A quick redesign, and new link behaviour

I’ve done a quick redesign of this blog. There are very few visually discernible changes unless you were paying attention, but I did develop a WordPress plugin along the way (perhaps not “develop” as much as “become really surprised by ending up with”).

Mainly, I’ve changed my link posts to behave more like they do at [Daring Fireball](http://daringfireball.net) – now, clicking on article titles in link posts (on the blog and in the RSS reader) will bring you straight to the linked item (this post isn’t one; take a look at the [homepage](http://yjsoon.com) for examples). RSS feeds will indicate these items with “Link” in front, and also include an extra footer with the link again and the page permalink.

If you’d like to try some of this on your own WordPress site, I’ve done up a quick [WordPress plugin](http://github.com/yjsoon/df-style-linked-list_wordpress-plugin) (which, keep in mind, adjusts your RSS feeds only), adapted from [Jonathan Penn’s original WordPress linked list plugin](http://github.com/jonathanpenn/wordpress-linked-list-plugin) (via [Shawn Blanc](http://shawnblanc.net/2009/08/wp-linked-list-plugin/)).

To use, download the plugin ([direct download link](http://github.com/yjsoon/df-style-linked-list_wordpress-plugin/archives/master)), put it in your plugins folder, and then activate it. When posting, you just need to define a custom field in WordPress called “linked_list_url”, which will be the link that your post goes to in your RSS feed, and it’ll behave like a link post.

A quick note, though – the plugin’s behaviour is much closer to DF’s RSS feed, in that it adds a ★ glyph for the permalink at the end of your post item, and also adds the glyph in front of your non-link post titles. Just remember, this affects your blog’s RSS feed only, so you’d have to adjust the look of these link posts on your blog yourself. You can do that by editing the template and making use of the built-in functions.

I’ll add in an option to change the glyph and toggle some of these behaviours in a future version, which I might then submit to the plugin directory. For now, it’s available on a MIT license, so do whatever you’d like with it.

More to come if I continue to procrastinate on real work.

Don’t Panic

I’ve had an iPad for about three weeks now (thanks to two Kevins for bringing back the iPad and case).

photo 1.PNG

I’ve noticed that, despite the [69 million reviews](http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ipad+review&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8) already out there, anyone who gets hold of one feels the need to write about his initial thoughts on the device. Ick! Such self-absorbed twats!

Anyway, my initial thoughts on the device:

* It’s been great for reading a variety of things on. I’ve been plowing through articles on Instapaper, PDFs on GoodReader, and books on iBooks.
* Other apps – NewsRack for RSS, Twitterrific for Twitter, SimpleNote for note-taking, ArtStudio for finger-painting, NYT and BBC for news, PenUltimate for quick sketches. So far so good. All these apps are very distracting when I want to settle down and read, though. (Multitasking in OS 4 will probably destroy my attention span for good.)
* GoodReader could do with an icon that doesn’t remind me of the eye of Sauron.
* Hasn’t replaced my laptop yet. However, doesn’t burn my lap when watching videos in bed. (To convert, erm, non-iTunes TV and movie content, I bought [iFlicks](http://www.iflicksapp.com/), which converts videos into iTunes-compatible formats, downloads cover art and fills in episode info.)
* One complaint, I guess – the iPad’s screen could do with greater pixel density. I keep noticing jaggies while reading text.

Summary: love it. As Stephen Fry wrote in his [giddy TIME review](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976935,00.html), the iPad is truly the closest thing to the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy humankind has devised. Douglas Adams would have been proud.

(Wallpaper from talented Apple designer [Louie Mantia](http://mantia.me/wallpaper).)

Apparently Wireless@SG login pages are my “Top Sites”

Well done to Wireless@SG for successfully messing up my Safari Top Sites:

Screen shot 2010-02-15 at PM 06.50.46.PNG

The new Wireless@SGx (dubbed “SSA”, which stands for “Seamless and Secure Access”, or “Senseless and Stupid Acronym”) 802.1X-enabled hotspot service is nice though, and really does help to solve this problem – after you set it up, you don’t have to go through the above login page. Thoroughly recommended for iPhone users especially. Search for one of the three mysteriously-differently-branded-but-functionally-identical Wireless@SG on the App Store and follow the instructions to download and configure the necessary security certificates.

Useless book suggestions

My friend Andrew asked on Facebook:

Anyone keen on writing a “The Student’s Guide to…” book? Let me know.

So, who had useless suggestions for Andrew? ME ME ME OOH YES CHOOSE ME PLEASE! The Students’ Guide to:

  • Creating senseless online comics in under 2 hours a week (bonus: How not to feel guilty about neglecting the site for weeks at a go!)
  • Making actually-light-hearted-but-which-may-come-across-as-sarcastic Facebook comments (sorry)
  • Making PDF selling websites that you don’t have time to develop further and which don’t net your only client any sales. At all. (Sorry)
  • Apologising through Facebook comments
  • Making lists
  • Extending lists
  • Overdoing a joke

I’m actually really happy for Andrew and his two wonderful books on “The Student’s Guide to Life” and “The Student’s Guide to Exam Success” (buyable from Aktive Learning or the aforementioned neglected PDF-selling website experiment). Back in 2008, he’d given me copies to give away to my graduating form class, which covered for my thorough lack of imagination in graduation gifts. I’m happy to see it’s doing well on the Popular Bookstore charts.

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Andrew is publishing “Diary of a Taxi Driver” by Dr. Cai Mingjie, Singapore’s most educated taxi driver and blogger. Good stuff. I hope Dr. Cai’s writing finds the audience it deserves – his poignant memoirs are always among the first articles I consume from my Instapaper reading list.

New Chickens, June – August

So, umm, yeah, I forgot to cross-post these like I said I would. Here are some. Personal favourites have a star (or, depending on your computer / browser, a white rectangle) next to them.

Fixing iPhone sync error 13019

I tried syncing my iPhone yesterday, and got an “unable to sync, error 13019” error message.

Some quick googling landed me on this Apple support page (Error 13019 during sync), which recommended de-selecting syncing voice memos and trying to sync again. If that failed (yup), de-select syncing music to try again (failed). Then videos, podcasts, etc. until a successful sync could be performed. All of this failed, so the page recommended I “attempt to sync an empty iTunes music library to the device while logged in as a new admin user”. Ugh! No!

What eventually worked for me: looking through the Voice Memos app, finding 8 of the same voice memo, deleting them all then syncing. Hmph.