No Plugin Needed for Feed Delay

Monday, 24 November 2008, 10:01 am

I recently saw a WordPress plugin that was designed to delay the publication of your WordPress feed by any specified time interval. While it is a good idea to carefully proofread your content before posting it, a plugin certainly is not required to do so.

As savvy WordPress users already know, WordPress has a built-in post-preview feature that enables authors to view their unpublished content as a published post. This enables authors to do any amount of proofreading and browser checking until they are satisfied with the results.

To do this, simply write your post as usual, and then click on the “Preview this post” button on the right-hand side of the screen. In older versions of WordPress (less than 2.5, I think), you actually need to save (without publishing!) the post first and then re-open it as if to continue editing. You will then see a “Preview »” link sort of hidden (due to poor CSS design) in the upper-right corner near the edit post field. Right-click on that link to open in new tab and you are good to go.

No extra plugin needed! :)

PHP Echo Shortcut

Sunday, 23 November 2008, 6:29 pm

Quick PHP shortcut to save a few keystrokes:

We can write this:

To replace this:

How to Close your Windows Live ID and Hotmail Account

Sunday, 9 November 2008, 6:06 pm

After deciding to stop using Hotmail, I went ahead and tried to close my newer Hotmail accounts. Unfortunately, the process of closing the accounts was a dreadfully convoluted experience, mostly due to the fact that these newer Hotmail accounts are acutally two accounts in one: one is associated with a Windows Live Hotmail account, and the other associated with a Windows Live ID account.

Whatever. After spending twenty minutes trying to figure out how to close the account(s), I decided I had better share the information for future reference. I mean, for crying out loud, Microsoft has convoluted the process to the point of absurdity. It’s like going on a damn treasure hunt! Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Login to your Hotmail account. In the upper right-hand corner, click on “Options” and then on the “More Options” link in in the drop-down panel. Then, under the “Manage your account” section, click on “View and edit your personal information”. From there, click on “Settings” in the left sidebar. Under “Additional options”, click on “Close account”. But wait, you’re not done yet!

On the “Are you sure you want to close your account” page, read everything and then enter your password for verification. If the Live ID account was not associated with a Hotmail account, you should see a success message. If your account was associated with a Hotmail account, you will see a message that says: “Cannot close your account”. Read the paragraph; in it, you will find a link to close your associated Microsoft Live Hotmail account. Click it.

The next screen gives a final warning that you are about to close your Windows Live Hotmail account (as if you didn’t know by now!). Read everything and then click “Close account” to finally close the damn account. And, believe it or not, that’s all there is to it! ;)

Goodbye, Hotmail

Sunday, 9 November 2008, 5:15 pm

Over the years, I have accumulated a large number of free Hotmail accounts. Several of these accounts were created over seven years ago, long before Microsoft made their first major overhaul to the Hotmail service. The overhaul happened quietly around five years ago (if I remember correctly), and directly affected the way in which all future Hotmail accounts operated.

One of the differences between the (very) old accounts and those established after Microsoft changed everything, is the way in which Thunderbird (and various other open-source email applications) is able to process emails from either type of account. For some reason, all of my old Hotmail accounts are processed perfectly well from within Thunderbird; however, those accounts created within the last several years do not play nice at all.

Unlike the older accounts, which are completely synchronized and integrated into Thunderbird, the newer accounts continually throw errors whenever they are checked for new email. These errors are usually associated with good ‘ol Hotmail not accepting any preset passwords, which must be re-entered manually every time email is checked. Needless to say, this behavior is very inconvenient. Meanwhile, the older accounts function flawlessly.

To get the Hotmail accounts to work at all with Thunderbird, two extensions are required, Webmail and its Hotmail-specific add-on. These two extensions enable users to integrate and process their Hotmail accounts along with all of their other email accounts. At first, the Webmail extensions worked perfectly with all Hotmail accounts; then, after a year or so, the newer Hotmail accounts stopped working. After upgrading the Webmail extensions, the newer Hotmail accounts would work, but then another year or so later, the same thing would happen all over again.

Occasionally, I have been able to get the newer Hotmail accounts to work by rolling back the Webmail extensions to previous versions, but this does not always work. Frankly, I suspect that the good ‘ol boys down at the Hotmail factory purposely tweak the system settings such that Hotmail is incompatible with free, open-source email applications like Thunderbird. I don’t know, but one thing is certain, the changes are happening on the Hotmail side of the fence, and they are changing their settings either deliberately or without concern for non-Outlook users.

So, as I find this cycle having come full-circle again, I am once again unable to check emails on newer Hotmail accounts. The bad news is that I am plumb out of previous Webmail extensions to try, and there aren’t any new versions to check out. So, as of today I am officially dumping all of my newer Hotmail accounts. I no longer have the patience or free time to spend fiddling things, trying to second-guess periodic changes on the Hotmail server. I will certainly keep the older accounts for as long as they continue to work, but the newer accounts are just not worth the effort. So, goodbye, Hotmail, I will never open another account with you again.

Transparent Division Recipe

Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 7:59 pm

I am getting so old that I need to make recipes of my design stunts so I don’t have to relearn them from scratch every time. Sad, but so are a lot of things..

In any case, here is the basic procedure for creating the transparent panels used in my current (Quintessential) design:

1. Open main design template
2. Verify proper widths via existing images
3. Create guides according to desired width(s)
4. Create a rounded-corner vector shape of 10-pixel radius
5. Rasterize vector shape
6. Set outer-glow layer style (normal, 33, 3, 7)
7. Create new empty layer and merge with panel layer
8. Magic-wand select panel area at 1%, no anti-aliasing
9. Add layer mask to reveal all
10. Ctrl+Gradient tool from panel top to desired fade
11. Duplicate layer as new document
12. Crop and match desired size

From there, it should be self-explanatory. If not, perhaps it’s time to pursue an alternate line of employment..