Sillybean

Baby update

Ultrasound tech: Do you want to know what it is?
Us: Yes.
Tech: *moves scope*
Baby: *flashes everyone*
Tech: Yep, he wants you to know, too.

HTML Import 2.0 beta

The new version of the HTML Import plugin is just about done. It’s completely rewritten and has several big new features:

It imports linked images. (OMG, I KNOW.) It can handle all of the following paths, as long as they lead to actual image files:

<img src=”http://example.com/images/foo.jpg” />
<img src=”/images/foo.jpg” />
<img src=”../../images/foo.jpg” />
<img src=”foo.jpg” />

Using custom post types? The importer now has options to import posts as any public post type. This means the plugin now requires at least WordPress 3.0.

It has supported custom taxonomies for several versions now, but in 2.0, the hierarchical ones (including categories) are displayed as nice little lists of checkboxes. Much nicer.

There’s now an option to enter your old site URL, which will be used to generate accurate .htaccess redirects. You can also retrieve the redirects again later if you need to, or regenerate them after you’ve changed your permalink setting, because the old URLs are now stored as custom fields of the imported posts.

The user interface is completely different. The settings have their own page, and the importer has been moved into Tools → Import. The settings that could make things go disastrously wrong, like a beginning directory path that doesn’t exist, will now trigger some error messages.

There’s a help tab on the settings page, and there’s a new User Guide (still in progress; please forgive the giant images).

Last-minute feature addition: default/index files for parent pages! In the past, the importer created empty placeholder pages when it encountered a directory, and then it would import all the files in that directory as child pages. In 2.0, you can specify the name of your default/index file (usually index.html on Apache servers or default.htm on IIS), and the importer will replace the empty placeholder with the index file’s contents. If there is no index file, the parent page remains empty.

I need testers!

If you’re willing to try out the beta, grab the development version from the Download page.

Here’s what it looks like…

Expecting

You might have noticed that I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Sorry about that. I’m pregnant, and as a result, I sleep a lot. In fact, I pretty much slept through April and half of May. I’m still catching up with life.

So, yeah: we’re expecting! Due in December, and we find out what it is in about a month. Yay hooray!

We are already assembling our parenting library:

• Go the Fuck to Sleep! (audio, free)
• Let’s Panic About Babies!
• My First Dictionary (which has an excellent companion website)

Further suggestions in this vein are welcome.

Young Miles, XKCD-style

“We booksellers of Harvard Book Store think that the original cover for Young Miles (an otherwise fine production) is unspeakably ugly and may deter you from purchasing this Hugo-award winning book which would otherwise provide you with hours of entertainment. With that in mind, we are providing this alternate, less embarrassing cover for your reading pleasure. Feel free to discard it and use the original cover if you enjoy flaunting its luridness, or what you wish.”

(via the author’s blog)

Ladies: the New York Times thinks you hate fantasy.

The NY Times has an amazingly patronizing review of Game of Thrones:

In a sense the series, which will span 10 episodes, ought to come with a warning like, “If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of ‘Sex and the City.’ ”

Well, gosh, Ms. Bellafante, I’m sorry all those characters hurt your pretty widdle head. Maybe you should return to reruns of trashy, materialistic sex soaps. Have fun with that.

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

You know, I quit going to book clubs because the level of discussion seldom held my interest, but the last time I was in one, we read quite a bit of fantasy — Sharon Shinn’s Archangel was memorable for appealing to the men just as much as the women despite having a pretty traditional romance plot — and not a lot of lit fic. Why? The literary crap we tried bored us to tears.

I’m hard-pressed to recall a sex scene in all of my recent television viewing. And… OK, I just checked my library, and despite the complete works of Georgette Heyer, fantasy still outnumbers romance by about 3 to 1.

Ladies, please join me in a (NSFW) Lily Allen singalong:

ETA: GeekMom has an excellent response.