Declan's Blog

Playing with the new WordPress iPhone app

This is Andrew.

So I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and I am very happy with it. You can work on things in a local space, then change the status to Published and it will be pushed to your blog. On slow connections, it will time out sometimes, just like any uploader. It does remember it’s state though, and tries again the next time you try to upload.

I have had an issue setting more than one category on a post. It seems only the first one gets added, but I’ll need to test more before I complain officially.

Another interesting issue I found with my first few posts was that even though it looked like a post had been successful from the phone, the post didn’t show up on my blog page. I didn’t have time to mess with it, so I checked the blog a few hours later and it showed up then. I tested with another post, and got the same issue. I looked in the list of posts, and it was there, it just wasn’t showing up on the homepage. The issue turned out to be that the time stamp on my server was off by a few hours, so the post from my iPhone looked like it was from the future and WP embargoed it until the time stamps matched.

I am not a Mac head, but we’ve had some additions to the toy cache. The campus bookstore had a great deal on a 24″ iMac, with a rebate on an iPod. So Elaine got the big Mac and I got an iPod Touch. It’s a ton of fun!

Our newest arrival is an iPhone 3g that I got for work. It is even cooler than the Touch because it has a camera. I’ll have a lot of lower quality photos now, but it’s super convenient.

A couple complaints about the phone, that I’m sure I’ll get the whine about on the MacVeritas podcast soon:

Battery life – with 3g, wifi, and heavy use, don’t expect this thing to last more than 5 hours.

Charging change – this just kills me. The device won’t charge in my car now. Lots of discussion on the forums that Apple decided to drop the pins where most car systems charge the phone. I’m hoping there can be a firmware fix. If not, maybe my car device has a switch, or I can build a little wire switching dongle. Either way, shame on Apple for messing with this with no real warning.

Exchange email set up was a snap – but I think I’m missing some emails… It’s being a little flaky with the ActiveSync. More experience with the device is needed.

Calendar confusion – some recurring events that have canceled exceptions are showing up as valid meetings. I know this is complicated programming from the WirelessKnowledge days. Apple needs to get ahead of this or people will lose confidence in their data.

Apps crash a lot – and have to be reinstalled. AIM, Twinkle, and others just try to start, then go back to the home dock. I’ll even get an occasional reboot.

Other than that, the device is nice! It’s sleek, so it slips in and out of pockets nicely. So far it is way more resistant to scratches than my 60G iPod.

Now that I have the phone, I don’t know if I need the Touch. The girl wants it, but I might sell it and the cool Surefire flashlights I won and buy a proper lens for the camera.

We tried a new place for lunch yesterday called Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot (address: 4718 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92117). It was very niiiice!

Phelan (@imagium), a BarCampSD buddy, had requested a while back that when we declare a BarLunch on Twitter that we pick somewhere in the Kearny Mesa area, closer to him so he could join us. Being a good manager, I put the work back on him and he suggested this great new place.

Here’s Phelan and surprise guest luncher Erika!

Paige was there too, but we kept her under the table.

First, they bring out a big pot of soup (original, spicy, or a split pot with both) and set it to boil on a hot plate in the middle of the table:

Then they bring out a platter of thinly sliced meat, vegetables, tufu, noodles, string mushrooms, and monkey brains.

Ok, maybe not monkey brains – fish balls and meat balls.

Then you cook. Yer own lunch. Why do we have to pay if we’re doing all the work?

Mmm! It was very good! Gabe give’s it a thumbs up:

Even the boy liked it!

Nathan was promoted to Brown Belt in Kajukenbo last weekend:

Lots of cool action shots:

Let’s hope he uses his power for good… 😉

I can’t decide whether this is cool or obnoxious:

Five planes flying at high altitude in formation dot matrix printing the sky is geeky cool. Reading about insurance companies and bad radio djs in the sky is kind obnoxious.

From www.skytypers.com:

Five aircraft flying at 10,000 FT. emitting biodegradable vapor "PUFFS" in a dot matrix pattern. These puffs are regulated by an onboard computer that controls the sequencing of the vapor to form the letters in the sky.
The average time to skytype a character, "The size of the empire state building," is only four seconds! The hang time for a eight mile long (25-30 characters) skyboard is three to seven minutes. That's a lot longer than a fifteen second TV commercial... or the average sign on the road read at 55 mph in 7 seconds!

Twice. Twice the stupid dog fights with a skunk in the backyard.

For the record, peroxide, baking soda, and vinegar take out about 80% of the stink. For the record, 20% skunk stink is still almost unbearable.

Stupid dog.

I got to go to ALA (American Library Association) in Anaheim, CA this year. I’ve worked in Libraries IT for the last 5 years, but have never made it to an ALA. Anaheim is just under two hour’s drive from San Diego, and Robert tricked me into teaching a class, so I went and had a great time. Man, those librarians can drink!

I got to see one of my favorite geek librarians, and fellow photographer, Cindi Trainor:

She takes lots of portraits, I’m more of the candid shot guy:

Although, if the light is right, even I can’t resist a pose:

That’s Tombriarian on the left.

Another Harvard buddy I ran into is Kenley Neufeld:

He’s a hoot and gave me a Twitter fix on his iPhone when my Blackberry was giving me trouble.

Dan Suchy from UCSD also came up for a day:

He was in the “special librarians” seminars all day.

More pictures, lots of new librarian twitter friends met:

Way back in June, Robert McDonald, David Minor, Ardys Kozbial, Chris Jordan, and I taught a day long seminar on Data Grids in Libraries for LITA (Library & Information Technology Association) in Anaheim, CA as a pre-conference for ALA (American Library Association).

Anaheim = Disney, don’tcha know?

All of the images from the class:

Those first few images are of a mystery device that was installed over my hotel room door. Never did figure out what it was. I’m not interesting enough to surveil…

The class was a lot of fun, especially because it was small and the attendees got really involved in asking questions.

I’ve redesigned the look and feel of the blog, mainly so I could play with a widget-able WordPress template. The credit for the design is at the bottom of the page. The bridge picture at the top is the Tower Bridge in London. I took this picture back in April and am very happy with how it came out.

The new site has a lot of black, which seems kinda dark to me, but since I post so many pictures, black sets them off nicely.

I’m way behind on blogging, so I set aside some time this morning.

It’s been a hectic couple of months, and appears to be the same in the near future. Lots of work and personal travel, Nathan graduating high school and getting ready for college, kid management during the no-school summer months, skunks, new toys… The list goes on 🙂

Today we’re getting ready for Robert McDonald’s going away party, my trip to the UCCSC, then off to Illinois for 10 days to visit family and celebrate Rich and Judy Koch’s 50th wedding anniversary. We did a blitz house cleaning last week so Robert could house sit without dealing with our mess. Makes for a nice house for the last week 🙂