I use an excellent plugin to display my Last.fm recently listened to tracks.  You can find the plugin here.  After the upgrade to WP 2.8 I kept getting this error when trying to activate the plugin “The plugin does not have a valid header.”  After trying a few different things I ran into this post that actually makes sense.  Ultimately, if your plugin is contained within a two folders it will be a problem.  For example, plugins\lastfm-records\last.fm\ will create a problem, you need to remove the lastfm-records folder and keep everything within last.fm.

~david

I ran into an issue yesterday which I’m still not 100% sure as to why it happened, but I at least was able to clear it  up.  I created an administrator script which did run even though it was scheduled to run every 30 seconds.  The script even when down to a start and end node only and still no response.  So, when making changes in ICM the first place to look at is the router.  Did a quick “cdlog ra /last /o” and the ra.log showed the following:

   1:  21:02:40 ra-rtr Trace: Undefined symbol: Global.userMy_UserVar. 

   2:  21:02:40 ra-rtr Add of ScriptData warning. 

Unable complete script load 7300: Undefined symbol: Global.userMy_UserVar. 

   3:  21:02:40 ra-rtr All configuration operations complete. 

So, if nothing else, this lets me know that there is something in my config which is not right and it’s possible that new changes might be queued up and that’s why my admin script is not running.  I went through all references of my user variable and removed them.  I then deleted the user variable and created a new one with the same name and put it back in every script.  Looked at the router log again and it looked clean.  After that, the admin script ran fine.

~david

I try to stay involved with Cisco’s forum as to try to give back to the community a bit as well as trying to get some knowledge from the masses.  While I’m not a know it all it’s nice to have a little bit of recognition.  Last week i went from Bronze to Silver, which based on points others award you for the answers you provide. :-)

I have a long way to go before getting those 25k points… wonder if I could turn them in for cool Cisco gear?

~david

As many of you might know, I was an early adopter of Sprint’s Palm Pre here are some of my initial impressions.

1. It’s a completely new way of navigating and getting around to different menus.  You’ll either spend all your time running your finger across the bottom or figuring out how close to the corner to tap to bring up preferences.
2. The screen is amazing and very responsive.
3. Integration with Exchange is great, the only thing I’ve not found is how to edit meeting invitations acceptances or rejections.
4. Setting up your initial contacts is a pain as it imports the contacts from every account which you set up.  I manage my contacts through Exchange and had to delete all of the Gmail contacts.
5. The keyboard is rather small, but really shouldn’t be a huge issues unless you have monster paws.
6. No T9 or similar program to auto guess what you’re trying to type.  You have to do it the old fashion way and type out the whole thing.
7. When browsing the web and you zoom in and click on a link the page goes back to it’s tiny view and you have to zoom in again.  It would be ideal if once you zoomed in, all subsequent pages were zoomed in too.
8. Palm decided to have a tiny little cap over the charging port.  I’m awaiting the days for this cap to fall of or be ripped out by accident.
9. Palm didn’t really use a standard Micro-USB port.  I have 4 of these chargers and they are now only good for my GPS.  Thank you Palm for having me have to carry just another charger.
10. Alarm clock will go off on the weekends even though it’s set for weekdays only.  Sprint acknowledged this bug and said an update should be out by the end of the first week of the Pre’s release.

That’s what I have so far.

~dmacias

It has been some months that I’ve been working on trying out different offline WP editors. I was getting tired on having to be online in order to add new stories. After much searching and much trial and error on stumbled upon Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. I have to honest, I figured since it was Microsoft’s and it had the whole "Live" tag with it, that it would somehow be tied to MS Messenger, Hotmail, etc. However, that’s not the case, it is completely stand alone and a great tool. Per it’s Wikipedia page it supports:

• Windows Live Spaces
• SharePoint blogs
• Blogger
• LiveJournal
• TypePad
• WordPress

Needless to say you should see a bit better formatting on my posts. Here’s a quick screen shot of the UI.

Notice the Edit, Preview, and Source buttons at the bottom of the main window, this allows you to quickly switch to different views and thus modify your page accordingly.

Another thing I love is how you can open any currently posted article and edit it very quickly.

Ultimately, I’m extremely happy with it.  It’s fast, has a very small memory footprint and it has a lot of plugins.

~david

Some of the image sizes I was using were causing layout problems so I reduced the size to 500 pixels in length.  I also made some very minor cosmetic changes to the theme I’m currently using… my site must feel so left out.

~dmacias

I really debated calling this, “How ICM Script Editor Allows You To See The Forest Through The Trees”, but I try to make titles which are relevant to my post.  Regardless, here is my latest fun encounter with Script Editor.

I was working on a script, which all of a sudden didn’t work as it originally did.  I checked the ToD routing logic, it was right.  I checked the admin scripts, they were right.  I checked every single node leading up to that step and they were all right.  I had two co-workers check it for me and they could not find the error either.

This is a small example of what I was looking at:

Now, in the above example it should be really apparent what is wrong, if you haven’t caught it, I’ll let you see what a correct script would look like:

Yep, no connection to the If node.  Now, you’re probably thinking, what is this guys thinking, that’s so easy to spot.  You’re right it is easy to spot when you have 4 nodes, but when you’re script spans multiple pages and has hundreds of nodes, it’s a little harder and honestly after starting at a script like this for weeks

you become crossed-eyed.

~dmacias

About a week ago I saw a story on Digg.com about tools to help you be more productive. I can’t remember the exact story, but more than likely it was from LifeHacker. Regardless, this story talked about this little California company who has created a plugin for Microsoft Outlook call Xobni. I’ve been test driving this for a week and let me tell you that I’m in love. Searching for emails is a breeze, what would take 10-15 minutes to finds, you’ll find it in under 3. Trying to find obscure emails is a breeze and being able to find any sort of conversation for any one contact is great.

The installation was quick and the indexing took a few hours, depending on how much email you have. The only draw back, which makes sense, is that you have to have the PST open in order for it to be indexed. It would be great for Xobni to index “offline” PST folders.

Lastly, Xobni comes with some pretty cool analytics. For example:

This is the mail traffic I’ve had today:




The email I’ve had in the last few months, which shows what happens when you get closer to production on a project:




And finally, a pretty interesting graph showing the time it takes you to respond to an email:




I highly recommend this for all Outlook users.

~dmacias

If you’ve not noticed by now, I’m going through a Kings of Leon phase. After the amazing show they put on a few weeks ago and their great CD “Only By The Night” it’s hard not to love their music. This album has been spinning in my iPod for what seems like months now. Highly recommend it.

Regardless, this song speaks about a guy who met a great girl, but he was not done with his partying ways and through it all he still thinks of her all the time. Good stuff!

What a night for a dance
You know I’m a dancing machine.
With the fire in my bones
And the sweet taste of kerosene.
I get lost in the night
So high I don’t wanna come down.
To face the loss
Of the good thing that I have found.

Woo hoo hoooo
Woo hoo hoooo

In the dark of the night
I can hear you calling my name.
With the hardest of hearts
I still feel full of pain.
So I drink and I smoke
And I ask If you’re ever around.
Even though it was me
Who drove us right in the ground.

See the time we shared
It was precious to me
But all the while
I was dreaming of revelry.

Gonna run baby run
Like a stream down a mountainside.
With the wind in my back
I wont ever even bat an eye.
Just know it was you all along
That had a hold of my heart
But the demon and me
Were the best of friends from the start.

So the time we shared it
Was precious to me
All the while
I was dreaming of revelry.

Dreaming of revelry.

And I told myself,
Oh the way you go.
It rained so hard,
It felt like snow.
Everything came tumbling down on me.
In the back of the woods,
It was dark as night
Palest pale,
Of the old moonlight
Everything just felt so incomplete.

Dreaming of revelry
Dreaming of revelry
Dreaming of revelry
Dreaming of revelry

Wow, that was painless, I tried the automatic upgrade and 10 seconds later I was upgraded! Good job WP team!

~david