Ennovy.org

Right now the EllisLab site is down for updates. Is it routine updates or some new secret project? I’m hoping it’s some new project!

I wrote my first Dashboard Widget last night! I basically followed the Hello World tutorial, except instead of displaying the words “Hello World”, I put in something more useful for me: the symbols for Apple keyboard shortcuts and which keys they are. After using my Mac for so long, I still can’t remember what the symbols stand for. I can remember however the F12 key which brings up the Dashboard, so that’s why I wrote the widget.

The hardest part was not the widget code itself but putting together some graphics that didn’t look like total crap next to the other widgets on the Dashboard:

I’ve updated the CSS for the control panel themes to match with EE 1.6.0. There have been no changes to the images, just to the css file. If you notice anything off, let me know!

I just went to the Google Blog Search to search for something. I got some results, and clicked on a link to sort by Date instead of by relevance. I then clicked on the next page of results to get a 403 forbidden error with this message:

We’re sorry… … but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now. We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

What??

The normal Google search works with no problems though.

Edit: Hmmm, this seems to be quite common...

I haven’t actually upgrade this site to EE 1.6 yet. I installed a fresh version of EE 1.6 on my computer to play around first. Before I update this site, I still need to make sure all of my extensions/plugins don’t break. Then I need to reconcile some hacks I made to the default plugins. Then I have to update my Control panel theme because it looks like the style sheet in the new version got some new updates. I’m planning on starting on all of that this weekend!

ExpressionEngine 1.6 has been released today. Woohoo, something new to play with! A month ago I was under the impression that 1.5.x was going to be the last version before 2.0.

All of the new features are mentioned in the changelog, but here are some of the bigger things I am excited about this release.

(Note: readers who don’t know EE will not understand much of what I’m saying.)

Custom Category Fields. I was so so excited to learn that this was coming in 1.6. With Custom Category Fields you can create custom fields specific to each category group.

And, there is also a new setting for Category URL Title! YAY! Something I have been waiting for since 2004!

Pages module. The new Pages module makes it easier for you to add pages to your site. Pages are mainly used for more static content. When you want to create a page, you still have to create a new entry in a weblog, but now you can specify a specific URL for the page. And it doesn’t seem to clash with the way I currently organize my static content, which is good.

Note that there already is a Pages module out there by Mark Huot – and since they have the same name, there will be a conflict. Mark Huot’s module has been renamed to Tome. I haven’t used Mark Huot’s module, but based on the activity in the forums it seems to be quite popular.

Hidden templates. With hidden templates you can prevent people from accessing certain templates. Many people, including me, use the {embed} variable to include certain templates into other templates, so that you can use one snippet of code in one template in many different templates. I don’t want others to access the snippets of code directly, so the hidden template feature will definitely come in handy.

Relaxed categories parameter. I will quote the changelog for this one:

Added new parameter relaxed_categories= to the Weblog Entries tag to allow use of category indicator in weblog entries tag pulling entries from multiple weblogs that do NOT share category groups

My first thought when I read this was, “huh?? What does that mean?” Then I realized it fixes something I ran into a long time ago. So, yay! It means shorter URLs and less templates to worry about.

Link to next/previous entry in the restricted by category. Two parameters category=”“ and category_group=”“ were added to the Weblog Module’s Next/Previous Entry Linking tag, which means we can finally restrict next/previous links for an entry to another entry in the same category, or any other specific category.

New Multi Site Manager Add-on. I’m not sure whether I like this. This is a new paid add-on (not a module/plugin/extension, but an add-on). With it, you can easily manage multiple sites under one installation of ExpressionEngine. This add-on was previewed earlier this month. When I first read about it, I was confused because I thought that you could already run multiple sites in ExpressionEngine – why did was there a new add-on to do it? Then I watched the video and saw how much more powerful this add-on is. Each site has its own separate settings, template groups, weblogs, and so on, but the member groups can be shared between all of them. The Multi Site Manager supports 3 sites, and if you want to add more you have to pay for each additional site.

The thing is that with the release of this Multi Site Manager, the old way of running multiple sites with ExpressionEngine will not be officially supported. I’m using this old method to run this website, my journal on a subdomain, and another weblog on another subdomain, all using the same version of EE. I’m worried that since this old method is not supported any more, one day as EE gets updated the old method will stop working. I don’t want to rely on an old method just in case something happens.

I could just purchase the MSM and forget about the old method. :p But I’m still trying to decide whether it’s worth it. (I am tempted to purchase just to try it out – that’s how I got the paid Forum module!!)

Other.

• There’s a new default theme, which matches the look of the new ExpressionEngine website.
• The Template Management page now shows different icon images next to each different template type. This will replace the lovely Template management with images extension that I had installed.
• “Modified default control panel styling of <h3> tags to no longer align text to the right.” Heh, this one bothered me although I never did bother to fix it in my custom CP themes.
• If you’re updating from there are some update notices to go through first.
• All the entries in the Multiple Rick Birthday Contest are quite funny!

I’m planning on playing with this new release even more over the weekend.

Since I recently made a post with a picture of a sea otter (“recently” was 3 months ago, but it’s only 2 posts down from this one, heh), I thought I’d link to this cute cute video of sea otters holding hands. I first found the link to the video off BoingBoing.net, but it has been linked all over the place too. The video, posted onto YouTube, caught the attention of the CBC and they did a news segment on the otters, which are found in the Vancouver Aquarium.

Just over a month ago, I took 3 weeks off from work and took the All Asia Pass offered by Cathay Pacific to travel around Asia. With the Pass, you get to fly to up to 23 cities in Asia within 21 days. You have to arrange your own hotel and so on though. I went with a friend to Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong, and I had the most amazing time. Other than Hong Kong, I’d never been to any of those countries before. It was much more fun going around by ourselves instead of following a tour (most trips I’ve taken before this was by joining a tour).

In Thailand, I decided to send a postcard to myself, and it arrived here (finally) today:

I’m still in the process of uploading pics … they should be up in my LJ scrapbook once I’m done.

Next year I’m seriously thinking of taking the All Asia Pass again and seeing more countries like the Phillipines, Singapore and Indonesia.

The other week I got a scanner in the house. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a scanner to play with (except back at school, a long time ago) and I am so ecstatic.

I had to scan in this postcard I have to set as my desktop wallpaper:

(click on the image for the full scan)

On the back of the postcard it says the photographer is F. Stuart Westmorland. Isn’t it cute?

I’m thinking of scanning in all of my Absolut ads but that’ll take forever.

Yesterday I went to the pMachine site and got a huge shock – not only a fantastic new design, but a new name, as well! pMachine has now become EllisLab.

I just stared at the screen in awe for a good minute or so before reading the news.

The pMachine EllisLab, ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter and EngineHosting (formerly pMachineHosting) sites have all been redesigned by Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain of 31Three, and they are all running on the same installation of ExpressionEngine. It looks like the members list for CodeIgniter and ExpressionEngine have been merged, and the forums for each of them too. There’s going to be an article from Jesse at the Digital Web Magazine about how he designed these sites.

Congrats to everyone at EllisLab for the wonderful job. I’m so excited to see the new stuff that they’re going to be coming up with next!