Thoughts From Eric Archive

While I was in Buffalo to conduct training at the university there, I discovered that I’d failed to pack any books or movies to while away the evenings.  Since I didn’t really want to pay $9.95 (or, you know, $12.95) for an in-room movie, I decided to head out to a Barnes & Noble and see what I could acquire.

After finding some classic (and massively discounted) Robert Silverberg and a Jack McDevitt novel I’d always meant to read, I headed back into the music-and-movies section to see what they had in the way of interesting DVDs.  Not much, as it turned out.  But while I was back there, within the space of about 45 seconds I had two different people ask me if I worked there.  The older lady who asked, upon hearing my negative, said, “Oh, I’m sorry.  You look like someone who would work in a bookstore.”

“I take that as a compliment, ma’am,” I said, and, smiling, headed toward the front of the store to purchase my books.

• Mistaken For Help was published on Thursday, May 13th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor and Travel categories.
• There have been fifteen replies.

A small WordPress hacking update: I’ve added a new plugin, MW Get Post Info, to the WordPress Plugins and Hacks page.  This one could be particularly useful for those of you who are providing excerpt feeds.  As usual, share and enjoy.

• New WP Plugin was published on Tuesday, May 11th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Tools and WordPress categories.
• There have been no replies.

Although I’m now using WordPress for the “Thoughts From Eric” portion of the site, that doesn’t mean I’m using a default install.  Oh no.  I had to go hacking on the source of the system, even though I knowknew next to nothing about PHP (not that it seems terribly difficult to learn) and bend it to my desires.  No, not those kinds of desires.  The HTML it produced wasn’t suited to my needs, so I changed it.  I didn’t like the limitations of some functions, so I extended them.  I needed a more robust monthly calendar, so I added what I needed.  I thought the administrative interface could provide better visual feedback, so I hacked on it until I could do things like highlight activated plugins in varying shades of green.

Since WordPress now supports plugins, I figured I’d share some of what I’ve created in case anyone out there is interested.  Thus, I now have a WordPress Plugins and Hacks page in the Tools area of meyerweb.  The three plugins currently given there are the three I wrote first, and which work the way I wanted.  Each plugin has a page that documents the parameters it can accept, which is a good way to decide if a given plugin will be of any use to you or not.  I have a few more plugins that are almost, but not quite, ready for public release; hopefully I’ll have them sorted out within the next couple of weeks.

So feel free to check out my WP plugins, and to use ’em if you like ’em.

• Plugging Into WordPress was published on Monday, May 10th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Tools and WordPress categories.
• There have been three replies.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the Blogger redesign!  I’ll have to start showing it off in presentations as another great example of standards-oriented design.

The PHP problems I was having in the archives should be all fixed up now.  Sorry about that—I had some HTML that was somehow interfering with the PHP calls, although I’m not entirely sure how.  In the course of conducting training this morning, I also discovered that I’d neglected to add alt attributes for the two RSS-feed buttons.  That’s fixed now too.  Apparently this was my day to find broken bits on the site, but at least they were bits I could fix.

Nick Finck, in citing his inspirations, had this to say about me:

One of the first presentations I ever heard Eric do was “CSS For Anarchists” and it really got me to think about CSS on a whole new level. Since then Eric has been a constant source of inspiration for me when it comes to CSS. As crazy as some of Eric’s ideas may seem, there is really some logical reasoning behind all of it.

Hey, whaddya mean crazy?!?  All my ideas are totally sane and rational.  It’s the rest of the world that’s nuts.  Now excuse me while I go adjust the geometry of my tin foil hat.

The “CSS For Anarchists” presentation was interesting for me too, as I was giving it at the same time President Clinton was giving a speech one floor directly above me.  I still wonder how many background checks were run on me, and whether they turned up anything good.  Because if they did, I’d like to know what.

• Blog Bits was published on Monday, May 10th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Redesign category.
• There have been four replies.

If you’re in the mood for some goofy humor, I’ve updated my CNN and general-media humor pages.  The entries on both go least to most recent, just so you know.

I will say one thing about random-dictionary spam: it can be amusing and educational.  I got one today titled “proteolytic giggling.”  Once I’d looked up “proteolytic” and had it lead me on to “proteolysis,” I was giggling pretty severely myself.  Which is good, because it helped cool off an energetically simmering political rant.

• Media Mirth was published on Saturday, May 8th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There has been one reply.

Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, John Allsopp posted a nostalgic note about the early days of CSS.  If you want to know who I hung out with back in the day, John’s got most of the names right there for you, and links to many of them.  There’s even a link to the CSS Samurai page, which I thought was long dead, and was greatly amused to read.

To John’s recollections, I would add Chris Lilley, who’s since been much more involved in SVG and other things; and Susan Lesch, who’s now at the W3C but back then was at macvirus.com.  (There’s a reason I didn’t link to that address, by the way.  If you go, make sure you can block popups.)

A more recent event of note is that it was a year ago today that the CSS Zen Garden opened its gates to the world.  Congratulations on an incredible first year, Dave.  I’m honored to have been able to contribute to the Garden in that time, and eternally grateful (and a little jealous) that you created such an awesome resource.  It opened a lot of doors, and a lot more eyes and minds.

• Look Back In Awe was published on Friday, May 7th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the CSS, History, and Web categories.
• There have been no replies.

I spotted a link to PacManhattan over at SimpleBits, and was immediately stunned.  I mean, sure, it’s like an episode of “When Geeks Go Crazy,” what with the use of cellular and WiFi communications to update player positions, and the Web-based arcade view of a live game in progress, but think about it.  These people are running around entire blocks of New York City just to play a live-action version of a 1980’s video game.  They’re actually getting exercise.  They won’t just be toning their wrists; this is a total-body workout.  That’s so not geeky.

Can’t you just hear the guy playing PacMan trying to cross the street?  “Hey!  I’m wakka wakka wakkin’ here!”

• Wakka Wakka Doo Doo Yeah! was published on Tuesday, May 4th, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Humor, Tech, and Technovertigo categories.
• There has been one reply.

Andy King, author of the excellent Speed Up Your Site and purveyor of fine content at the new Optimization Week, has posted a very nice review of More Eric Meyer on CSS.  I think this might be the first official review of the book, and if he posts it over at Amazon it will very likely be the first review there as well be one of the first few reviews over there (someone posted the first review some time today!).

According to Andy, Jeffrey Zeldman (who just launched a superfine redesign over at The Daily Report) and I “actually make standards sexy.”  Oh, yes, big boy… mark up my content, you style stud, you…

Okay, I promise never to do that again.

If there are other reviews out there and I’ve missed them, please let me know!

• MEMoC Under Review was published on Monday, May 3rd, 2004.
• It was assigned to the Books, CSS, Standards, and Writing categories.
• There have been seven replies.