I'm sometimes distracted by too many project ideas. When the ideas pile up, my productivity sinks because I keep thinking about them, and multitasking slows me down. To keep focused, I evolved a mind trick called The Pickle Jar that, despite its hokey name, actually works for me. It got me through my thesis, when writing was the last thing I felt like doing.
The Pickle Jar is an actual glass jar that once held pickles. Next to it is a square pad of paper, about 4 inches on the side. To get unrelated thoughts out of my mind, I write down a brief synopsis down, fold it twice, and put it into the Jar.
The physical act of writing down, folding, and then "pickling" the idea for later consumption is weirdly cathartic. Since I'm no longer in danger of forgetting the thought, I can relax. The act of formulating on paper has also satisfied the urge to follow up on it. The size of the paper also prevents you from writing too much...there's just enough room to get the essence of the idea down.
The best part: You can see that you've got the ideas queued up, but it's hard to retrieve them. They're in a jar! Getting at the idea entails trying to stick your hand in the jar (which shouldn't fit, if you've chosen your glassware wisely), or dumping them out in a mess and unfolding all of them. It's just inconvenient enough that I tend not to look unless I really am in the mood. The use is similar to that of a piggy bank, in that it encourages easy deposit but prevents casual withdrawal. So you tend to deposit and get on with your life, which in my case is getting back to #&!@*! work.
One side effect of the Jar... after pickling, some of those ideas don't really seem that interesting anymore, so I end up tossing most of them.
Sadly, my official Pickle Jar was destroyed or lost during my last move, so I'm going to try using WordPress as the idea containment system. I suspect it might not work, but I'm curious to see if the physical act of pickling is as important as I thought.
(Update: I repurposed a canning jar as the new Physical Pickle Jar. See the picture!)
ACHTUNG!
The Markdown Image Hack has been retired. Please check out Lazy Image Layout instead!
The code has been separated from Markdown, and is now a stand-alone plugin called LazyImages.
Continuing with the markdown/pictpress hack, this post with serve as a to-do / issues list.
Download MDIH 0.3, the MDIH 0.3 changes, or follow the development history.
In version 0.2, note that the syntax has changed, so you will have to update your old posts if you were using 0.1. But no one was, so I doubt it will be a problem :-)
done I want to add a special popup value for the link url, which would automagically put the full size image in its own tasty window. I'm not sure where I would insert the javascript code for this in a portable way. For all I know, there is built-in javascript already in WordPress, so I should do some more digging.
done What about GIFs? So far, this is JPEG only! I can either snoop the file's extension, or maybe there is some kind of "magic number" routine that can identify filetype in PHP. That would save me some string processing work :-)
fixed I just realized that I have the syntax kind of backwards. I should put the link as the second parameter, and have all the image control in the first link. This came to me when I found myself wishing I could use the global link defs in markdown. Maybe something like...
!@[image_uri](url "title")(L 120)
!@[image_uri][id](L 120)
...where the parameters get their own little extension parens. I think I can write a regex that treats that last as optional, and it can default to a standard left-justified thumbnail. Or maybe I don't use regex at all on the individual backreference level and just get the entire match, and EXPLODE it. That would make life easier :-)
done Use global link defs, because I love 'em.
done It would be useful to have a CLEAR ALL indicator. The half-assed way I'm designating alignment (due entirely to my weak grasp of regular expressions) could be extended to support this, perhaps by using lower-case to mean "float" and upper-case to mean "clear, then float".
handled The way alignment and width are glommed together is because I wasn't sure how to handle extra or out-of-order parameters gracefully using regular expression references, so I put them into one thing. Since they are all required, though, I could just have a separate alignment parameter. Though I kind of like them as one thing. I don't want to require too many parameters, because that defeats the purpose of Markdown.
If I use syntax changes, I could introduce longer keywords, but that gets away from the spirit of markdown. Maybe L for left float, and LB for left float break?
Put a quick upload form on the Write and Edit admin pages, so they are automatically uploaded to the right directory? It should be possible to hook into the post page, since I've seen other plugins claim to do it. This would simplify uploading, especially if the upload manager automatically uses the post_id to create a containing directory. That would totally rock. The links inside the markdown syntax could probably just access files by name, and you'd never have to use a directory again.
done Change the cache file naming scheme so cache comes FIRST in the name. I thought at first that I wanted files to sort alphabetically so related files were in a nice block, but that kind of sucks when you are looking for just the important originals. Also, put them in their own directory.
When I first saw these goggles, I immediately felt the urge of become a properly-accessorized mad scientist. With these goggles, surely I could rule the world! But I was with friends and was self-conscious about admitting this publically. So I passed them up.
That was a big mistake. Re-introduced to them by my sister (who's so much cooler than I), I was again consumed with consumer desire, only to find that they're sold out online and at every store we've tried. My sister suggested that the harry potter quidditch goggles might be OK, but both she and I knew that they were a poor substitute for fine german engineering (I may be assuming too much here...they're probably all made in the same factory in China). The store people say there will be more goggles in December in time for Christmas, but I wanted them for Halloween! And right away! Now!
I've noticed that certain plugins seem to cause WordPress (WP) to run slower. PictPress, for example, seemed to slow down page generation by quite a bit. However, it might just be that the server load on the weekend is lower.
Still, I'm curious how to optimize WP, or to find out what's slow. A couple of tips to speed up performance I found:
- limit # of posts shown per page
- don't use posts-per-category counting
- hardcode links
- use xcode or some other profiler to find out where all the execution time is goin
- don't use the cgi version of PHP. Though my host's customer support said it shouldn't be slower when I asked before. lies?
The gist of this seems to be: limit the number of database queries and text processing as much as possible.
Today is, of course, Talk Like A Pirate Day! It's a great excuse to run around saying pirate words like ARRRR and AVAST. My vocabulary in this regard is pretty limited, so I'm cribbing from the glossary posted on TLAPD's translators page. You can also translate entire web pages, if you want to make your Sunday browsing extra special.
Completely awesome is this WordPress 1.2 plugin by Dougal Campbell. The automatic pirate text translation is via that plugin. It even automatically activates on TLAPD, which is September 19.
UPDATE: The filter has been turned off. Sorry!
