Junk Posting

April 8th, 2008

To fill that canyon void between true quality, sometimes there must become a little bit of junk. This is the first of the experiment with junk posts on this quasi-blog type thing. No real aim, but to create and fill. Oft times it is the mass of filling that makes the other so good.

I am not talking automatic writing here, and will leave that to another day.

Anyway, what did I do today? Not much, just working mainly. Thinking back, thismorning Jasper awakened me with her meowing. For lunch I headed down to Sakura Sushi. Still failing in my attempts to get Jerry to try it. I finished chapter twenty-nine of Great Expectations, experiencing Pip’s first adult falling for the now-fully-grown Estella.

Had a call from The Strange Attractors‘ prospective bass player. Things seem almost to be coming together.

Unsure of where all this junk will lead me tonight.

Coming up for AIR

April 3rd, 2008

Shyla said she had two spare tickets to see AIR play that night. Somewhere in The Valley she said, the Tivoli maybe. Some quick googling proved her right. The tickets were in her name, so she handed over some non-photo id and we prepared for some undercover work, only to have our cover crumble when we got to the ticket counter and saw the familiar face of an old acquaintance staring back. The girl at the ticket counter obliged us, thankfully.

New Buffalo supported the night, glitz girl with certain somewhat subtle masculinity, supported to the side by feminine transparent red showing of two more supported showings. Ocean had sprung up a conversation with a girl called Liz of whom she remarked had a nice dress only moments before. She became part of the group as more and more friendly faces arrived and gathered for the show. Surprising there would be so many there, known in the mind.

After the song and dance, the pretty photon show, a migratory path to Ric’s was pursued. Only stayed there a short while, time enough for one game of Galaga. Perhaps it was the effect of the show on my senses, or some other stimulant, but I played like never before, trance-like, focused to the gills, reaching a never before achieved, level 17, and breaking the 100,000 point mark. First on the machine by a long shot, surprising not only those watching, but myself as well.

Sometimes all it takes is to come up for AIR every so often. See you there.

AIR at the Tivoli
AIR playing at the Tivoli in Brisbane

Silhouettes of Self-Organisation & Cultural Adaptation

April 2nd, 2008

Days workin’ for the man, a breezy little gig in midtown, pushing pixels, and redirecting electrons, rarely do thoughts of far off lands evolve far past the subconscious.

Word of a protest rally in the heart of the city however had broken out amongst the workers, and with Karuna being more than a little based upon the Buddhist tradition, it was decided by the leading powers that we should be in attendance. And so it was, that at 12:30pm one sunny Monday in this southern land, there organised a collection of humans, sacrificing their lunch, or otherwise taking time out, to gather collectively, to come together in public space.

It was a reaction, this collective sharing of sentiment, part of a knee jerk response to the figurative, repeated kicks in the face that this cultural entity has been turning the other cheek to for decades. Ancient cultures – at least those surviving today – are of a highly adaptable breed, that when threatened with extinction, will evolve new methods of survival.

Though the body seems somewhat submerged in raging waters, tendrils of cultural buoyancy reach far and wide; they encircle the earth, and take up residence in the hearts and minds of those free to assemble and with a purpose to attain, symbolic silhouettes in hand.

Life, through life, finds a way.

Rally For Tibet Outside Treasury

The Evolution of the WordPress Species, Version 2.5

March 30th, 2008

Seems I had WordPress 2.5 final already last night, but just didn’t know it yet. It was simply masquerading as a late revision of release candidate 3. This morning when the news came through the usual update channels to my awareness, I immediately went to upgrade from the subversion repository. I found that the only file that was updated to be one wp-includes/version.php which seems to just tell WordPress what version number it is running.

Actually now that I look at it, mine now says “2.6-bleeding”. I guess that’s what comes of this whole subversion beta testing thing, not ever really getting to try the release versions for very long. Probably in essence, it is like always running a broken, un(der)tested version. It is like a fleet of horses and carriages, with the newly designed carriages up at the front. Sometimes their new fandangled modifications will result in a wheel falling off, and as such, the rest of the fleet would probably not adopt that new modification.

You can obviously draw parallels between software development and the evolutionary process, especially with open source development, with each application being a separate species that slowly adapts over time. There is no one single designer, and indeed it would be impossible virtually for any single person to design and code something so complex as the WordPress base code. But with so many contributors building upon and changing the design to better suit its environment, the species plods along on its evolving path.

The audacity to speak only in the singular when referring to any creation so complex astonishes me.

Whores Not Wars

March 28th, 2008

Unsure of the sentiment expressed in this statement, this impetuously interesting compilation of words, that should grace itself with a presence in my head. Brought to residence by Cieon from a house of questionable respectability, high in reputation, near West End one summer afternoon, it immediately struck my active attentions.

When talking of human occupation, we are talking two of the oldest, both in an evolutionary battle for the soul.

A lot of running around going on upstairs this week, and it almost seems I am standing on the edge, no, staring at and contemplating the myriad long and winding roads up ahead, no, searching in vain for some suitable metaphor for the exist and flow to be the way it is. Time at one moment seems to stand still, but it is gone in a blink, never to return.

Some new songs the world over may come out of these trying times. I can hardly believe the day is over already. I’m on the brink of night.

This fellowship application, nearly completed, could afford the opportunity to visit the city of cities. All that is left is to print, burn, and mail. I think back to how all this mess got started, and I dream I might be standing at the base of those twin monoliths of memory before too long. To think all this fate it held in the clenched hands of others leaves me uneasy, but hopeful.

So many things we take to heart in the name of some old such-and-such. When two concepts present themselves together side by side, we seem to find out much more about the environment in which we find them. Whores and wars, running around in your mind.

Whores Not Wars
The true alternative

First Update for Darwin Theme

March 28th, 2008

After a few days use and rigorous testing down in the lab and out in the wild blue yonder of the interwebs, this new species of WordPress theme we call “Darwin” has undergone the first tiny changes in its evolutionary and ever-marching journey towards a more perfect suitability to its environment.

A number of small alterations in genetic php code seem enough to warrant a revision release. These include:

  1. Colours and wording in the footer
  2. Footer css styling issues in ie7
  3. Altered styles for code and blockquotes
  4. Wide borders for images in posts, making 500 pixel images line up perfectly with text
  5. Comment box now lines up correctly
  6. Header moves in to meet text while viewing single page, and h2 text now aligns left
  7. “Archive” text removed from single pages in the browser title bar
  8. Reduced height on list elements
  9. Other seemingly imperceivable changes

This post also serves as an excuse to use the Abduction! Firefox plugin, which allows full page exports straight from your browser.

View Screenshot | Download version 0.1.1 | Or Test Run Right Here 🙂

Install as per usual, as per the last Darwin post. And as before, feel free to use and modify at will, with or without credit under the GPL. Shout back any favourable modifications you may stumble upon.

Feeding the Masses

March 27th, 2008

Taking a break from the Grant McLennan Memorial Fellowship application that is slowly coming together, in between intended gatherings of The Strange Attractors, the occasional wanderings online, and Cieon, wonderful house mate coming home and persuading me into watching the Liv Tyler film Heavy, I stay on course, this ship just set for sail, across the wide Atlantic.

This blog, now syndicating through FeedBurner and newly launched, is on the watchtower lookout for subscribers, subscribers to the blog feed. As we are utilising the latest trunk of WordPress, the bleeding edges of 2.5 RC2, of course certain plugins such as FeedSmith seem not to work. So in this post, along with testing the default display of code in a post, we will see quite an inelegant, and rather simple, hacky way of making sure all your WordPress feed references redirect to your blog’s FeedBurner feed.

Update: ok, so it turns out that FeedSmith was working all along. I was just misjudging its functionality. Seems it redirects after clickthroughs to the feed and doesn’t actually physically change the link. I’ll keep this here for reference anyway.

Just one simple edit in the general-template.php seemed to do the trick. Should be self-evident from the following diff output, monospaced and styled with the use of <code></code> tags. I may customise some css for for the next Darwin theme release. Seems quite good as it it though, clean and simple.

Index: wp-includes/general-template.php
===================================================================
--- wp-includes/general-template.php (revision 7524)
+++ wp-includes/general-template.php (working copy)
@@ -92,7 +92,8 @@
$output = get_feed_link('rss');
break;
case 'rss2_url':
- $output = get_feed_link('rss2');
+ //$output = get_feed_link('rss2');
+ $output = 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/phocks';
break;
case 'atom_url':
$output = get_feed_link('atom');

Ok, so now there should be no subscriber left behind. Already FeedBurner is reporting 22 subscribers, which must be some kind of miscount or something as I only just put this in place a little while ago. I have no quarrels with bandwagon jumpers however.

Is that rain I hear out my bedroom window? A welcome sign, though weeping heavens, if they persist in their sombre state, may present a challenge to my Thursday morning stroll, a new beginning to the working man’s blues, plaguing so many.

Over The Train Lines
The Albion Old Mill in the midst of deconstruction, from the crossing over the train lines

Always on the lookout for an opportunity of creation to feed the masses, even if that means the photographing of destruction.

Introducing Darwin

March 24th, 2008

I was searching for a very minimalistic theme, with a certain understated simple elegance, a theme that met with web standards, had widget support, and was easily customisable. Growing tiresome of wading through the sea of WordPress themes, looking for one that I could be truly happy with using, I decided it was high time I developed a theme of my own.

So here it is, entitled “Darwin” after the grandfather of evolution theory, good old Charlie. Still in very early alpha stages, the Darwin theme is based very heavily on the default Kubrick theme that comes with WordPress. I originally tried to develop the theme from scratch, without much luck, and also began to develop it as a K2 style, but found that I was stifled by the limited flexibility.

Features List

  1. Very minimalist design, fast loading
  2. Support for WordPress Widgets
  3. Web standards compliant, valid XHTML and CSS
  4. Wider content pane, suitable for displaying flickr 500px photos
  5. Free to use and modify, no sponsored links
  6. Lots of other cool stuff

Screenshot | Download version 0.1 alpha, released under GPL

Installation Instructions

  1. Unzip the folder and upload to your wp-content/themes/ directory
  2. Go to the themes viewer in your WordPress admin and click on the one that says “Darwin”
  3. Enjoy!

I’m releasing Darwin into the wild using the General Public Licence to encourage others to use and work on evolving the theme over time. The GPL basically states that you can use the code, change and modify it — you don’t even have to link back to me if you don’t want to, although it would be appreciated — as long as you keep all derived versions or modifications under the same licence.

Through various tiny mutations, Darwin will adapt over time. Please let me know any genetic code changes you might make, so I can include them in the next release. I’m phocks at gmail.

A Temporary Existence/Post

March 19th, 2008

A new blog springs into existence from the ashes. Has been a long time coming. Those reading should not garner any high hoped expectations. This experiment of existence will be a pouring from the mind, and little more.

You can download a zipped archive of all old posts and read ’till your heart’s content.

Soon there will come a day where all the people can sing and play.