Learning WPF
Since I'm pretty much stuck in the house due to the snow (and lack of a job), I've decided to learn something new. I've begun writing a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application. WPF has some insanely cool UI features, including declarative UI effects. My first project is a simple screensaver that pulls photos from Flickr and displays them as a slideshow with cool transition effects. Eventually, I'd like to create a dashboard type application that displays news, weather, email, etc. The dashboard will be more UI intensive, so I'm not quite ready for that. Creating WPF forms is very different than creating traditional Windows forms.
Testing Windows Live Writer
I just installed Windows Live Writer as a tool to publish stories to my web site. It has some promising features, and works with WordPress (yay MS).
I also just installed DropBox because I've been meaning to find a way to create offsite copies of some of our important files. I haven't tried it yet, but I hear good things about it.
Hmm, now that I'm about to publish, I'm wondering if it will handle WordPress tags... it did not.
Fennec Alpha 1 Testing
I installed the mobile version of Firefox, named Fennec, on my Nokia n800 today. It's intolerably slow (but it's alpha, so that can be ignored for now), but has some potentially cool features like tabbed browsing and a "smart" URL bar.
We Like the Dark
Most software engineers prefer to avoid the sun and bright lights. At my office, we keep the lights out and the window shades closed. However, when we do choose to look out the window, this is what we see...
New Look
I found the Aeros wordpress theme, downloaded it, made some modifications, added my photos/movies/music widget, and here it is! I've only tested in Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7. The font looks a bit strange in IE7... Anyway, I'll be fiddling with it some more over time. Let me know if something doesn't look right in your browser.
I know the sidebar isn't very elegant (especially the photos/movies/music links). I am soooo bad at design. Fooling around with those 3 links took longer than anything else I've done with this update. Every time I tried to get fancy, the layout would go to hell. I have grand ideas - really.
A Working Widget
I have a working tabbed (ajax) media widget. The tabs display media from Flickr, Netflix, and Last.fm. It looks crazy simple, but there's actually a lot of processing and caching code going on. It's about 250 lines of PHP, with some simple jQuery on the front end. (update) Now it's in the side bar to the right.
PHP and Last.fm Fun II
It seems like I can't use the following code on my server:
$dom = new DOMDocument(); $dom->load($recentTracksUrl);
because "URL file-access is disabled in the server ". I guess I'll have to find another way to handle REST responses with php. I'm guessing there's a better solution anyway. Research begins...
PHP and Last.fm Fun
I've been working on some code to display various pieces of my web life here on cleverswine.net. My first chosen task is to display my recently listened to album covers from Last.fm (like you see in the side bar to the right). I could have used the widget that I'm currently using, but my end goal is a little different (more on that later). Plus, I'm learning PHP, and it's always fun to learn a new language.
I uploaded my code to Snipplr in hopes of getting some feedback and/or criticism.
BitNami WordPress Stack
I've just installed the BitNami WordPress Stack on my laptop and it was so easy, and so cool! After the install, I had a fully functioning WordPress up and running locally - complete with Apache, MySql, and PHP. After installation, I exported all of the data from cleverswine.net and imported it locally - again, super easy. As a result, I have a copy of my web site running locally that I can play around with. Sure, I could have installed Linux and set up everything that way, but I've had a hell of a time getting Linux to work on my laptop (I tried bleeding edge Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint). Anyway, I happen to be very pleased with Vista.
Testing a Plugin
Testing a Flickr plugin that I just installed...
This is a waterfall in Oregon called Bridal Veil. Yep.