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Use one image to link to WordPress galleries

Note: If you're not running a WordPress blog and using its built-in gallery feature, the following will be of no interest to you; it's posted here mainly to make it easier for me to find in the future, when I forget it once again.

WordPress includes a simple-but-usable gallery feature. Unfortunately, posts with embedded galleries display a thumbnail for every image in each gallery—and there are no options to limit the display of thumbnails. While fine for shorter galleries, such as this one, if you've got a lot of images, this can make for an ugly page.

What I wanted was the ability to include an image gallery in a post, but not show a thumbnail for every picture in the gallery. Ideally, I'd just be able to use the first image from the gallery, or perhaps even a text link. After a lot of fruitless searching, I finally found the very simple answer in a post by malissas in this thread.

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My iMac’s literal bug

Another lost-to-Google-policies Tweet movie; this time, about a bug in my iMac that was lingering after 24 full hours.

The bug, of course, was a real one; here's the video that's vanished from the above tweet:

Thankfully, the little buggy vanished not soon thereafter, thankfully not remaining onscreen for eternity.



Amazingly fast garage door opener

I posted this to Twitter a year or so ago…

Unfortunately, just after I posted it, Google decided that YouTube accounts also had to have Google Plus accounts, so I closed my YouTube account. So here's the video of those fast garage doors at our local Toyota shop.

These doors are tall, yet roll up in under a second; they come down nearly as quickly, too. The end result is that the service bay entrance area isn't exposed to the elements for any length of time at all.



Behind the scenes: WordPress plug-ins, take three

This marks the third (one, two) in a continuing series of occasional posts about the plug-ins I use to run the site. Since the last update, things have changed a bit.

  • For various reasons, I've had to disable GrowMap Anti-Spambot and Stop Spammers. Anti-spam services are now provided by Akismet, JetPack's comments plug-in, and Sabre.
  • Sliding Read More also bit the dust, because it wasn't compatible with WordPress' built-in Gallery feature.

So much for out with the old…read on to see what's been added…

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Watch It: The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride Blu-rayThe Princess Bride (1987) tells the tale of a stable-boy-turned-pirate's journey to rescue the love of his life; it's based on the 1973 book of the same name.

The film touches on almost every subject imaginable, including pirates, princesses, sword fighting, adventure travel, large evil creatures, good guys and bad guys, true love, death, giants, and even logic-based drinking games. In short, this is not your average kids' fairy tale—and because it's not your average fairy tale, it's a very fun and interesting movie.

There are many wonderfully quotable lines and short tidbits of dialog (You may have heard the most-oft-repeated one: "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." … but there are many others. I suggest you not visit that link until after you've seen the movie, though; there are many spoilers in that collection.)

The cast includes a number of faces you'll recognize, even if you don't recall their names—I found Mandy Patinkin, as the aforementioned Inigo Montoya, particularly entertaining. Cary Elwes, Chris Sarandon and even the late great André the Giant also do a fine job with their roles. Peter Falk narrates (I could listen to that voice all day), in his role as a grandfather telling this tale to his grandson, played by 11-year-old Fred Savage.

It's hard to describe everything you'll experience in this movie, but it's worth experiencing. So if you've been avoiding it (thinking perhaps it was just another kids' film), stop doing so, and give it a look. If you have seen it, but not lately, perhaps it's time to renew your acquaintance? That's what I did over the weekend, in fact.

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How I create digital versions of Blu-ray discs

As I recently wrote about, I'm weird in that I prefer to buy my movies on physical media, versus electronic only. But I also enjoy the benefits that come from having an electronic version of the movie. The recent Frozen Blu-ray release, for example, was perfect: In the box was a Blu-ray, a DVD, and an easy-to-use redemption code for the iTunes digital version.

Other studios, though, want to force me outside the Apple ecosystem, and into the hell that is Ultraviolet. More and more, in fact, this is the norm. Which means I need to make my own digital versions.

For DVDs, this isn't too troublesome (and well documented), but I'm only buying Blu-ray discs now, and that makes things a bit tougher. (Kirk McElhearn discussed Blu-ray viewing/ripping for Macworld last year. Kirk focused on playback; I'm ignoring playback, and expanding on the ripping tutorial.)

If you're interested in creating your own digital copies of your Blu-ray discs, read on to see how I do it.

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A simple URL tester for WordPress

One of the issues with blogs is that, over time, links embedded in posts can break. Sometimes they break in graceful ways (redirecting to an acquiring company's site), sometimes in not so graceful ways ("Site not found!"), and sometimes in downright horrid ways (a porn spammer takes over a URL).

I wanted a way to test any URL in entries I've posted here, so a buddy wrote the basics of a tool to query the database and extract URLs from the posts. I took his core, then did some digging on the web, and mangled together a simple PHP app that will scan all your blog posts for URLs, and test to make sure each one still connects.

The results are displayed in an ugly-but-usable table form:

The first column is the URL being tested, and the second column displays the post numbers where that URL can be found. Any highlighted rows reflect dead links; no highlighting means that the URL opened as expected. Read on for the code and a basic how-to…

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A physical media guy in a digital media world

By today's standards, I'm a throwback, a relic, a technological luddite. Why? Because I enjoy owning movies. No, not "owning" the right to watch a downloaded movie—as you might "buy" from iTunes or Amazon—but owning the actual physical disc that stores the movie's encoded bits. But why, you might ask?

First off, I like everything about the physical product itself, from the case's design to the cover art to the inserts in the case. Many are boring and bland, of course, but some are truly wonderful.

Consider The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Trilogy; the image at right doesn't do the case justice, as it's stunning in person. And when you open it up, you're treated to a wealth of extra content, as seen in these customer photos on Amazon.

Sure, you can get the same thing on iTunes, for the same $49.99…but you can't experience the product's physical extras, nor easily share them with someone else. All you can do is share the onscreen experience with others. Try using the Lord of the Rings maps while watching the movie, for instance. It works, but only if you're using a computer while watching the movie on a TV or another computer.

Or consider the three-disc Blu-ray edition of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone that comes in a very nice case, with printed inserts. (Again, the customer photos show more than does the stock Amazon photography.) You won't get this experience with the digital-only alternative.

I guess I'm just hooked on the tactile feel, appearance, and "solidity" of the physical media. But that's not all.

I also like that many movies offer multiple versions; so for movies that appeal to adults and kids (i.e. Pixar), we keep the DVD version with the kids' stuff, and the Blu-ray version in the "parents only" collection. I also like taking discs to friends' homes for movie parties, or just loaning them out. None of this is easily possible with a digital-only movie.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Just another luddite, afraid to make the digital jump," right?

Actually, that's not it at all: I love the digital versions, too, because of their flexibility. I can "take" them almost anywhere, and watch them almost anywhere. But I want those versions in addition to the physical versions, not in lieu of the physical versions. That way, if something happens to the authorizing agency down the line, my movies won't all vanish in a puff of digital smoke. If I can't buy a movie with a usable digital version, I just make my own (but that's a story for another day).

I do make exceptions at times, of course. When Apple sold a bunch of movie collections on the cheap, I took advantage. And recently, I discovered that I can get an HD version of the not on Blu-ray Real Genius, but only via the iTunes Store. So I'll be purchasing that, as it's not likely we'll see a Blu-ray version any time soon.

But outside of those exceptions, I will always (until there's no way to do so) prefer to purchase the physical version of a movie over the digital-only version. Call me a throwback, a dinosaur, a stuck-in-the-00s guy if you must, but I love my physical media plus digital versions; I really find it's the best of both worlds.



Watch It: Real Genius

Real Genius [DVD]I cannot recall the first time I saw Real Genius (1985), but it wasn't in the theater.

Whenever it was, the movie made enough of an impression that it became one of my fave comedies—something that's still true today. I owned it on VHS, I own it on DVD, and if it comes out on Blu-ray, I'll probably buy that, too. (I noticed while writing this that the iTunes version is listed as HD, so I may have to invest in that one.)

The cast is a bunch of names you've never heard of, except for a very young Val Kilmer. The plot centers on two geniuses at a college, working together on a laser project that just happens to have military applications.

There are any number of hilarious mini sub-plots running through the movie, and Val Kilmer is very funny as the older genius at the college. Toss in a guy living in the basement below the closet, a lottery fix, a sexy woman on a mission, ice skating in a dorm hallway, and a slew of one-liners, and you've got a recipe for a very entertaining 108 minutes of movie fun. Thought provoking? No. Well-developed plot? Not so much. But fun? Yea, it's got that to spare.

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Do Dropbox droppers do due diligence?

Apparently Dropping Drobpox is a thing now, because Condoleeza Rice has been named to the board of directors. I'm aware of at least two prominent people (Chris Breen and Mark Frauenfelder) who have publicly discussed their Dropbox departures, and I assume there are many more.

First, I admire these folks' convictions and follow-through on those convictions. For me, Dropbox is too ingrained in what I do to make such a switch. Additionally, I don't believe someone sitting on the Board of Directors of a company is reason enough to change my practices relative to that company's products.

However, for those who feel strongly about Ms. Rice, I assume they'd want to avoid any companies that have directors with similar backgrounds, right? In order to make such decisions, they need to do due diligence on any company whose products they might like to use.

To ease that task, I put together a brief list, based strictly on companies having board members involved in the military-industrial complex, and who may have been active in the same timeframe as Condoleeza Rice.

The first entry in the list may be somewhat surprising…

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