Cool Flickr Photos

I’ve been a Flickr member for several years, and have posted several thousand pictures during that time. Here are the top five photos and what they meant at the time I took them.

1. Ductster PDA. So far this photo has been viewed 3053 times. I took this very crappy photo of a note holder made of duct tape. Taken with a Windows Mobile phone. Very popular during my Hipster and DIY Getting Things Done phase.

2. Worlds Largest Diet Coke Can. So far this photo has been viewed 1521 times. I took this photo on a vacation trip to Yellowstone. I honestly can’t remember where it was taken, but I do know it was a gas station off the highway somewhere in Idaho I think. I’m a big Diet Coke fan, and thought this was the coolest picture.

3. 38 Special – Special Forces. So far this photo has been viewed 1420 times. It’s really a snap of album art. I love album art. It’s mostly a dead practice. Most artists today paste their picture on the front and call it good. A lot of musicians drew and painted their own album covers. It has a personal connection to the music.

4. Stewart-Haas Racing Logo. So far this photo has been viewed 851 times. This was a screen shot of the new Tony Stewart NASCAR racing team logo. I’m a huge fan of Tony, and I thought this was a great logo. I hope I never get in trouble for posting it.

5. Just A Geek. So far this photo has been viewed 453 times. I’m a big Wil Wheaton fan. I took a pic of his book after I got it from Amazon. It was a great book, and you should get a copy. He has several other great books. Wish there would have been a spin off of his Star Trek character Wes Crusher.

One picture that I really like is the one I took with Brandon Sanderson. Brandon is a Fantasy author who lives in Utah. He is also the author asked to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This photo was taken after I interviewed Brandon (along with Jeff Norris, for iscifi.tv) at Life, the Universe & Everything writers symposium at BYU.

There you go, just a random post about some photos I’ve taken. Please head over to my Flickr page and see the rest. Let me know what you think.

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BuddyPress And The Missing Admin Bar: Solved!

I’ve been working on a few BuddyPress projects lately, using custom themes. Actually, I’ve used a great new plug-in, BuddyPress Template Pack by Andy Peatling to help with custom themes. While this great plug-in got me down the road (it basically turns your existing theme into a BuddyPress compatible theme), there were a few things missing. I wanted to share one I solved, and how.

Once I installed the theme and started working on it, I noticed that there was white space at the top of all my pages, enough room for the BuddyPress admin bar. So I knew it had something to be missing code that wasn’t displaying the admin bar. A quick search on the BuddyPress forum site and I found the solution: Make sure the wp_footer() reference is in your template file.

My theme needed a reference to wp_footer(). There was a reference to get_footer(), but that doesn’t help the admin bar. Once I added the reference, the bar shows up as desired. I call this code snippet in the custom theme where the footer should appear.

<?php
function custom_footer() { ?>
    <div id="custom_footer" class="accentBorders">Copyright &#169; 2010 All Rights Reserved.</div>
<?php
    wp_footer();
}
?>

Find more BuddyPress goodness at http://buddypress.org/support/topics/.

By the way, BuddyPress is a set of plug-ins that give your WordPress site the ability to create a community.

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New For PodCampSLC 2010

Today, PodCampSLC is excited to announce to new additions. Here are the new things happening with the event:

• New web site. Thanks to CrowdVine, we now have a new website for PodCampSLC. This site incorporates many of the social networking features you have grown to appreciate.


• New sponsors on board: PressDev, Mozy.com, eBay, Neumont University and SLUG Magazine. Please take some time to visit these companies, and we really appreciate the support.


• The schedule is really starting to come together. We are covering everything from audio and video recording, live streaming, social media, and a lot more.


• Phil Windley has agreed to hold the March CTO breakfast just before PodCamp.

Again, I really want to thank Tony and team at CrowdVine for the new site. We are working very closely with them to resolve any problems that may come up, so please be patient.

Please visit the new site and register today.

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YouTube Video Marcus Miller – Burning Down The House

YouTube Video Marcus Miller - Burning Down The House

One of my favorite Bass players.

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Google To Stop Supporting Older Browsers

I just got an email from Google stating that starting March 1st, their web applications will no longer support older browsers, instead, pushing the new HTML5 standard. Here is what they said;

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser

I applaud this. As a web developer, trying to create sites that work with a dozen web browsers is nearly impossible. I hope more companies take this stance, and help push new technology along. Google has a strong enough presence with their own applications (i.e. GMail and Docs), that they can control what browsers they will support and which they won't. Here's hoping others will follow.

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