Aliso the Geek

A coder in love with WordPress

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Hard drive go BOOM.

capt.sge.lzt75.140705170249.photo00.photo.default-384x223Two days ago, I had the pleasure of having my computer crash while I was trying to print something. No problem, I thought, this happens sometimes—after all, I do mess around in the command line enough to actually screw something up now and then. I hold down the power button on my iMac until it shuts down, then press it again and hear the familiar Apple “ding.”

I was then greeted by a folder icon with a question mark on it.

Somehow, my computer had lost the ability to find its own hard drive. My husband and I worked on my computer the rest of the evening—about seven hours that night—and several hours the following day before we could get it to see the drive at all. We still couldn’t boot from it, of course, but at least we could wipe it and reinstall the OS.

We finally succeeded, after three tries. The install kept freezing at 2% or so.

I had a two-day-old backup, so I still have most of my data. Time Machine is a godsend, but I turn it off when I play WoW because it brings my frame rate down to around one frame per seven seconds. That’s quite a problem when you’re healing nine other players while fighting Onyxia. I basically lost a weekend’s worth of work, which sucks, but isn’t horrible.

Running a surface scan revealed that after zeroing out my drive, I still inexplicably had corrupt blocks on the drive. My hard drive is probably going to physically fail for good sometime in the near future.

Until I can afford (in money AND time) to get a new drive for my computer, I might have to lose another day or two here and there, relying on hourly Time Machine backups to save my butt. Development on SimpleMap and all of my other projects has pretty much come to a halt for the next week at least.

Trust me—I don’t like this any more than you SimpleMap users out there do. I’ll do what I can to get 1.2 out of beta soon.

Blog

SimpleMap 1.2b3: Major bug fix

I just posted SimpleMap version 1.2b3 to the WordPress repository. This update fixes a few bugs and adds a couple of niceties:

  • The bug preventing the database from being created is FIXED.
  • The Search function correctly searches Name, Description and Tags (but not Category yet).
  • You can now choose an address format for the “city” line. There are seven different format options.
  • The page now scrolls up to the map when you click on a result in the list.
  • Changing a location’s address in Quick Edit forces you to re-geocode before saving the changes.
  • “No Results Found” is now a translatable string.
  • A location’s phone number now has a “Phone:” label in the info bubble as well as the results list.

A huge thanks to all my beta testers and translators. I’ve been keeping the translation files updated with each beta release, so please send me your .po files once you’ve translated them.

Blog

List of known bugs in SimpleMap 1.2b2

I have barely had time to work on SimpleMap lately, but I’m hoping to get a lot done on it this weekend to get 1.2 out of beta.

For the benefit of anyone using the beta, here are the bugs I’m aware of:

  • Tables aren’t created on install (this is a BIG one; it’s first on my list to fix)
  • Distance conversion/calculation error—differs from Google’s distance estimate when kilometers are used
  • Search for keywords not working properly (FULLTEXT error)
  • “No Results Found” is not being translated
  • Need to add options for the display order of address elements (i.e. putting postal code ahead of city for certain countries)

I’m hoping to pound through all of these this weekend, so we’ll see how it goes.

Blog

Fugue Sprite background-positioning fixed

A friend alerted me to the fact that some browsers weren’t showing the Fugue Sprite properly: everything was showing up as the topmost icon in the image (for example, the first 100 sprites all had the Address Book icon).

I did fix it, and I uploaded the new CSS to both my demo page and the ZIP file. Enjoy!

Fugue Sprite CSS (684 KB)

Blog

Fugue Sprite CSS

Any Blueprint users out there have probably heard of SilkSprite, a plugin for Blueprint that provides easy access to the entire Silk Icon Set from famfamfam. It’s basically a CSS file and a single image that you can use in any website, whether or not you use Blueprint.

I came across the Fugue icon set a few months ago, and I’m using is often enough that I decided to make something similar to the SilkSprite. I created the Fugue Sprite: a CSS file & set of images that provides easy access to all 2,330 Fugue icons.

To use it, just unzip the file and upload that folder to your server. Then link to the stylesheet. Voilà! Now you can use the Fugue class names on any element in your website to give it a left-aligned background of that Fugue icon, with 20 pixels of padding on the left.

Make sure the images stay in the same folder as the stylesheet.

The Fugue icon set is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, so if you use it, be sure to provide a link back to Pinvoke giving them credit for the icons. Enjoy!

Fugue Sprite CSS (684 KB)

View the complete set of icons & classes.

Blog

SimpleMap 1.2 Beta is almost here!

I made some incredible progress on version 1.2 over the weekend (I used a couple of vacation days from work, so yesterday was really the end of my weekend). The ability to have multiple maps with only specified categories is DONE. I haven’t fully tested it yet, but that’s what a beta is for! The shortcode for displaying a map with all categories will still be the same:

[simplemap]

If you want to show only specific categories, you just need to do this:

[simplemap categories=4,12]

…where 4 and 12 are the ID numbers of the categories you want to show. The ID number of a category is automatically generated and will be shown in the Manage Categories screen for easy reference.

Also, categories are just better in general now; if you change a category’s name, it will update it in all the affected locations. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s much better than it used to be.

Tags are done, as is the ability to search them. The search now looks in the name, description, category, AND tags.

I found a great CSV processing class that should improve that functionality tenfold. Hopefully my beta testers will help confirm this!

In order to get these changes out there, I’m not going to include custom map markers in 1.2. They are next on the list and will come in 1.2.1. I’m really pushing myself on this and I’m hoping to get the beta out in the next day or two. Keep in mind that the beta should NOT be used in a production environment, because there’s no guarantee that it’s free of bugs and defects.

Blog

SimpleMap Support Forums are live!

Support Forums are live!

SimpleMap Support Forums are now live! Click on the “Forum” link in the header to get to them. You can post in the forums without having to register, but you will have to provide your name and email address. I will leave the comments open on the SimpleMap page for now, but I strongly encourage anyone with a support-type question to post in the forums. This is my first time hosting or administering a forum, so please bear with me as I learn the ropes!

A huge thanks to Simple:Press Forum for making this possible. The plugin is so easy to use! It even gave me a couple of ideas for improving SimpleMap’s usability.

Blog

SimpleMap Support Forum coming soon

Forum ScreenshotThe number of comments on the SimpleMap page has now surpassed 150. I am so grateful for all of the feedback I have gotten from users! The downside of this is that the issues/bugs users have reported are sometimes getting lost in the sea of comments. Even though I’m keeping track with my own issue tracker, it’s hard to keep up and make sure I respond to everyone and maintain the level of support I want to provide.

In light of this, I am working on a support forum for SimpleMap. I’m using the awesome Simple:Press forum plugin for it. I’m extremely impressed with Simple:Press so far—I’ve seen my husband set up other forums in the past, and this install was so much easier than any of those. The level of control and customization blows me away, especially for a completely free plugin!

That little donation module in the top-right corner of the Simple:Press site is a pretty great idea. I might be adding something similar soon… we’ll see.

Blog

A fantastic script for making customized Google Map markers

I stumbled across this script after an email from a SimpleMap user, who wanted some help figuring out where in my code he could program his own map markers. The code he sent back led me to this tool—albeit through a long period of site-to-site surfing—that I will use in SimpleMap 1.2 to allow for custom map markers. I wanted to give everyone a sneak peek, and also share this tool with anyone looking for this kind of functionality in their own project.

Check out the demo!

Reference: MapIconMaker v1.1 Reference
Source: mapiconmaker.js

You can look forward to some truly great marker customization in SimpleMap 1.2!