Monthly Archives: February 2004

For a while now, I’ve wished for a WordPress hack that would utilize Amazon’s web services and allow you to update my music and books with a click of a button, and a few days ago my wish came true.

Denyerec emailed me a few days ago and asked me if I’d test an Amazon Media hack he made for WordPress, of course I would. After a few days of emails being sent back and forth, Amazon Media 1.0 has been released to the public. With it, you can add books, music or DVDs and display them in variety of ways. I’m currently using it in my side bar and music/book sections of my site. It’s been tested on WP 1.0 and up, but will not work with any earlier versions.

Some of it’s other features are:

• Associate ID support for .com or .co.uk
• Display by book, DVD, music or any combination media type
• Display most recent, recommended or random items
• Filter items by personal recommendation
• Customisable output similar to standard WP template functions

Screenshots – 1 2 3 4

If you want to grab a copy, go here and download it. Or if you want to check out the forum topic on this hack, go here.

I spent an hour or so looking around WordSpy.com today. WordSpy is a web site devoted to indexing new words and phrases that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, web sites, and other sources. Here are a few of my favourites…

• Wardrobe Malfunction – A problem with a part of one’s clothing or an error in fashion judgment. Made famous by Justin Timberlake after the boob incident at the super bowl.
• Movieoke – A form of entertainment in which a person acts out scenes from a movie while a silent version of the movie plays in the background.
• Heteroflexible – A heterosexual person who is open to relationships with people of the same sex.
• Bridezilla – A bride-to-be who, while planning her wedding, becomes exceptionally selfish, greedy, and obnoxious.
• Puppy Leave – Time taken off work to care for and bond with a new puppy.
• Stendhal’s Syndrome – Dizziness, panic, paranoia, or madness caused by viewing certain artistic or historical artifacts or by trying to see too many such artifacts in too short a time.
• Joy-To-Stuff Ratio – The time a person has to enjoy life versus the time a person spends accumulating material goods.
• Presidentialness – The physical and mental qualities that make a person appear to be suitable for the job of United States president.
• Quirkyalone – A person who enjoys being single and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately.

I’m going to tell everyone I’m ‘Quirkyalone’ whenever they ask if I’m dating anyone from now on. It’ll be fun to watch them try to figure it out. 🙂 And I think that ‘Dooced’ should be added to the web site. What’s it mean? Well, when you lose your job due to your blog, you’ve been ‘Dooced’.

I think I speak for most people in Perth when I say ‘fuck you western power’.

We pay our bills and you order us to not use any “non-essential power” today (i.e. air conditioning, pumps, ovens, microwaves, dryers, washing machines, computers, and probably even life support). You practically shut down half of the industry in Perth and if we didn’t do as we were told you threatened to fine us $1000 to $10,000. Yes, we did what you said, but we are not happy about it.

It’s officially ‘I can’t be bothered Wednesday’, a day in which everyone was grumpy, hot and couldn’t be bothered doing anything. Business’s were shut, pools were full, and western power was hated today. I think it should be made a public holiday to pay tribute to West Australians that had to put up with today’s bullshit.

It’s currently 40.5° in Perth and even with the air conditioning up high and blasting out of the air vents I still feel uncomfortable in this humid weather. They say there is a chance of a thunder storm, so I am hoping and dreaming of thundery things today.

Kitta.net is up for Best Australia Camsite in the 2004 Cammies, please go vote for it. I want to say thank you to all the people who nominated Kitta.net and to anyone who’s voting for it. Also I’ve noticed there aren’t many prizes for the winners, so donate something fun if you can.

I’m going to go find a friend with a pool before I start to melt.

I thought that picture would be fitting since its Valentines Day, the day when roses are three times their normal price. So happy Day Of The Expensive Roses to you all.

What a nice surprise. Kitta.net was mentioned in Lars Holet’s entry on ‘Well-Designed Weblogs‘ yesterday. Its volume 2 in a series of entries on good design and lists some inspiring sites and I was happy to find Kitta.net in the mix.

I’m never really satisfied with my site, I tweak daily, but it feels good to be recognised and know that my tweaking is worth it. Thanks Lars. 🙂

Speaking of design, I have no idea where I got the link from, but this color wheel is fantastic. It informs you if a color is web-safe, web-smart or un-safe. It’s one to bookmark.

Some wanker(s) thought that it would a fantastic idea to edit out every acceptance speech during last night’s Grammy’s on channel 7. No, it wasn’t a fantastic idea. I wanted to hear Justin Timberlake’s apology for the super bowl boob incident (or ‘malfunction’ as he put it).

So I have no idea who thanked god, who cried and who has way too many friends and should have just thanked the whole entire world.

Bugger.

I downloaded the new Firefox today. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, I urge you to do so, it’s everything you need in a browser and more. Also, check out this post on the design process that went into the nifty Firefox logo.

Me: “Mmm, cheese.”
My Brother: “What?”
Me: “Lets play the mmm game, I say ‘Mmm (a food type)’ and you reply with ‘Mmm (another food type)'”.
My Brother: “Ok. Mmm, money.”
Me: “You can’t eat money.”
My Brother: “Yeah you can.”
Me: “Alright, eat some money then.”
My Brother: “Nah, I’m not that hungry.”

I picked up some blueberries while I was grocery shopping yesterday and decided to make some blueberry muffins today with them. I just kind of threw together some ingredients (hoping for the best) and made my own recipe on the spot and I thought I’d share the recipe with you all because they turned out really yummy.

• 1-1/4 cups of self-rasing flour sifted
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1/4 cup of butter melted and cooled (I used a lactose free brand)
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup of milk (I used a lactose free milk)
• 100g of blue berries
• 3 tablespoons of caster sugar
• A few drops of vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C and grease a muffin large pan (it makes about 12 muffins). Combine flour and caster/brown sugar in a mixing bowl.
2. Using a fork, whisk butter, egg, milk and vanilla essence together in a jug. Add it and the blueberries to the flour/sugar mix and fold together until just combined.
3. Spoon into the muffin pan and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until a fork inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean. Let them cool for a minute or two and sprinkle some icing sugar over them. Enjoy. 🙂

I updated to the latest version of WordPress today. Normally this would be easy, because WordPress isn’t hard to upgrade, but I have a cold. So the simplest things turn out to be the hardest things. It took me over 1 hour to figure out the database was upgraded and the error messages were normal and not to be concerned about. Grrr. It would have taken me only 5 minutes if my brain wasn’t in ultra slow mode.

I should have spent today in bed, watching the ‘Labyrinth’, ‘Dark Crystal’ and ‘The Luscious Grassy Place Movie’ – I mean, ‘Return To Oz’ – which I scored for $10 each over the weekend.

Anyways, there are still a few things that need tinkering with, such as:

• Re-install the mobile hack
• Re-install the since last visit hack
• Install comment blacklist hack
• Re-do the smiley codes
• Install the grin hack
• Re-code the content (which I’ve been meaning to do for ages)
• Fix the CSS shadow effect around images
• Find out if there a stats hack for this version
• Check if it all validates

Fun times.

This is for the googlers…

• I have no idea how to get on The Oprah Show, I just write smart ass blog entries about oprah show dreams.
• That ‘bat the penguin’ (or spank the pingu) game you are all searching for is here thanks to Mark.
• Spanking of the little red monkey is not advised, but you can spank another monkey here or here.

There was a freelance reporter that emailed me today who was writing an article for The Courier Mail (either in Brisbane or Melbourne, I’m not too sure) and I accidentally deleted the email while deleting some other emails containing mydoom in mail washer. Oops. So if you are that reporter, please email me back.