hNotSoFun

Holy microformats batman! I don’t know how useful it is posting from your blog in microformats like I just did. If everyone else out there had something like the operator plugin you’d be able to see the event appear on planet gnome and add the event to your respective calendaring tool (google, yahoo, evo?).

Code Monkey Event Bar

However since I somewhat doubt that most people are actually using this toolbar or working with microformats in anyway it’s just a bit frustrating. I understand you could argue that if everyone starts using them that they’ll be accepted and adopted and our lives would be grand, but this is the default argument for almost every new technology… right?

So what’s the not so fun part here?

Even though I grabbed the plugin from Structured Blogging to help me create the microformat, the interface for entering the information was terrible. I can easily accept that initial interface designs are bad, this is a large part of my life, and that given time it will probably get better. However if you want people to use microformats it should be simpler that not using them. And hey, creating interfaces is the “fluffy stuff“, which is why all interfaces are easy to use and it must be weak kernel programming that is really holding us back.

The other part that really sucks right now about this microformat posting is that I have to create an entire entry for the microformat. Really what I want to do is have a small block inserted at the bottom of my post with the microformat details. Creating a new single entry for each event, review, list, or media isn’t how I’d like to use this.

And it might as well be in a table since planet and most feed aggregation rips out any CSS styling, I’d rather not have the hCalendar entry sprawl out large and ugly like it is. But still using tables is probably what always gets me nasty looks from the web 2.0 types, oh well!

I guess since I’m a wordpress hacker now, I should just go ahead and fix these things I’m complaining about.

Code Monkey getup go to Boston Summit

Jonathan Coulton at Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA

Artist/performer: Jonathan Coulton

Begins: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 at 9:45 PM

Ends: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 at 11:45 PM

Location:

17 Holland St

Davis Square

Somerville, MA 02144

USA

Link: Jonathan Coulton’s Tour Schedule

Jonathan Coulton with Paul and Storm are playing at Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA. This show is playing on the Friday before the Summit begins. You’ve probably heard the Code Monkey song before, if not check out his downloads page and search for it. time change update, now at 9:45

Tags: jonathan coulton, code monkey

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Google Mapping WordPress Plugin

I’ve been doing some work for a friend of mine, mostly writing WordPress plugins, also writing a theme or two.

Recently I created a plugin for mapping your blog entries to some geo-coordinates. I had found a few other plugins out in the wild that allowed people to enter the coordinates themselves, but I really wanted something simple enough for the blog editor to only be aware of a town or street address to place the entry.

Mapping Entries Screenshot

If this interests you at all, take a look at the project source code page, also I have a small video of using the plugin (ogg)

Next thing to finish is exporting the georss in the blog RSS such that a reader could map then entry automatically.

Boston Summit

Unlike last year where I unknowingly made travel plans over the same time as the Boston GNOME Summit, I believe I’m going to be around this year. I’ve added my name to the participants list, one of not many people so far. So go sign up if you can make it!

aboot

This is the blog personality of Bryan Clark. I'm a designer in a world of open source. This blog reflects mostly writing about Design, Open Source, Economics, Beer, Wine, and Dogs. There's more information about me on this site or you can contact me directly at clarkbw@gmail.com.

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