2006 May Archive at Meta Comment

Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Starred Review 2.0 Beta (Patch)

Posted May 14, 2006 14 Comments

[THIS PAGE IS DEPRECIATED - SEE "Starred Review 2" FOR UPDATES]

Around 3AM this morning (serriously, I really want this plugin to work) I stumbled on a block of code (see here) that was causing problems on my Wordpress setup at least. It works for me, but others are having difficulties. So, I’ve zipped my whole “Starred Review” folder, made a change or two (Thumbs.db!) and uploaded it as ~~Starred Review 2.0 Beta (Patched)~~.

Install

Remove the file starred-review.php and the folder starred-review from your plugins directory.
~~Download and un-zip Starred Review 2.0 Beta (Patched)~~.
Open the folder “Starred Review Patched” and copy the contents (minus README) to the plugins directory on your Wordpress server
CMOD & Set Permissions all those files to 777. I don’t understand CMOD, but it could help.
Open up your Wordpress Admin, go to Plugins - make sure that “Starred Review” is enabled.

That should be it really, ~~if this is your first installation / virgin-install of the patch check Marc’s way-better install page for details / style info.~~

The default stars are Black gifs, you can easily change these by downloading the original Starred Review file (check out the images folder, replace the files in my patched images black-gif folder). Or download the psd for Photoshop.

Leave a comment if it works, especially if it doesn’t. heh.

5 Star

Posted May 13, 2006 9 Comments

This post is going to be less “5 Star”, more whine; I just discovered that half the work I was about to begin today on my (first) Wordpress Plugin Consumer.us has already been put into action as Starred Review by the very worthwhile and talented Marc Hodges. Problem is, it doesn’t really work for me (take your eyes for a wander top-right stylee). Yes, my images are missing, the stars that is. And it appears Marc is in India or something, all very nice… not for wanna-be-motivated programmers like myself. I say wanna-be and that’s been proved again today. I can’t figure out how to replace this very clever bit of php code, with a static address… ussualy the options pannel is used to configure the location / variation of the star image. That doesn’t work for me.

Integrating with normal posts

Different Styles for TV / Movies / Radio

Automatic Link to Amazon / Search on IMDb

Back-end improvements or a del.icio.us style pop-up at least

I can’t do anything with my Movie Rating Plugin (which will come out of all of this), until I get that above code fixed. If you want to check out Marc’s plugin, he’s over here!

—————————————————

Update:

I worked out a quick fix / hack. Go into classes.php and you’ll have to do some manual work,

old code:


		$img = '';

		$img_path = get_option('siteurl').'/wp-content/plugins/starred-review/images/'.$dir;

		$decimal = abs($rating - ((int) $rating));
		for($i=1;$i< =((int) $rating);$i++)

			$img .= "“;
		if ($decimal > 0)

		    $img .= ““;
		for($i=ceil($rating)+1;$i< =$options['rating_scale'];$i++)

			$img .= "“;
		return $img;

replacement code


		$img = '';

		$img_path = get_option('siteurl').'/wp-content/plugins/starred-review/images/stars-red-gif'.$dir;

		$decimal = abs($rating - ((int) $rating));
		for($i=1;$i< =((int) $rating);$i++)

			$img .= "“;
		if ($decimal > 0)

		    $img .= ““;
		for($i=ceil($rating)+1;$i< =$options['rating_scale'];$i++)

			$img .= "“;
		return $img;

Update 2:

I made a patched version of Marc’s code. Hope he doesn’t mind :D Its Here.

Technorati (& now I geddit)

Posted May 12, 2006 2 Comments

That was just a headline, I always understood how miserably self-indulgent / egotastical (yes I said egotAstical, and meant it) Technorati is. If your not a blogger, San Fran-ite or a 2.0′er I can sum up Technorati in one phrase; “what did he say?”. Its like over-hearing all the conversations online about you at once. You can type in a website address, and it’ll give you a list of pages that link to it. I guess its intended for blogs and for the ultra-cool / web savvy’s who need to know who’s commenting on thier posts, when and where.

Not impressed? Either was I - as a user / member of Technorati for a good 2 years only tonight have I noticed any incoming(!) from technorati… in fact tonight is the first time I’ve ever done a Technorati search for Callum Alden, and found worth-while data. I suppose last week’s maintanance did some good; Technorati sees me!

The whole blogging bubble popped for me a long time ago, I hate all the pretense that goes a long with it, even K2 makes me feel like I may be appearing to be one of the in-crowd. I happen to like the design / coding, but there’s a lot of fanboys out there :(

On the train today some posh twat with a painful Gordonstoun/merican accent was joking (sorry, I couldn’t help but listen she sat right next to me) about how terrible it’d be if Edward were to read her diary, maybe it was just because she was American… but she went on to read a passage out loud, until the whole carriage was bored of her. I could have punched her. It made me think of blogging. *i should develop this point… remind me*

2 Years On…

Posted May 11, 2006 0 Comments

Just want to bring any ‘old-school’ friend’s attention to William & Myself’s little archive of photos from our last day of school, ever. Its on Flickr, so if you have any photos from that day, you can either sign up (for free) and upload them yourself, or give them to William… who really wants Daniel / Fiona / Rebecca’s photos to add to the archives. Here’s two batches of photos from that day, from Me & Will:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/willrennie/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/callumalden/

If you have a digital camera and access to the interweb, you really need to get your ass on Flickr. Its like MySpace - but less shit. Or you can just check out everyone else’s ‘FlickrSteam’(s) via Callum’s Contacts.

BBC News (is not CNN)

Posted May 10, 2006 0 Comments

What the hell is going on. Is that a joke? No, I’m telling you; its a joke. BBC News at 10… where are they getting their graphics from… ITV?

We just got our Satellite dish fixed, so I can watch CNN again… at least it doesn’t pretend to be over-important flashy uber-news; CNN are the original over-important uber-News. And they seem to be the only channel that’s calmed down since 9/11, the whole colour scheme has gone neutral, un-offensive white. One thing I’ve noticed, since my last CNN period (about 6 months ago) is that Becky Anderson is devoid of all emotion these days, and appears to have taken the 24-hour-newspresenter course again; learned to completely ignore natural gaps in speech and sentance structure, replacing them with some mental CNN-speech. You really need to check her out, its actually very funny.

Richard Quest is still formidable. ~~He should have his own show.~~ Did I tell you I once saw an ad on CNN for a Power Station. Yeah… pff.

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