This is a pretty pedestrian way to break a month’s silence, but the 0.2 version of WP-Cats is out. I’ve rewritten the JavaScript so that I’m no longer completely ashamed of it; the closures are a lot cleaner now, and it makes extensive use of jQuery for DOM manipulation and bits of animation.

There’s also a cool new feature where if you add a category to a particular post, you can double-click the plus-button on another post to add the same category to that one. This could be handy if you’ve created a new category and want to quickly go through and tag a bunch of posts with it.

In this release, I made a really serious effort to remove dependencies on Wordpress code, especially on the WP admin panel markup. Using jQuery offers greater flexibility regarding what can be conveniently used as JavaScript hooks, and this time around the main hooks are all inserted by a filter, hopefully making the overall system much more tolerant of future upgrades. Oh, and it all works on Safari now.

No functionality changes, but I spent an hour on the Clipper yesterday figuring out how to make WP-Cats work with WP 2.2.2.

Admittedly, WP-Cats is a more sophisticated plugin than some in the degree to which it interacts with core code, but my first experience contributing to a major open-source project has been a little mixed. My attempt to interact with the team received no response, and I can tell by checking out the trunk that the next point release of WP is going to—again—break the basic interface upon which WP-Cats relies.

Despite this, I think the plugin provides useful and worthwhile functionality in an elegant little package, and I’ve had dozens of thank-you emails about it over the past year; that’s motivation enough to carry on. So enjoy!

The #1 Matt was in town on Wednesday night, so some folks organized a meetup at the Heartland Brewery. I only took a handful of pictures, none of which turned out very well, but fortunately John Keegan has shared some nice snaps.

It was neat to chat with Matt and find out more about Automattic as a company and what some of their plans are for Wordpress. He’s a really fun, personable guy. It’s awesome to use a product with such a great spokesperson.

Google recently released google-code-prettify, a nifty little JavaScript for colouring up source code embedded in HTML pages. Anyway, here’s a version that you can install as a bookmarklet.

A handful of people emailed me about WP-Cats not working with the newest Wordpress. I’ve fixed the problem now—the compatible version is available as WP-Cats 0.13a. Over the past couple months, I’ve also received a number of feature requests for it, many of which I think would be useful and sensible, so expect to see a proper update at some point in the future.

Also, I now have a much better understanding of how to properly use closures and JS objects, so that truly heinous JavaScript will get cleaned up a bit, too.

Brandon pointed out to me the new website for the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Department has launched, featuring my logo in the document footer, similar to how ECE’s is.

My understanding is that there will be an official unveiling in the summer term, at which I’ll be asked to give a brief explanation of process and inspiration. So you can all come out to that with your clappers and big foam fingers… or just know that the inspiration was doodling on a tablecloth at Montana’s, and the software used was the excellent Inkscape.

It’s been a slow month for blogging, what with exams and all. But all is done now; I’m more convinced than ever that engineering school is less about academics, and more about proving yourself against outrageous expectations and under extreme stress.

That said, I don’t think I’ll ever forget how to set up a band pass filter or a summing amplifier.

Looking ahead, I treated myself to a new camera, and I plan to post lots of pictures from NYC. I thought I’d also publish my fledgling list of stuff to do while there:

Suggestions welcome.

Jeff had recently floated the idea of reversed sleep schedules. The advantage of studying all night and then sleeping during the day is, of course, the absence of many distractions during the wee hours. I was considering exploring more of a biphasic approach, but in the end it’s been more of a less complicated “sleep when tired” approach.

Anyhow, there was a bit of drama in our front hall yesterday morning:

Interestingly enough, Pico didn’t seem all that interested in actually gutting the little intruder. It was terrified and exhausted from being chased, but once backed into a corner, all it got was a bunch of swats and nasty scowls. So I scooped him up with a glass and deposited him outside on the other side of the street.

After another ten minutes of confused stalking about, Pico fell right asleep on the couch; I kind of wonder if she’s going to sleep a wink in the two weeks that I’ll have her over Christmas in Toronto.

My room is the cleanest it’s been in months. The dishes are washed, and the counter is wiped. This morning I had bacon and eggs for breakfast, and last night I baked fresh bread. Now there’s a delicious-smelling pot roast on the counter that’ll be ready in a few hours.

It is officially exam time. Can you tell?

I don’t normally just post random funnies, but this is pretty much the most hilarious conversation I’ve read in a long time: Man hired to kill woman instead warns her. I’ve never been a DND person, but that tounge-in-cheek earnestness is right in line with my prejudices about tabletop RPG players.

For another laugh of a similar ilk, see also xkcd #189. (for the borderline nerds in the audience, str is strength and con is constitution)