http://michaelearls.me

I’ve also moved my blog to this location:

http://michaelearls.me/blog/

This should help associate “Michael Earls” with me.

However, I don’t see how this is any different than creating a web application and hosting it on a web host like Godaddy or Discount ASP.NET. Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t see paying per transaction when all I have to do is create and host my web app on my web host.

I guess I have some more learning to do.

What’s most shocking is that I have one code base (XHTML and CSS) that works in IE 7+ (even in IE 7 quirks mode), Google Chrome, Firefox, and Apple Safari. I’m psyched. This is the first time in my career that I haven’t had to write javascript to detect the browser version. Of course, I am assuming that my visitors have more recent versions of their browser. That’s why I put a “this site optimized for…” deisclaimer at the bottom. Hopefully, it won’t look too awful in older browsers.

The sites both validate against XHTML and CSS. I’m really excited about this. I almost can’t believe it.

As soon as my domain name (cerkit.com) transfers to GoDaddy, I’ll post my new custom template/theme to the site and start piling on the blog entries!

I like to use the RSS Icon () to indicate that the feed is, in fact, an RSS feed. It’s easily recognized over just plain text. This is not possible in the default implementation, so I had to do some hacking.

To get the icon on my page, I had to do two things:

• Edit the link-template.php file in /<your wordpress root>/wp-includes folder
• Edit the style.css file

In link-template.php, search for the function named “post_comments_feed_link()”. Once you find that function, notice that the last line is:

echo apply_filters( ‘post_comments_feed_link_html’, “<a href=’$url’>$link_text</a>”, $post_id, $feed );

Simply change it to the following code:

echo apply_filters( ‘post_comments_feed_link_html’, “<a href=’$url’ id=’CommentRSSLink’>$link_text</a>”, $post_id, $feed );

This will give us an ID to hook up with in our CSS file.

In your styles.css file, simply add the following:

#CommentRssLink
{
    background-image: url(‘img/feed-icon-14×14.png’);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: 0;
    height: 14px;
    padding-left: 18px;
}

Make sure you have the correct feed-icon (you can get them here) in the <your/<template>/img folder.

You might also want to change your <your wordpress template root>/comments.php to change the wording of the text, as demonstrated below.

Here’s the final result:

All in all, I’m finding WordPress to be very easy to enhance and extend. This change allowed me to offer my readers an easy to recognize way to subscribe to my comments’ RSS feeds.

I hope this helps.

How can we describe our universe with mathematics alone? Even our calculations of the distances to stars and other celestial bodies is based on color shifting and radio waves which must be processed. I’m not saying that the nearest galaxy is only a few light days ahead, I’m just suggesting that our limit of understanding isn’t necessarily caused by stupidity. It’s merely a limitation of our understanding of the universe as it relates to the language of mathematics.

What if there was another language we could use? I’m not referring to religion, I’m suggesting that there might yet be an undiscovered language we can use to apply to the unknown universal truths. Something that doesn’t even require an “intelligent design versus evolution” war. Maybe I’m just referring to the “all inclusive theory of everything”.

What if this language could teach us that light isn’t the fastest known thing in the universe? What if it could reveal to us that time and light are connected in such a way that time would adjust to an increase in the speed of light so as to keep the balance there? Oh well, I’m spouting BS now.

Just something I’ve been pondering lately.

I think I’m switching teams.

I am having trouble with an e-commerce gateway. It’s a little over my head and the documentation is sparse. However, it has a lot of great features, so I’m determined to make it work.

Overall, I’m very pleased with my experiences with WordPress. I’m also extremely impressed with GoDaddy’s hosting setup (I’m using the Windows hosting).

Once I get it up and running again, I doubt I’ll restore all of my content from 1994 and on. I’ll just start over (and break all my permalinks…bad!..bad!…bad!).

I’m definitely looking forward to getting my domain back up and running.

I bought the Sony PRS-300 reader mainly because I didn’t like the keyboard on the Amazon Kindle. I have no problem having to hook my reader up to my PC to get a new book downloaded, so the Amazon Whispernet feature didn’t appeal to me, either.

I just finished reading my first book on the device and I have to tell you that I didn’t even notice that I was reading on an electronic device. The only thing that was strange was the inherent flashing that occurs when you turn the page, but that’s the e-ink technology at work. A small price to pay. The page turns were fast enough to keep up with my reading, so this was no problem for me.
The menus on the device are simple to use and intuitive. I like the fact that I can be reading multiple books at once and it remembers my place in all of them. I can have multiple bookmarks, as well, so that’s a nice feature.
All-in-all, I love the device. The only reason I gave it 4 stars on features was because it doesn’t have a search function. But, I accept this because there is no keyboard, which I stated above is something I didn’t want.
All of the low ratings I’ve seen so far come from people who are reading PDFs on the device. I can’t speak for the PDF quality as I don’t use mine for that purpose. I buy books from the Sony eBook store and I plan to get some from other free sources (ePub), as well.

The construction of the device feels sturdy. I don’t plan on dropping it to find out, but is well-balanced in my hands. One-handed reading is not a problem, either.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive device to read books on, this is the one. Because it’s Sony, I trust that it’ll be around for awhile.

Many of Dick’s books were made into movies, including:

We’ll remember that for you wholesale – Total Recall
Minority Report – Minority Report
A Scanner Darkly – A Scanner Darkly

And I’m sure there are more that I’m unaware of.

Anyway, pick up some books by Dick and give them a read if you like science fiction.

We wanted a change of pace, something other than the monotonous drudgery of another day on the “farm”. Laurie and I usually go to bed around 10:00 every night. Not tonight. I think we’ll be up reading until 1:00 with the way things are going around here.

So, we’ve definitely gotten a change of scenery!

It’s the little things in life that teach us so much.