Pie Palace

For those who don’t know “QuickPress” is the admin widget that allows you to blog from your Wordpress dashboard. The latest Miniposts revision (0.6.10) adds a minipost checkbox to the QP widget. Thanks to Lan for suggesting this.

Update: I spent most of the week being sick as hell. This is delayed one week.

Like most of the world, I think Barack Obama is awesome (viz: this video). But I don’t know much about him. So I picked up his autobiography and I’m intending to read it in January. If you’re interested in reading Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, here’s my blogging/reading schedule:

• January 11 – Introduction and Chapter 1 to 4.
  
• January 18 – Chapter 5 to 10.
  
• January 25 – Chapter 11 to 15.
  
• February 1 – Chapter 16 to, uh, the epilogue.

Which is a pretty easy schedule: a mere 110 pages a week. If you feel like it, grab a copy of the book and read along with me. If you don’t, just crib my comments and pretend you’ve read it yourself!

Have you ever wished, fellow blogger, that you had a way to tell your readers when you comment on somebody else’s blog? I have. Whenever I comment on dubroy.com (for example), I’d like my blog to show that I did that.

I’ve put together the Elsewhere plugin to do that magic. When you comment on a blog with Elsewhere installed, that blog will ping the URL you entered in the ‘Website’ field on the comment form. If that website has Elsewhere installed, a link to your comment will be displayed in your sidebar.

Miniposts 0.6.8 is now out. It’s another fix release that removes post duplication issues, cleans up the preferences page, and fixes a couple of bugs with the smiley code that nataan contributed.

The big news is that the miniposts plugin is now hosted on Wordpress autoinstallation site, meaning that installation and upgrades should be easy peasy. Since this is my first hosted plugin, I’ve taken a quickie screenshot, so I can remember when my plugin’s average rating was 5/5:

Triple Beaver winning (and donut eating) blogger Zoom has joined Blogawa! If you would like to join Blogawa, fill out an application.

And Happy Festivus!

I’m an atheist¹ but I really do enjoy the Christmas season. It has everything I love: snow, time off, parties, a reason to see friends, and an excuse for binge drinking. Given the length of the Ontario winter, I’ve always thought that we should have Christmas sometime in late January, but I’m rarely consulted on these matters.

Here’s the first (and possibly last) Annual Pie Palace Gift List

Canadian Electorate

Over the past year, Canadians have stayed away from the polls in droves, and expressed consternation when opposition parties did their job and opposed poorly considered legislation.

• What they want: A Prime Minister like Barack Obama.
• What they deserve: A remedial civics lesson, explaining why voting is important, and the role of the opposition.
• What they will get: A Prime Minister like George Bush (namely Stephen Harper).

Iraqi Shoe Thrower

Muntadar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at George Bush, yelling “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.” An event already immortalized across the intertubes by numerous animated gifs and at least one (crappy) flash game.

• What he wants: Stability in Iraq. (presumably)
• What he deserves: Stability in Iraq, and a new pair of shoes.
• What he will get: A long jail term, likely with abuse. (It looks like the abuse has already started)

Green Party Candidate Jen Hunter

Poor Jen. She ran as Green Party candidate in Ottawa-Centre during the 2008 federal election, getting 9.9% of the vote. If she’d gotten an extra 38 votes, she would have gotten 10%, and Elections Canada would have refunded 50% of her campaign expenses to the party.

• What she wants: A seat in Parliament.
• What she deserves: 39 more votes.
• What she will get: A new iPhone, and possibly a scarf.

OC Transpo’s Bus Drivers

Poor bus drivers. They just want their 7% raise over three years, and a contract that will allow them to set their own hours. Is that too much to ask?²

• What they want: A 7% raise, byzantine scheduling rules that favour drivers with seniority, and a pony for every driver.
• What they deserve: Better public relations.
• What they will get: Back to work legislation.

Stephan Harper

This year has been a bit of a roller coaster for the leader of Canada’s least disliked party. Breaking his own law and calling an election early, getting dissed by the Parliamentary auditor he appointed, almost losing the House when his poorly planned fiscal update backfired, and doing anything necessary to hold onto power.

• What he wants: A majority. And a pony.
• What he deserves: Visits from the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future.
• What he will get: A visit from the Ghost of Joe Clarke.

This post is a tardy addition to A&J’s Ottawa Blogger Virtual Christmas Party.

Image credit: AP and AbstractionReaction. Used without permission.

1. Agnostic, to be exact. But “agnostic” sound too noncommittal for my taste. It would probably be more accurate to say that I’m committedly unconvinced of the existence of any higher powers. (back)
2. I’m not sure how I feel about the strike. The union is doing a terrible job at getting their side of the story out. As a bus rider, I want the drivers to be treated fairly, and service to resume – but it’s hard to tell if the drivers’ demands are fair, when I can’t find out what they are. (back)

Finally.

No. I’m not pregnant. But seeing blogawa grow makes me feel like the owner of an ugly dog that nobody likes. Sure, it’s ugly, but sometimes it does something nice, that makes the snickers worth it. In this case, blogawa has sprouted a pair of new contributors: A. and J. of Please Pick-up Your Socks.

I’ve updated miniposts to look nice in Wordpress 2.7. I’ve also included naatan’s smiley goop. Go download 0.6.7 now! (Or wait until Wordpress.org lets me host it in their plugin repository)

This is my five hundredth published post on Pie Palace. That doesn’t include the half written drafts, nor the posts I deleted before publishing. But it does include:

• My first post, which, unsurprisingly complains that reporters are all too human. And adept at missing the real story behind an event.
• The coverage of the 2006 Green Party Leadership Race. And my complaining when David Chernushenko came in second.
• My eulogy for Rosa Parks. My belief that people who don’t know how to write also don’t know how to read was confirmed by the first comment. (Why bother to write a response when you haven’t bothered to read the post?)
• Waaay too many Green Party posts.
• Posts about my pet projects: Blogawa and engagement announcement.
• The progress of my masters thesis.

• I’ve seen fit to comment on 116 good things, but only 81 bad things. In the worst case, that means I’m an optimist.
• Only 26% (134 of 500 posts) are marked as being self absorbed, meaning I have to start commenting on my breakfast more often.
• My first post was in January, 2005. I’ve posted roughly once every two days. I clearly need a life.

Except for the occasional slip, I’ve managed to avoid posting personal information, compromising pictures, nudity, LOLcats, useless links, and drunken rants. I’ll try to do something about that over the next 500 posts.

Image credit: Mrs Magic.