Ennovy.org

Wow, I haven’t posted in this blog for a year now!

I would love to rehaul the entire site, get rid of all the broken stuff. But I don’t have the motivation to do it.

I used to get a lot of comment spam on this weblog. 99.9% of them were caught and so they never showed up in the comments, but I still had to delete the comments in the control panel. In the last couple of months the comment spam has died down to nothing. I was congratulating myself for solving this comment spam problem (although it’s really EE’s security features and Loweblog’s Akismet module that should get all the credit) when I realized that in the last couple of months I had turned on the option to close comments after 30 days. So obviously I wouldn’t get any comment spam if no one can post comments! And I rarely make public posts these days.

A long time ago I came up with a solution to use inline editing with EE using some ajax magic. The problem with that solution though was that the page would refresh once you submit something to edit. I figured that there must be a more elegant solution, one that updated the edited information without a page refresh.

I decided to revisit this problem and rewrite the code using the jQuery javascript library and the jQuery form plugin. However, there is a lot more javascript involved. The jQuery file itself is 26kb (the packed version), the jQuery form plugin file is 6kb, and the custom code is 4kb, so the total amount of javascript I have to include on every page is 36kb. The original solution used only 8kb of javascript (although it did require me to edit the HTML to add the javascript call, whereas with jQuery I don’t have to).

Oh well. At least I got to learn how to use the jQuery library. And, since I am the only person who’s authorized to do any editing, I made it so the javascript files are only loaded when I’m logged in, so it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever to you the reader.

I read on Slashdot that Gmail is finally offering IMAP support for their email accounts. According to the comments in the ./ post they’re only rolling it out to a few accounts for now. I eagerly checked my gmail account and to my surprise I found they’d enabled IMAP on my account! (In the past I’ve always been the last to get the new Gmail features.)

I prefer using IMAP over POP3 (which Gmail has had available for a while now) because with POP3 I somehow always manage to lose email when I’m downloading it to a desktop mail client. Ever since I started using Gmail, I’ve stuck to checking my email using the web-based interface. Now I get to use both the web-based interface and a desktop client, woohoo!

A few weeks ago, I switched to the beta version of the new My Yahoo, a personalized portal page. They’ve added a couple of new features, including more customization options and more content. I’m using it as my home page, same as I’ve done for years now, but there are a couple of things that bug me.

In the old version, there was something called the “Message Center”, which I had on the top left corner of the page. It told me whether I had any new mail in my Yahoo account, and it was really quite handy. If I did have mail, then I could sign into the Yahoo mail.

In the new version, it’s been replaced with something called the “Personal Assistant”. Except it’s not a replacement. This new Personal Assistant tells me if I have new mail only if I’m logged in. If I’m not, then it tells me to sign in. Which makes it useless!

Then there’s the fact that this Personal Assistant seems to be stuck on the right side of the page. I can’t move it around like I can with all of the other items on the page.

Lastly it sticks an advertisement into the middle of my links:

Note: I wrote this post because I wanted to test out the screen-capture abilities of Skitch. And I felt like whining.

Note: all links below contain spoilers for the 7th Harry Potter book. Please proceed carefully.

• Potterdammerung is a short version and a parody of the book – it’s hilarious!
• Non-magic T-shirt – an even shorter summary that fits onto a T-shirt. Would people really wear that?
• J.K. Rowling reveals what happens after the end of the book. It says she might write an encyclopedia on all the stuff that didn’t make into the books – I’d love to read that.
• Dan Radcliffe talks about what he thinks of the book.

A new version of my l’il old Weighted Categories Plugin is out. I went up two version points because I never released the last update I made. Oops.

I finished the book. I finished the series! I loved it. What a great ending!

Now I’m going to read it again.

The book has arrived! In a nifty box, too:

I think I might be the only Harry Potter fan who hasn’t gotten the last Harry Potter book yet. Well, I don’t know if I am, because I am staying away from a lot of sites so I don’t get spoiled.

For the last book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, I pre-ordered online from Indigo.ca and chose the normal shipping instead of express shipping. However, they sent the book to me on the first day anyways. This time, I pre-ordered again, but from Amazon.ca, and got normal shipping. I assumed it would arrive today, but I forgot I ordered from a different vendor last time. Oh well. It has been shipped out, it just hasn’t arrived yet.

Tomorrow I want to go watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in the movie theatre. I really, really hope I won’t hear someone yelling out a spoiler or anything like that.