Monthly Archives: May 2007

Using Custom Fields « WordPress Codex

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Using Custom Fields « WordPress Codex

I haven't been able to figure this feature out, but I'd like to get it working if possible. This tutorial makes it sound so easy, like the jitterbug, but it plum eluded me the last time I tinkered with it.

Supposedly, you can get it to do all kinds of things, but the simplest are adding moods and "Currently Reading" and such.

Here is an example of what this information might look like on your post:

Currently Reading: Calvin and Hobbes

Today's Mood: Jolly and Happy

Usage

Based upon our example above, let's put this into action. We'll add two custom fields, one called "Currently Reading" and the other "Today's Mood". The following instructions will demonstrate how to add this information to a post using Custom Fields.

  1. From the Write Post panel, choose Advanced Editing. If you are using the Simple Editing screen, look for a button with Advanced Editing » next to the Publish button. Click the button to go to the advanced editing screen.
  2. After you have written your post, scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Editing screen and look for an area titled Custom Fields.
  3. To create a new Custom Field called "Currently Reading", enter the text "Currently Reading" (without the quotes) in the text entry field titled Key.
  4. The newly created Key should now be assigned a Value, which in our case is the name of the book currently being read, "Calvin and Hobbes". Type "Calvin and Hobbes" in the Value field, again without the quotes.
  5. Click Add Custom Field button to save this custom information for that post.

To add your "Today's Mood", repeat the process and add "Today's Mood" to the key and a description of your mood in the value text boxes and click SAVE to save this information with the post.

 So. I've added a "Mood" and a "Currently Reading" field but it's not visible… until maybe I publish? Let's see here…

Ah. I have to add a tag or two to a template: 

Displaying Custom Fields

With a Custom Field added to the post, it's time to display your books and mood to the world. To display the Custom Fields for each post, use the the_meta() template tag. The tag must be put within The Loop in order to work. Many people add the_meta() template tag to the end of their post or in their Post Meta Data Section. Here is a basic example of using the tag…

I omitted a lot of tag chaff, but the gist is, you put a tag in the template that governs how the blog – WordPress is a bit anarchic, and the name of the file varies with the theme that you are using – sometimes "index.php" just shows a link to the theme's master index, and sometimes it's really the main index file itself. In this theme, it's in the theme master index, and I sort of got it working but I think I need to move it into the next div.

UPDATE: Sort of got it working, it's not behaving exactly as I'd hoped, and now I'm going to bed, to blog another day about why tinkering with this crap keeps me from thinking about work…

The Antikythera Device: Using Science to Discover Ancient Technology

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Dept. of Archeology: Fragmentary Knowledge: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Other artifacts included bronze fittings for wooden furniture, pottery, an oil lamp, and item 15087—a shoebox-size lump of bronze, which appeared to have a wooden exterior. Inside were what seemed to be fused metal pieces, but the bronze was so encrusted with barnacles and calcium that it was difficult to tell what it was. With so much early excitement focussed on the sculptures, the artifact didn’t receive much attention at first. But one day in May, 1902, a Greek archeologist named Spyridon Staïs noticed that the wooden exterior had split open, probably as a result of exposure to the air, and that the artifact inside had fallen into several pieces. Looking closely, Staïs saw some inscriptions, in ancient Greek, about two millimetres high, engraved on what looked like a bronze dial. Researchers also noticed precisely cut triangular gear teeth of different sizes. The thing looked like some sort of mechanical clock. But this was impossible, because scientifically precise gearing wasn’t believed to have been widely used until the fourteenth century—fourteen hundred years after the ship went down.

antikythera1.jpg

Wow. I'd heard of the Mechanism back when it was getting some notoriety for being cited by Erich von Daniken as evidence of ancient astronauts.  

But this amazes me – using high resolution X-Ray tomography, the  Antikythera Mechanism Research Project has been able to decipher many of the inscriptions on the mechanism, almost as if the device's user manual was deliberately engraved on the brass plates and fittings that make it up. It's pretty clearly an astronomical calculation device that can predict solar eclipses and show the position of the sun, moon, and 5 planets at any almost date in the past or future. 

And they have been able to estimate what it might have looked like: 

antiktheraright.jpgantikythera2.jpgantiktheraleft_1.jpg

It's amazing and sobering to think that ancient technology was as advanced as this before the long fall; it would be another thousand years or more before Western civilization was capable of producing anything similar to this. 

There are still thousands of inscriptions on the fragmentary Mechanism to be deciphered, but it's possible that this is the very device mentioned by the Roman philosopher Cicero after a visit to a Greek school of astronomy. 

Via Archeology in Europe 

 

SCIFI.COM | The Dresden Files

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SCIFI.COM | The Dresden Files

Man, I've been getting a fair number of hits for any mention of this excellent show. The SciFi Channel's page for the show has a lot of features, quizzes, interviews with Paul Blackthorne, who plays wizard Harry Dresden.

There are four video Q&A's – I'm about to sit here and watch them all – but the main thing that strikes the viewer is Blackthorne's cultured British accent. Also, thus far he is reading "forum" questions on a silver laptop in the SciFi offices in New York, but NEVER TOUCHES the KEYBOARD.

Knowing his character's electromagnetic quirks when it comes to technology (in short, he keeps shorting stuff out and uses old rotary dial phones and drives a very basic old Jeep), it's funny to watch Blackthorne sit at the table and earnestly respond to questions on screen, but keep his hands resolutely off the keyboard. It's like he's a little bit afraid to touch it, kind of like when Harry is around the computers in Murphy's office. It's kind of charming. 

Oh, wait – he finally touched the keyboard in the second or third clip. My bad. 

It's very odd also to hear Terence Mann, who plays "Bob," speak in an ordinary North American accent and not in Bob's round, juicy tones.  He's quite funny and un-Boblike while kidding around with the rest of the cast. 

The clips are intercut with bits and pieces from the series that serve as amusing commentary on Blackthorne's answers to fan questions – the tone is light and amusing and someone worked pretty hard to put it all together so that it worked.

So: no news on SciFi.com about a second season yet, Dresden fans. I think that all the extra post-season promotion that the SciFi channel has been doing bodes well for it's chances – they wouldn't do that if they have no intention of having it back.  

Live Earth: Spinal Tap Reunites, Breaks Up, Reunites

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Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming.

The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, "This Is Spinal Tap," will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7.

The original members of Spinal Tap will be there: guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest), singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). Rob Reiner, who both directed "This Is Spinal Tap" and played the fake documentarian Marty DeBergi in the film, will also be in attendance.

Reiner created a new 15-minute film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

Video: Watch the new "Spinal Tap" film now

Pretty funny, looking forward to the big reunion if they don't break up 16 more times before then. Also: Mac must have paid a promotional fee, the serene glow of white apples is in almost every screen.  

 

DO NOT WANT ANGLICAN PIE

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Father Jake Stops the World: With Apolgies to Don McLean

I'm not a supporter of Rev. Don Armstrong's schismatic activism, or that of his former colleagues at the ACI, but I don't approve of what happened Sunday, when some teenaged idiot kid threw a cream pie in his face at the early service. That's just stupid and immature, and no way to treat a man of the cloth, no matter what his views. That said, Father Jake's take on "Anglican Pie" is kind of amusing, but only from one point of view. It would be funnier still if it was funny from both points of view.