but hope that one day soon it will be available on the iPhone. Of course, this will mean that Apple will have to actually APPROVE the app for inclusion in the App Store.

As of this post, Apple has yet to approve any major 3rd party web browser application for the iPhone (meaning not based on Safari). That’s one of the few things where Helio had them beat. When the Opera “mini” browser was released, Helio embraced it. And how could they not? Let’s face it, the Helio native browser was sluggish and seriously lacking in many features where as Opera was sleek, fast, and surely had it beat. Heck, you could even manage your bookmarks online from the Opera website and easily synchronize with the browser on your device.

I would LOVE to see that kind of capability on my iPhone!

I had hoped that by now, Fennec would be far enough along that Helio users could use it. But since Jim and I have jumped aboard the Apple ship, my hopes are now that Fennec could one day soon be made available for iPhone users.

Please, Apple? Please???

Don’t get me wrong, I like Safari … but I’m a Mozilla fangirl through and through!

Figuring out the iTricks

Learning a new device always takes time. I’ve spent some of my spare time lately seeking out all the iPhone tips and tricks for various functions that I couldn’t figure out on my own. (Manual? What manual?) Apple actually has a pretty comprehensive list on their site, but I found several more that may be of interest to any other iNewbies out there.

Domain Resolution

If you have your search engine set to Google (it is set to this by default), you can leave off the “www” and “.com” when typing a URL in Safari. For instance, for www.mozilla.com just type “mozilla” in the URL box.

Save an Image as Wallpaper from Safari

You can save an image to your camera roll in Safari by pressing and holding the image. A menu will then appear asking you to either “Save Image” or “Cancel”. Once saved in your camera roll, you can set it as your wallpaper.

Caps When Typing

Most of the time, I never use the caps lock and keep it turned off. But what if you need a series of letters to be capitalized? The neat thing about the iPhone’s multi-touch is that it is smart enough to let you use the shift key just like you would on a computer — so you can hold down the shift key while you type, and every letter will be capitalized.

Neat, huh?

Re-arranging Applications on Home Screen(s)

This one I found by accident. You can rearrange the icons on your Home Screen by tapping and holding on any icon. When they start to “shake” simply rearrange as you like. Note: you can also switch out the icons on your dock (the gray bar at the bottom of your iPhone Home Screen).

Create an Icon for Your Website

If you hadn’t figured out by now, you can save bookmarks to your Home Screen. If no web clip (think favicon) is available for your site, it will create one using a screenshot of the whole page. Ugly, right? So create one for your site and it will be displayed instead.

Recommended: 57×57 pixels. Save as PNG format, with a filename of “apple-touch-icon.png”. Make sure you put it in the root folder of your website where your web documents reside.

If you don’t have access to your root folder, you can add the following to the HEAD section:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/images/apple-touch-icon.png"/>

Is that all?

I’m sure there’s a lot more out there that I haven’t discovered yet, so feel free to share your iTips and iSuggestions in the comments form below!

Open call to Black Hat theme users

Having all this time off lately has afforded me something that I hadn’t previously had — an opportunity to spend a great deal of time on my Black Hat theme. I’ve taken the last update further by incorporating more theme options. As of right now the following can be added or controlled via the Theme Options: Sidebar location (and/or removal), Feedburner URL (replace the default RSS feed link in sidebar), Feedburner email subscription link, meta keywords, latest Tweet in the sidebar, Related Posts.

What I’d like from you is: what functionalities would you like to see added to Black Hat? I am getting close to releasing this update and would love some feedback on what should be added next.

Humpday Hilarities – Birthday Edition

Before I get started, I’d like to thank everyone for the warm birthday wishes. Y’all really make my day.

This first funny is courtesy of Don:

How did you break your arm?

Even if you aren’t a skier, you’ll be able to appreciate the humor of the slopes as written by a New Orleans paper:

A friend just got back from a holiday skiing trip to Utah With The kind of story that warms the cockles of anybody’s heart.

Conditions were perfect…12 below, no feeling in the toes, basic numbness all over…the “Tell me when we’re having fun” kind of day.

One of the women in the group complained to her husband that she was in dire need of a rest room. He told her not to worry, that he was Sure there was relief waiting at the top of the lift in the form of a Powder room for female skiers in distress. He was wrong, of course, and the Pain did not go away. If you’ve ever had nature hit its panic button, you then you know that a temperature of 12 below doesn’t help matters.

With time running out, the woman weighed her options. Her husband, picking up on the intensity of the pain, suggested that since she was wearing an all-white ski outfit, she should go off in the woods and no one would even notice. He assured her, “The white will provide more than adequate camouflage.”

So she headed for the tree line, began lowering her ski pants and proceeded to do her thing. If you’ve ever parked on the side of a slope, then you know there is a right way and wrong way to set your skis so you don’t move.

Yup, you got it!!! She had them positioned the wrong way. Steep slopes are not forgiving… even during the most embarrassing moments. Without warning, the woman found herself skiing backward, out-of-control, Racing through the trees…somehow missing all of them and onto another slope.

Her derriere and the reverse side were still bare, her pants down around her knees, and she was picking up speed all the while. She continued backwards, totally out-of-control, creating an unusual vista for the other skiers. The woman skied back under the lift and finally collided violently with a pylon.

The bad news was that she broke her arm and was unable to pull up her ski pants. At long last her husband arrived, putting an end to her nudie show, then summoned the ski patrol. They transported her to a hospital.

While in the emergency room, a man with an obviously broken leg was put in the bed next to hers. “So, how’d you break your leg?” she asked, making small talk. “It was the stupidest thing you ever saw,” he said. “I was riding up this ski lift and suddenly, I couldn’t believe my eyes! There was this crazy woman skiing backward, out-of-control, down the mountain, with her bare bottom hanging out of her pants. I leaned over to get a better look and fell out of the lift….

So, how’d you break your arm?”

And these are courtesy of my Cotillion sister, Janette:

The Talking Dog

A guy has a talking dog. He brings it to a talent scount. “This dog can speak English,” he claims to the unimpressed agent. “Okay, Sport,” the guys says to the dog, “what’s on the top of a house?”

“Roof!” the dog replies.

“Oh, come on…” the talent agent responds. “All dogs go ‘roof’.”

“No, wait,” the guy says. He asks the dog “what does sandpaper feel like?”

“Rough!” the dog answers. The talent agent gives a condescending blank stare. He is losing his patience.

“No, hang on,” the guy says. “This one will amaze you. ” He turns and asks the dog: “Who, in your opinion, was the greatest baseball player of all time?”

“Ruth!” goes the dog. And the talent scount, having seen enough, boots them out of his office onto the street.

And the dog turns to the guy and says “Maybe I shoulda said DiMaggio?”

Alligator Shoes

A man was on holiday in the depths of Louisiana, where he tried to buy some Alligator shoes. However he was not prepared to pay the high prices, and after having failed to haggle the vendor down to a reasonable price level, ended up shouting. “I don’t give two hoots for your shoes man, I’ll go and kill my own gator!” to which the shopkeeper replied,

“By all means, just watch out for those two good ole boys who are doing the same!”

So the man went out into the Bayou, and after a while saw two men with spears, standing still in the water. ‘They must be the good ole boys,’ he thought. Just at that point he noticed an alligator moving in the water towards one of them. The guy stood completely passive, even as the gator came ever closer.

Just as the beast was about to swallow the him, he struck home with his spear and wrestled the gator up onto the beach, where several gators were already laying. Together the two guys threw the gator onto its back, whereupon one exclaimed “Darn! This one don’t have no shoes neither!”

The License

A Mom is driving a little girl to her friends house for a play date. “Mommy,” the little girl asks, “how old are you?”

“Honey, you are not supposed to ask a lady her age,” the mother warns. It is not polite.”

“OK,” the little girl says, “How much do you weigh?”

“Now really,” the mother says, “these are personal questions and are really none of your business.”

Undaunted, the little girl asks, “Why did you and daddy get a divorce?”

“Those are enough questions, honestly!” The exasperated mother walks away as the two friends begin to play.

“My Mom wouldn’t tell me anything,” the little girl says to her friend.

“Well,” said the friend, “all you need to do is look at her drivers license. It is like a report card, it has everything on it.”

Later that night the little girl says to her mother, “I know how old you are, you are 32.”

The mother is surprised and asks, “How did you find that out?”

“I also know that you weigh 140 pounds.” The mother is past surprise and shock now.

“How in heavens name did you find that out?”

And,” the little girl says triumphantly, “I know why you and daddy got a divorce.”

“Oh really?” the mother asks. “Why?”

“Because you got an F in sex.”

Origins

A 2nd grader asked her mother the age-old question, “How did I get here?”

Her mother told her, “God sent you.”

“Did God send you, too?” asked the child.

“Yes, Dear,” the mother replied.

“What about Grandma and Grandpa?” the child persisted.

“He sent them also” the mother said.

“Did he send their parents, too?” asked the child.

“Yes, Dear, He did,” said the mother patiently.
“So you’re telling me that there has been NO sex in this family for 200 years? No wonder everyone’s so damn grumpy around here.”

A lonely woman, age 70, decided it was time to get married. She put an ad in the local paper:

HUSBAND WANTED:
MUST BE IN MY AGE GROUP (70′S)
MUST NOT BEAT ME
MUST NOT RUN AROUND ON ME
MUST STILL BE GOOD IN BED
ALL APPLICANTS PLEASE APPLY IN PERSON

On the second day she heard the door bell ring. Much to her dismay, she opened the door to see a gray-haired gentleman sitting in a wheel chair. He had no arms or legs.

The old woman said “You’re not really asking me to consider you? You have no legs.”

The Old Man smiled, “Therefore I cannot run around on you.”

She snorted, “You don’t have any arms either.”

Again he smiled, “Nor can I beat you.”

She raised her eyebrow and gazed intently, “Are you still good in bed?”

With that the old gentleman leaned back, beamed a big broad smile and said, ” I rang the doorbell didn’t I?”

And this one is from my Cotillion sister, Kathleen:

I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors.

I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down and sweated for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

And last but not least, this is from my pal Sarah:

What if WWII were an MMORTS

(MMORTS = Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy)

It’s written like a chat log between a handful of gamers, except it pretty well sums up World War II. There’s a bit of language, but funny as hell if you like gaming/history humor.

Updated WordPress Theme: Black Hat

I normally don’t post updates to my themes here on the blog, but I think this one warrants an update post for a variety of reasons. This update has been so extensive, I want to post a little more information on this its features as well as its development. I also want to highlight what the theme has to offer — while this is all is located in the readme file, I don’t think I laid everything out in the original introduction post. And last but not least, I wanted to cite the various resources that I have used in both the development and updating processes.

Details

Black Hat is a dark minimalist theme based on Adrian Diaconescu’s Corporate Sandbox, which is of course based on the Sandbox framework. It is has been built specifically with WordPress 2.7 in mind, but is also backwards compatible for version 2.6. (Sorry, I will no longer be supporting version 2.5 or older.)

Stickers icons courtesy of DryIcons. Favicon by Brian Brasher.

Features

Theme option for changing sidebar location – Pretty self-explanatory, there’s a theme option so that the sidebar can easily be moved from left to right and back again from within the WordPress admin panel.

Sitemap template – If desired, you can create a sitemap for your blog by simply using this template.

Links page template – If desired, you can create a links page by simply using this template.

Printer-friendly stylesheet – Something I think a lot of users don’t think about until someone tries to print a post. Personally, I think all blogs should have these!

Admin & Login links – Many WordPress-savvy users don’t need a link to get to the Admin panel, but it’s nice for those of us who can’t remember the exact URL for it!

Favicon – Something else I think a lot of users don’t think about. Personally, I hope all my users replace this file with their own. A favicon helps your blog stand out, IMO.

Visual sticky post indicator – With the introduction of sticky posts in WordPress 2.7, I’ve noticed that it’s hard to tell if a post is sticky or not. I like visual aids, and this is one.

Easy to implement Feedburner links – By default, Black Hat features a feed icon linked to the blog’s RSS feed. This can be changed to a Feedburner RSS feed by simply updating a file to include your Feedburner feed URL. There is also pre-written coding for the Feedburner email subscription link. Another simple edit can enable this feature.

Default and conditional feed options – By default, Black Hat includes the coding for the following feed types: RDF/RSS 1.0, RSS .92, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3. The RSS feed for all comments for your blog is also included. Conditional feeds: If viewing a single post, the comment feed for that post is available. If viewing a category, the feed for all posts in that category is available. If viewing a tag, the feed for all posts with that tag is available.

Additional/SEO meta tags – When developing my themes, I take the liberty of adding many commonly used meta tags. Most of the information is automatically filled in via various WordPress commands and can easily be modified by the user.

Twitter integration – In the post footer (when you click on a post, not viewing the index or archive page), there is a “Share on Twitter” link. There is also some pre-written coding to allow you to display your latest Tweet in the sidebar.

Related Posts feature – This function looks at the first tag for a post and finds all posts matching that tag. If no tags are specified for a post, it simply will not show up at all.

Customized default avatar (Gravatar) to match theme design – Black Hat includes an avatar to match the theme style. To use, you would simply login to the WordPress Admin panel and set the custom avatar as default.

As I said, more detailed information on these can be found in the theme’s readme file.

Sources and Link Love

These are the various resources and individuals who have helped make this theme possible: WP Candy, Cats Who Code, ThemeLab, WP Recipes, WP Hacks, Lorelle on WordPress, the WordPress Codex, WP Seek, WP Tavern, Jacob at A Blinding Sonic Blast, WP Lover, WP Hackers mailing list, Theme Playground, and For the Lose.

My apologies if I’ve left anyone out!

New WordPress Theme: Black Hat

My newest theme for WordPress 2.7. I think this one has been my biggest challenge due to all the features I had wanted to incorporate. As I had previously highlighted in my post the other day, this theme includes a detailed “read me” file covering its various features and a couple of FAQs/frequently requested modifications:

• Theme option for changing sidebar location
• Sitemap template
• Printer-friendly stylesheet
• Favicon
• Additional feeds
• Additional/SEO meta tags — including Google’s new canonical tag for paginated post pages. (Rumor has it this tag will be added to the core code in a future WordPress release. Nice!)

While I don’t think it’s my best work visually-speaking, I think its functionality and user-oriented details make it one of my better themes overall.

As time permits, I will be updating previous releases to meet the standard that I’ve set for myself with this release.

Details

Black Hat is a dark minimalist theme based on Adrian Diaconescu’s Corporate Sandbox. It is has been built specifically with WordPress 2.7 in mind, but is backwards compatible down to version 2.5. Stickers icons courtesy of DryIcons. Favicon by Brian Brasher.

Availability

Demo | Download

New Neopets petpage template: Fairy Dust

I had originally designed this for a Blogger template, but ported to Neopets petpage format by request. I have several other designs that I will be (hopefully) porting soon.

Preview:

Code:

Download here.

To install:

Go to your Neopets’ homepages index. Click the “Edit” link under the pet whose page you want to modify. Copy the contents of the template’s code file into the edit box. Scroll down and click “Preview Changes.” After the preview page loads, scroll down and click “Save Changes.”

New WordPress Theme: Red Delicious

My first new theme featuring the WordPress 2.7-specific features. Hopefully, I’ll soon have the time to update my other themes.

Details

Red Delicious is a fruity red theme. Works with WordPress version 2.7 and is backward-compatible down to version 2.5. (If you were really desperate, it can work with 2.3 but I wouldn’t recommend it!) Background courtesy of Country Clipart by Lisa. Stock image for header by Creapril.

Availability

Demo & Download

Next Page »