Before I get into the tedious specifics, let me get right to the main announcement.
Daniel Bartholomew and I are very excited to introduce you to ScriptureLog.
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ScriptureLog
Scripturelog is a free, open source plugin for the popular WordPress blogging platform that turns WordPress into a collaborative online LDS scripture study journal.
The plugin installs volumes of scripture into WordPress as hierarchical, inter-linking pages of books, chapters, and verses. Once the pages are installed, you can use the built-in features of WordPress by yourself or in collaboration with others to read the scriptures, take notes, and discuss the gospel.
I have long resisted running my blog on WordPress because so much of the actual code is messy and because I prefer a more object oriented approach than it employs. I chose Textpattern for many reasons that at the time made it superior and have used it since 2005. Even before that, when we first started the Millennial Star blog, we chose b2Evolution over WordPress because of its superior coding. (I’ve also used Joomla and Drupal)
However, looking at the situation now and the huge community and momentum that WordPress has amassed, it pretty clear that WordPress is easier to use for general blogging than any of these others, despite a number of annoying architectural, geeky complaints that just wont go away. Read more »
Just after Christmas, my wife was looking through the more than 300 photos on our digital camera that we had taken between Halloween and Christmas. Our four year old daughter had snapped about 30 photographs the day before and the camera memory was getting full. The battery was getting low too and the camera wasn’t responding well to the controls. My wife mentioned that she still hadn’t downloaded many of the pictures from the camera to her computer and that she better do it just in case something were to go wrong and we were to lose them.
She was struggling with the uncooperative controls, when all of a sudden she cried out “Oh NO! I think I just accidentally deleted all the photos!”
“What?” I responded. “How did you do that?!”
She didn’t know exactly how it had happened, but she was right. There wasn’t a single picture on the camera. All the pictures of Christmas Day, the pictures of the snowman I built with the kids before Christmas, the pictures of our family Christmas party, even the pictures from Thanksgiving—ALL GONE! She was devastated.
I panicked for a only a brief moment, but then the computer geek part of my brain clicked on.
“I think I can recover them,” I told her.
I apologize for two tech related posts in a row, but this was just too good to not share.
I was reading an interesting article on a usability design method they call “Paper Prototyping” and the first comment on the article was pure geek gold. In order to truly appreciate it let me give you the context first.
Paper Prototyping is a inexpensive, low-tech method of brainstorming, or of testing the usability of proposed designs for a software interface. Basically, you print out the various aspects of the proposed user interface on paper or cards. You cut out individual elements of the interface design with a pair of scissors if necessary. Then you sit down with the end user and you take the place of the computer. The user then interacts with the paper prototype, and you show them what would happen by laying down different sections to show how the interface changes and displays data.
So here is the golden comment by one Mantari Damacy:
It is like a role playing game, except, for using a computer!
PLAYER: “Okay, I save my file.”
GM: [dice clatters, looks up chart] Okay, you try to save your file, A new window pops up on the screen that indicates a general I/O error, but gives no specific details.
PLAYER: “Oh no! I open up the case, and pull the boot disc off of the IDE controller!”
GM: Okay. [dice clatters] Well, you manage to open up the case without tripping the power, but you’re not familiar with the internal workings of this machine. You can’t locate any IDE drives…
Awesome! I can just imagine a prototyping session ending with the following exchange between the designer and user:
“Sinus supremus!”
“Zero charisma!”
“Sinus supremus!”
“Zero charisma!”
This article is about a technical aspect of computer programming and since I know that many of my readers are not computer programmers, and of those that are, many do not program in PHP, you may safely ignore it unless it interests you.
As I’ve been working on a light-weight data access layer for PHP5.1+ that I hope to release as open source in the near future, I have discovered an annoying design flaw in PHP.
Support for a more object-oriented approach to programming has been greatly improved since the introduction of PHP5. PHP also offers some magic methods that can be used to simulate properties and methods without having to actually declare them individually. These are great for implementing on the fly methods and properties.
But these magic “overloading” methods don’t function exactly as expected when it comes to inherited child classes.
Some of the most exciting developments in technology are those that break down barriers to entry into areas that have been previously monopolized by a select few.
If you are like me, at one time or another you have considered trying your hand at Screenwriting. Sometimes this desire is inspired by viewing a particularly awe inspiring film. Other times it is provoked by seeing an unbelievably horrible one.
But, like many fields, the barriers to entry into the field of Screenwriting for the uninitiated have felt prohibitive. For years now I have been looking for a free alternative to the expensive commercial Screenwriting software packages. And since I am not confident about correct screenplay formatting and style, I wanted a program with a little bit of hand-holding for newbies.
No such program appeared to be available…until now.
I have just discovered the Celtx project .
Celtx is an open source “pre-production program for film, video, theatre, and animation” based on the same mozilla framework that Firefox is developed from. It includes story development tools for creating “detailed backgrounds for scenes and characters” and for writing “properly formatted script that can be annotated with any type of media, including notes, photos, sound files, and video clips.” It also includes scheduling and collaboration tools for team writing. There are versions for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, 2000, XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
When writing a script with Celtx, you simply use the tab key to rotate through the different formatting block types (heading, action, character, dialog, parenthetical, transition, shot, and text) and it automatically sets the correct formating in the script.
Celtx also comes with a short example script for a scene from “The Wizard of Oz.”
With increasingly cheap digital video production tools we are already seeing an explosion in alternative media production and with free software like Celtx, we may, in the not so distant future, be able to provide a viable alternative to Hollywood.
So if you have been sitting around day-dreaming about writing a good movie screenplay, download Celtx and check it out.
When version 1.5 of the wonderful Firefox web browser was released last November, I linked to some of the extensions that I have found most useful.
When the Firefox 1.5.0.1 upgrade was released in February, I found that the spell check extension, Spellbound, was no longer compatible! During the last couple of months, I have visited the Spellbound website hoping for an upgrade that will work in the newest versions of Firefox, but it appears that the project has been dead since before the November release of Firefox.
Today, I am very happy to have found the Spellbound development version available on a different site. Even though it is not a release version, it appears to work great with Firefox 1.5.0.1, and it includes great new features.
This new version spell checks form inputs as you type, underlining misspelled words and offering correction suggestions if you hold down the ctrl key while clicking on the word.
Get the Spellbound development version at:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=351130
(And if you are still aren’t using Firefox as you primary web browser, download it today! http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ )
If you develop for the web, there is a new extension for Firefox that you simply must get:
Firebug combines the functionality of the DOM inspector with the Error console and command-line JavaScript interpretor and then packs it with some great additional features.
Today Google announced an exciting new tool for Firefox users called Blogger Web Comments . This fantastic little extension for the firefox browser automatically searches Google’s blog search service for posts that link to whatever page you are currently viewing. Then it displays a notification window in the bottom right hand corner of the browser window that shows the most recent blog posts that link to the page. If you click on any of the listed posts, it opens them in a new browser tab.
