Ramblings of a Programmer

I just installed a new plugin for WordPress that detects mobile browsers for mobile devices like the iPhone or iPod touch and automatically presents the blog in a way that is better suited for mobile browsers.

WordPress recently released version 2.9.1. I have tried a couple of times to upgrade using the automated upgrade option within the blog. Each time, it would throw messages about not having required permissions to perform the upgrade. It appears that the automated upgrade will not work on my hosting provider.

So, I took the time to download the update and performed the install manually tonight. It took a little while to make sure I got everything copied up to the site and not overwrite something important. It appears that the upgrade went well.

I realized that I have not posted an updated photo of Aaron lately.  He is growing like a weed.  Since I last posted about him, he is getting around all over the place and trying to talk.  They grow up way too fast.  You can click on the photo to see a larger version.

The update to WordPress 2.9 is complete although it did not occur without some glitches. I had to manually make some changes to the database so some of the new features would work properly, but I learned something in the process.

WordPress 2.9 was released today.  Needless to say, I am a bit behind on my upgrades.  I am currently running WordPress 2.2.3.  I am not sure what steps the upgrade will require, so the blog might be down at times over the next few days.

Aaron has just started pulling up and standing by using things around him. This is the first time that I have seen him stand up without any help of another person.My wife mentioned today that he fed himself some small bits of cheese, diced pears, and crackers.  They grow up so fast and sometimes we miss some of these wonderful moments.  We have to make the best of all the moments that we have with them.

There are just a few days left to get in on the contest to win a Drobo at Managing Your Digital Life.

OK… get your minds out of the gutter.  After a couple of years of being in total love with the combination of Firefox Greasemonkey, I started using Google’s Chrome browser.  Right off, I missed the functionality that was gained with the Greasemonkey plugin and various scripts that I had downloaded from userscripts.org.  After a few weeks of using Chrome and realizing that its speed has won me over, I thought I would look around to see about using Greasemonkey with Chrome.  I found what I was looking for tonight in Greasemetal.

Greasemetal is a userscript runtime which hosts javascript files for use with Google Chrome just as Greasemonkey does for Firefox.  I have tried a few of my favorite scripts for Flickr and all seem to work well so far.  Check out the Greasemetal web site to get the installation file.

Yeah… you know how the say goes.  Between work and the baby, I have not had much time to participate in the things that I enjoy like photography, geocaching, etc.  My blog has suffered greatly as well.  I realized tonight that I am on such an old version of Wordpress (2.2.3) that I might have to scrap everything and start fresh.  I am not really sure what the upgrade path would be or if there even is one for that big of a gap.

I’ve been using twitter more and more as of late.  As long as you do not have too many people to follow, it is actually manageable.  You can follow me at http://twitter.com/kwsanders.

My wife and I were sitting at Children’s Hospital this morning with our family waiting on news about our baby’s surgery.  He was born with a cleft lip and surgery was planned to repair it today.  We received many recommendations for the surgeon that is performing the surgery.  Some recommendations came as far away as people in Pensacola who traveled to Birmingham with their child just to see Dr. John Grant III.  He is a very respected surgeon in this field.

Update:  I wanted to leave an update on the surgery from earlier today.  It was a success.  Everything went well during the surgery, which lasted about 3 hours.  As the surgeon put it, “everything fell into place” and he did not have to do any major reconstruction to fix his left nostril which was sort of pulled flat due to the cleft lip.  The lip line looks fantastic and since our little trooper did have his Cupid’s Bow, when things were pulled together, the stitches fell right along the line of the left side of the Cupid’s Bow, so the scar may not be noticeable at all.