Author Archives: Mike Walsh

03.16.10
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wp-SwimTeam 0.1.442 available

This evening I posted a v0.1.442 of wp-SwimTeam on the download page.  There isn’t a lot of new functionality which is visible yet but this released fixes a couple things I ran into getting ready for the MacDolphins 2010 season.

Updating a season now allows a prior year to be selected – the year range now shows 3 years prior and 7 years after the current year.  Most of the success and error messages now use the WordPress styling where they appear near the top of the page in a colored box.  There are probably a few I missed but most of them should work correctly.

This release also exposes the start of the results import although it doesn’t currently do anything other than load the file and do some basic parsing on it to make sure it is a valid SDIF results file.  The data is not currently stored in the database.

03.10.10
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Sandbox Swim Team Theme

This evening I posted a new Sandbox based theme called Sandbox Swim Team.  This theme is designed for Swim Team web sites.  Like the LEGO and Soccer themes I have done recently, this theme is widget ready and has styling for a number of plugins I use regularly.  This theme has a number of options to support custom header images, color scheme choices, and themed login pages.  You can see this theme in action on the MacGregor Downs MacDolphins web site.

image  image

02.15.10
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Sandbox-LEGO theme update

Sandbox LEGO ThemeThis afternoon I posted an update to my Sandbox-LEGO theme.  In the process of developing my CASL Soccer theme I had figured out how to do a couple things which I have wanted to incorporate into Sandbox-LEGO.  It wasn’t a lot of work but I also decided to spend the time to re-write the Bourne Shell script which I use to generate CSS files for the various color schemes.  Instead of duplicating a bunch of code I implemented it as a series of functions which are called with the various color settings.  Fairly trivial looking back on it, not sure why I hadn’t done it in the first place.  It should make adding a new color scheme much faster.

01.14.10
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Ramping back up for Swim Team

I have not done much work on wp-SwimTeam over the past few months but about a week ago I dusted off my virtual machine (have I ever mentioned how much I love VMware Workstation?) in preparation for the upcoming season.  Since I last worked on the project there have been numerous patches for Windows XP (my development area is an XP VM) and WordPress has moved from 2.7 through the 2.8.x releases and is now on 2.9.1.

All new work will be done against 2.9.1 (for now) so I have upgraded WordPress and the plugins that I use in conjunction with wp-SwimTeam.  There are two areas where I will focus on immediately – importing results which I never finished last year and volunteer management.  I’ll probably finish the portion of results I am working on right now and then move on to volunteer management since we’ll need that functionality in March when the MacDolphins do registration.

01.04.10
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Setting up a multi-blog installation

The CASL Ambassadors web site is actually a collection of WordPress blogs – the main site plus one for each of six age group teams.  When I initially set it up I tried using WordPress-MU but my hosting solution wasn’t capable for MU’s requirements.  Then I tried a plugin called WP-Hive which allows a collection of blogs to share some common infrastructure.  Wp-Hive looked promising but I ran into some concerns which kept me from using it.

Ultimately I ended up setting up a separate blog for each site and hoped to come back to it at some point.  That point was a couple weeks ago when I decided to do some maintenance on the sites.  I ended up using the main installation as a parent and linked (using Unix symbolic links) all of the sub-domain sites back to parent.  The only exception was the wp-content directory which is a real directory (so uploads can be unique) but within wp-content I linked back to the parent’s themes and plugins.

This worked pretty well – if I install a plugin or theme for the main site it is available for all of the sub-domain sites and when I upgrade WordPress, all of the sub-domain sites are upgraded as well.  Once I got this running, I wanted to share the users across all blogs.

After several attempts and numerous Google searches, I ended up following the directions in this thread and this thread and got everything to work.  I don’t particularly care for having to modify one of the core WordPress files since it will go away the next time I update WordPress but none of the other solutions I tried worked.

12.01.09
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Trying out WordPress Facebook Connect plugin

I have been doing some testing with the WordPress Facebook Connect plugin.  There are a couple sites I work with, particularly our swim team web site, MacDolphins.org, where I need users to login and add data to the site.  Each year when we do swim team registration I get lots of questions about how to register, forgotten usernames and passwords, etc.  With the popularity of Facebook, I am thinking that leveraging Facebook login credentials could make things a lot easier for me and our swim team parents.

As a test, I have installed it on the site I am putting together for my youngest daughter’s soccer team (CASL Sharks) to see  how it works.  For the most part, I am impressed – it pretty much works as advertised.  I was able to login using my Facebook login and once my user was added to the WordPress user tables, I could change my permissions to allow my Facebook user id to post.  I still need to do some work to support Facebook Connect for comments but the instructions look pretty straight forward.  I think this would work well for the NCLTC and NCLUG sites as well although Facebook Connect requires PHP5 and those sites are hosted on a PHP4 based server so I’ll have to sort that out.

11.30.09
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First impressions with a Verizon MiFi

Today I got a Verizon MiFi (Novaltel Wireless MiFi 2200) to replace the AT&T Broadband card which came with my Dell E4300.  For the last couple months I have really struggled with the AT&T card and I’ve finally given up.  I think this is a Dell issue more than an AT&T issue.  Dell’s software stinks, I’ve had nothing but problems with it when I ran XP and again now that I am running Windows 7.

Even though Verizon has flooded the airwaves with their “There’s a map for that” advertising campaign I’ve been happy with AT&T’s 3G coverage.  The places I go it has worked well.  I went back to using my Express Card but ever since I broke the antenna off, it hasn’t worked very well and getting a replacement from AT&T has been difficult.

I have been holding out using a Sony-Ericsson Z750i UMTS phone as a modem in hopes that AT&T would offer the GSM version of the MiFi (Novatel Wireless MiFi 2372) but last week our AT&T rep told me they have no plans to offer anytime soon.  Bummer – the GSM version is newer, faster, and has a few more features.  So I could continue to limp along with the Z750, keep fighting with my built in card and Dell’s crappy software or I could get a MiFi from Verizon.

The MiFi is really what I wanted so I decided to drop my AT&T broadband service and get one from Verizon.  It arrived today.  Set up was pretty simple and it seemed to work fine in the office but testing in the office isn’t a real test.  I used it for a while in the car this evening waiting for my daughter to finish basketball practice and it worked well.

I have a netbook now so having a solution which I can use with my laptop, netbook, iPhone, or iPod Touch is pretty appealing to me.  Now that I have it, I am sure that AT&T will announce the GSM version of it within the next month!

11.22.09
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Flickr-Gallery Plugin – good stuff!

I use Flickr to host my photos and I’ve always wanted a better way to present them on WordPress blogs and this weekend I think I found it.  Flickr-Gallery is a great plugin.  It is easy to set up and use and it integrates well with my theme.  It has a nice selection of short code options.

The only thing I use which is missing is the ability to link or preferably, display, a slide show.  I shoot a lot of pictures of our kids activities (skateboarding, soccer, basketball, swim team, etc.) and sharing them as a Flickr slide show is something I do frequently.

I found a solution to the missing slide show by using the Light Window plugin in conjunction with the Flickr URL for the slide show I am interested in presenting.

11.20.09
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Villanova survives a scare with George Mason

I had hoped to catch the Villanova game on ESPNU yesterday afternoon but wasn’t able to get home until well into the second half.  I guess it was a good thing since each time I checked the score on my phone the Cats were behind.  Down by 9 at the half?  What happened?

When I got home and turned the game on the Cats were down by 5 and in heavy foul trouble.  Yarou was nowhere to be seen so I assumed he had fouled out already.  Turns out he was sick and didn’t play.  I caught the game from about the 8:00 mark in the second half – just in time to see Stokes and King foul out.  Wonderful.  George Mason looked good – they were composed and clearly not intimidated by VU.

In my opinion Villanova was very lucky to win this game.  They missed a lot of easy shots and numerous free throws and just got outplayed but stayed close enough to GMU to have a chance.  GMU missed some free throws at the end which could have closed out the game.  What a surprise to see Armwood hit the 3 to put Villanova ahead.  Clutch shot by who player who wasn’t expected to even be in the game at all.

The best play I saw from Villanova in the brief time I watched was the final play of the game.  The defense was phenomenal and George Mason didn’t even get a shot off.

Villanova will have to play much better today than they did yesterday or they will lose to Dayton.  I hope to be home in time to catch the game this afternoon.  These early afternoon start times are tough!