Sillybean
a writer’s married life (an occasional series)
ME, registering my new toll tag via iPhone while he drives: What’s your license plate number?
HIM: I don’t know. I’ll add it later.
ME, having lost signal: OK. I’ll let you set up the autopay thing too, then. I’m going back to my story now. [stares out the window]
HIM: I have to deal with financial matters so you can go talk to the voices in your head?
ME: Yes.
HIM: …
Howdy, stranger.
I know, it’s been ages! How are you? You look thinner. Have you done something different with your hair?
Me? Well, I was sick for a while there. No, not hamthrax. Not even a virus, really; turns out the stuff I was on for back pain had some unlisted side effects. I’m better now. Except that my back hurts. Oh, and I’ve had a cold for two weeks.
Also, I was traveling a lot. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I wound up going to ArmadilloCon, FenCon, HighEdWeb, and World Fantasy all in quick succession, with side trips to San Antonio and Waco in between. One more big trip this weekend, to An Event Apart in San Francisco, and then I’m done.
And, you know, I’ve been busy. I’m frantically finishing up all my freelance projects because I have a book deal.
No, not for a novel. Don’t get too excited. Just a little excited.
I’m writing a book on WordPress! It’ll be out next summer from Apress, and I’m slanting it more toward CMS use than blogs, because, you know, WordPress is good for that sort of thing.
Look! It has a cover and it looks real and stuff! And it’s on Amazon and everything! That’s right: if you search for me on Amazon, you will find stuff.
OK, I’m a little excited.
So, you know, if you don’t see me around much for the next few months, I’m not dead… I’m just on a deadline.
a better save bookmarklet for delicious on the iPhone
Last week, I discovered that the standard ’save to delicious’ bookmarklet pretty much sucks on the iPhone. It tries to open a new window. It doesn’t use the mobile version of delicious. When I got back, I realized that nothing I’d been saving actually got saved.
The mobile edition itself is rather good, but its save function doesn’t fill in the URL and title for you. That’s obviously less than ideal; who wants to cut and paste all that junk? I mashed up this code with the original bookmarklet and came up with this:
javascript:(function(){var newUrl='http://m.delicious.com/save?url=';var thisUrl=encodeURIComponent(location.href);var title='&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title);location.href=newUrl+thisUrl+title;})();
It doesn’t open a new window, and it does preload the URL and title. Now if delicious will just get tag autocompletion working, bookmarking on the iPhone will be just about perfect.
Keynote ruckus at HighEdWeb
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I spent the week attending the HighEdWeb conference. I’ve been a presenter and a member of the programming committee for the last few years. I adore this conference because the quality of the presentations is outstanding, the attendees are delightful people, and the focus is exclusively on higher ed. Networking with 450 people who share your professional frustrations is amazing.
HighEdWeb has an active backchannel. This year, things got interesting. (more…)
Sundry updates
ArmadilloCon was delightful (except for the migraine and the insomnia, but those were my issues, not theirs). If you are a fan of Scott Lynch, keep your ears open this week for an announcement that is, as they say, relevant to your interests. Maybe two, even.
Also, thanks to a little down time and the free hotel bar wifi, the HTML Import plugin for WordPress now includes an option to clean up bad HTML, such as that from Word or Frontpage.
And! There appears to be an Arabic translation of the Random Posts from Category widget. Nifty.
