It’s been a long time since I’ve done a regular blog post. Most of what ends up here gets auto posted from Posterous.
So, with that in mind, here’s a regular post. I’m writing this using the latest version of the WordPress app on my iPad 2. Since my blog is self-hosted, it’s nice that WP gives away a free editor when they could easily restrict it to only those blogs hosted by WordPress.com. One of the “big” new features of the new app is the formatting toolbar located just above the keyboard which appears when you’re writing a post. In theory this is a good idea—no more typing in HMTL markup directly. And maybe on an iPhone where I type with two thumbs that makes sense. But on the iPad, I’m a landscape-oriented 10-finger touch typist. And, as I’m sure is apparent, touch typing when there’s nothing to actually touch is more an exercise in trust (that autocorrect will work) than pure skill. That’s where the placement of the formatting bar comes in. I’m sure it’s placed near the keyboard for convenience but it is certainly not convenient to invoke a blockquote when I’m going for an “e” or a hyperlink when I’m typing a “w”.
I hate complaining without offering a solution. Here’s my solution: put the formatting bar at the top of the editing pane. Let’s face it, an iPad screen is not so big that this placement would greatly affect usability or convenience. And it would eliminate the possibility of inadvertently invoking formatting commands. At the very least make this a user-selectable option.
written by Ben
\\ tags: iPad, Wordpress
Apparently there was an update to the WordPress app for the iPhone today and it finally works with my blog again!!! For some reason the previous version would crash every time I tried to acces this blog. Not any more!
written by Ben
\\ tags: iPhone, Wordpress
It’s been ten days and already a lot has happened in 2009. I’m now a graduate graduate student at Lewis University. I finally got all the photos from my October 2008 trip to Colorado onto Flickr (ok, actually that was late last year but still…). My employer has changed and now I work for “National City now a part of PNC”. And I finally upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.7.
I plan on writing a longer post on my trip – maybe a bit of a narrative – and of course embed slideshows of the photos I took. I have a lot of raw video to go through as well but I’m waiting for iMovie ’09 to get it all put together. I really want to use some of those cool new map transitions – Indiana Jones style!
written by Ben
\\ tags: Apple, Colorado, iMovie, Indiana Jones, Lewis University, National City, Photos, PNC, Video, Wordpress
I’m really more interested in trying this out than anything. When Apple finally announced official 3rd party app support, my initial idea of a “killer app” was mobile blogging software. Now that WordPress for the iPhone is out, my wish has been realized (I know TypePad was first but I’m a WordPress guy) and here I am blogging from work. Will this newfound ability increase my output? Doubtful. I’ve vowed to be more prolific too many times to count yet this blog still chugs along at one post a month.
Still, the idea of slowly crafting a post via iPhone throughout the day when a spare moment presents itself is an attractive proposition. Heck, it sure beats wasting time on Twinkle which seems to be slowly morphing into some sort of Web 2.0 dating service (see attached screen grab – “female playmate” – enough said).
And so concludes my first truly mobile post. I hope there will be many more.
Note: After posting originally with WordPress on my iPhone, I went back in with ecto to center the image (for some reason I hate left-aligned images) and also to add a few links to the body of the post. Despite some minor post-production, I think posting from my iPhone is powerful indeed and will—hopefully—drive me to be more active.
written by Ben
\\ tags: iPhone, Twinkle, Wordpress
I think Tom Merritt, Molly Wood, and Leo Laporte’s Twitter novel is a nifty idea. However I really don’t like reading it from the bottom up. The RSS feed wasn’t much more help – you still have to click on each “post” to read it. What was I do to? Well, with little PHP trickery and WordPress wonderfulness, I was able to parse the RSS feed in such a way as to strip out the “140novel:” at the beginning of each tweet as well as the sometimes-present “#t” (or “#m” or “l”) at the end of each tweet. Eliminating these two conventions makes for a nice linear reading experience. You can view the “book” version of 140novel on my appropriately-titled 140novel page.
Now the question I’m faced with is this: where are paragraph breaks in a Twitter novel? Right now it’s just one stream of sentences. There are no hints from the authors as to where to make these breaks so I guess it will just have to be a big jumble of text.
UPDATE: So it seems that only a certain number of the most recent tweets are fed into the RSS feed. Therefore the story doesn’t—and never did—start from the beginning as it appeared on my 140novel page and it would continue to cut off more and more from the beginning as more posts are added. Not sure how to fix this. I’m a little upset because the code works. The story is formatted perfectly. It’s just the RSS feed that is the issue.
written by Ben
\\ tags: Novel, PHP, Twitter, Wordpress
Just one minor blog update, actually. I’ve added a new page for Ben’s Videos appropriately titled the Ben’s Videos page. You’ll find my last eight Vimeo uploads there.
Also, I’m extremely disappointed with the Jawbone I purchased on Thursday night. The darn thing couldn’t be more staticky. Holding my iPhone at arm’s length causes the headset severe distress whereas I was accustomed to roaming around my entire apartment with my $20 Jabra. I’m concerned about the Apple Store’s policies regarding non-Apple branded merchandise. Hopefully they will exchange it for me without an issue as I’m assuming I simply got a defective unit. All those glowing reviews can’t be wrong. Right?
written by Ben
\\ tags: Jawbone, Tech, Updates, Wordpress
Ok, it’s really just the same old WordPress, only upgraded to version 2.3.1 (I had been on 2.2.x). Also, I found out I was a full two versions behind on my favorite WordPress theme in the whole word, i3Theme. Now I’m on 1.4 which fully supports all of the new-fangled features in WordPress 2.3 like tags. (In fact, this is my first post featuring tags. Cool!)
Not much else to update on other than 7:15am meeting coming very very quickly. Oh, and MoodBlast 3 rocks. Everyone should use MoodBlast. Everyone.
written by Ben
\\ tags: i3Theme, Updates, Wordpress
