JoePahl.is

Phish – 6.30.2012 “Golden Age” -> “Also Sprach Zarathustra”

Joe Pahl — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:25:28 +0000

A post worthy jam from this weekend. Why did I skip the first leg? DOH!!!

Alpine Valley, WI 2012-06-30 "Golden Age" -> "Also Sprach Zarathustra"

Work in Progress

Joe Pahl — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:55:31 +0000

This is a new theme I’ve been tinkering with. It started out as a responsive design sandbox, but I want to develop it into a polished WP theme and eventually publish it.

If you don’t know about responsive design, drag the window to change it’s size. Magic!

Michele Bachmann gets a snarky salute from the Roots

Joe Pahl — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:22:37 +0000

We already know that Jimmy Fallon has the best house band in late-night, but this takes it to another level. Last night the Roots greeted Michele Bachmann with a Fishbone song that expresses the feelings that many people share for the Republican nominee.

Don’t get it? Neither did I, but thanks to Twitter…

aight late night walkon song devotees: you love it when we snark: this next one takes the cake. ask around cause i aint tweeting title.

November 22, 2011 1:07 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@questlove

Questo of The Roots

Questlove hinted that they had something special planned, but didn't name the song outright.

@questlove L.A.B.? Wowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowowow

November 22, 2011 1:13 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@PRBLMMTC

Ronald Clark

I wouldn't have figured it out if it weren't for another hint. Questlove retweeted this a little while later.

The Late Night website removed Bachmann’s intro and walk-on from the interview clip. Hopefully Hulu keeps full episode intact. I tip my hat to the Roots.

Check out the original 1985 Fishbone track.

Lyin’ Ass Bitch
Lalalala Lalalalala
Lalalala Lalalalala
Lalalala Lalalalala
Lalalala Lalalalala
I knew her and she knew me
When she asks me to introduce him
When I did we were three
Until she tried to seduce him
I really thought our love was much too strong
But that little slut just proved us wrong
I still care and that’s my fatal flaw
Cause sharing you will surely kill us all!
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she loves you but you know she don’t care
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she needs you but you know she really don’t care
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she loves you but you know she don’t care
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she needs you but you know she really don’t care
She swears that her heart’s for you
And she swears that her love never ends
She swears that she’s all for you
As she messes around with your friends
I really thought our love was much too strong
But that little slut just proved us wrong
I still care and that’s my fatal flaw
Cause sharing you will surely kill us all!!
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she loves you but you know she don’t care
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she needs you but you know she really don’t care
She’s just a…
Lalalala Lalalalala
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she loves you but you know she doesn’t
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she says she loves you but you know she doesn’t
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
You know she’s got you pussy-whipped but you’re not sorry!
You’re nothing but a little lyin’ ass bitch!
She’s just so full of shit…
this is dedicated
to lyin’ ass Yvette
The lyin’, piece of, sack of shit
Slut trash can scummy
Dirt bag… Biiiitch!!!!!!!
— L. Grant, K. Jones, A. Moore

Phish – 7.1.11 “Peaches En Regalia”

Joe Pahl — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:43:03 +0000

Not perfect, but Phish doesn’t have an orchestra backing them up. I think this would make Frank smile.

Trey’s sounding great this summer.

Phish – 7.1.11 "Peaches En Regalia"

Happy 4th of July!

Joe Pahl — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:12:25 +0000

Chinese Character Count in PHP

Joe Pahl — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 01:44:06 +0000

I just spent five hours banging my head against the wall trying to figure this out. In hopes that I can prevent someone else from suffering the same fate, I decided to share this.

Background & Issues:

Chinese characters are word symbols rather than letters. A word count is impossible because there are no spaces between words.

Instead you have to do a character count. Unfortunately using a substring (PHP: substr()) won’t work because Chinese characters are encoded in Unicode.

Keep in mind that the $content string is UTF-8 encoded. Each Chinese character is composed of multiple characters. A ten character long string is equal to only three UTF-8 Chinese characters.

$content = '有史以來最好的網站';
// In Unicode (UTF-8) this string equals '%E6%9C%89%E5%8F%B2%E4%BB%A5%E4%BE%86%E6%9C%80%E5%A5%BD%E7%9A%84%E7%B6%B2%E7%AB%99'

$excerpt = substr($content, 0, 10);
// substr() does not recognize Unicode characters, this results in broken characters at the end of the excerpt.

echo $excerpt;

The above snippet will output:

有史以�

(The black-diamond-question-mark symbol denotes a broken Unicode character.)

Solution:

The multi-byte string cut function mb_strcut()) function recognizes encoded characters and removes partially encoded characters from the return value.

$content = '有史以來最好的網站';

$excerpt = mb_strcut($content, 0, 10, 'UTF-8');

echo $excerpt;

The above snippet will output:

有史以

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Gets Skooled

Joe Pahl — Wed, 25 May 2011 18:47:26 +0000

"Germans be good at bein' austere!"

Dynamic Light App or Marty McFly’s Hand

Joe Pahl — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:20:17 +0000

To be honest, I had never heard of HDR (or HDRI) until the iPhone 4 came out. It wasn’t until today that I learned that the initials stand for high-dynamic-range imaging. The only reason I know now is because of my new favorite photo app – Dynamic Light.

Since I’m learning about HDR for the first time, I’m not going to try and explain it. According to Wikipedia:

High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wide dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.

In short, the Dynamic Light app gives you control of the HDR settings. You can dial up or down the dynamic range between light and dark. Additionally, the app has filters that you can apply to your images.

Dynamic Light is published by MediaChance. The $0.99 iPhone app is a steal, especially considering they sell a desktop version of this software for $55. Dynamic Light has replaced Instagram as my favorite photo editing app (though I will still use Instagram to upload images).

I took this pic on a recent trip to the Seattle area. The original image isn’t very impressive, but the iPhone HDR version combined a frame with the hand and a frame without the hand, giving the image a cool effect. With Dynamic Light I was able to turn this “mistake” into something interesting. Here’s a sampling of what you can do with the app:

The Original

The Original HDR

There are more examples of Dynamic Light pics in my Flickr photostream.

Custom Taxonomies with WPML + My First Contribution to the WordPress Codex

Joe Pahl — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:35:33 +0000

This may be a rare case, but if you call the get_terms(); function to retrieve a custom taxonomy array, and you are using the WPML (WordPress Multilingual) plugin for language translation, there is an ~~undocumented~~ (see below) argument that you will need to use.

If, for example, your custom taxonomy, “Birds,” has a the following terms: hummingbird, sparrow, dove, crow, parrot, hawk. You can use WPML to add Spanish translations: colibrí, gorrión, paloma, cuervo, loro, halcón. To display a list of the birds taxonomy, you would call:

$terms = get_terms('birds');

$count = count($terms);
if ($count > 0) {
$bird_list = '

;

foreach

(

$terms

$term

)

{

$bird_list

' . $term->name . '

;

}

$bird_list

';
echo $bird_list;
}

/****************************************

Regardless of which language is selected, this snippet will display:

colibrí
crow
cuervo
dove
gorrión
halcón
hawk
hummingbird
loro
paloma
parrot
sparrow
*/

To get a language specific set of terms, you need to set the taxonomy argument along with the parameter:

$args = array( 'taxonomy' => 'birds' );

$terms = get_terms('birds', $args);

$count = count($terms); $i=0;
if ($count > 0) {
$birds_list = '

';
foreach ($terms as $term) {
$i++;
$birds_list .= '. $term->slug . '" title="' . sprintf(__('View all post filed under %s', 'localization_domain'), $term->name) . '">' . $term->name . '';
if ($count != $i) $birds_list .= ' · '; else $birds_list .= '

';
}
echo $birds_list;
}

/****************************************

In English, this snippets‎ displays:

crow · dove · hawk · hummingbird · parrot · sparrow

In Spanish:

colibrí · cuervo · gorrión · halcón · loro · paloma
*/

So that I never again have to look up this detail, I decided to write this post. Halfway through writing, I realized that if there was something missing on the get_terms Function Reference Page, I should just add it. And so, I did.

To explain when to use the taxonomy argument, I added this example:

This was my first experience editing the WordPress Codex. It feels good to contribute to a resource that I have depended on for so long. Hopefully, someone finds what I added useful.

Thanks to Kaaviar for the tip.

Sizing oEmbeds in WordPress

Joe Pahl — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:28:44 +0000

I have been a fan of the auto-embed feature in WordPress ever since it was introduced. Auto-embeds are powered by the oEmbed protocol. When you enter a YouTube link, the protocol grabs the embed from YouTube and displays it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCENBce_dls

Being stuck with one size when inserting auto-embeds has been the only flaw I’ve encountered. You can, however, use a shortcode to set the maximum height and width of an individual video.

[embed width="460" height="400"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esUMvBL3gnY[/embed]

This is great, but there is still an issue if you have different layout widths. If, for example, the width of your blog’s content area is 460px, but the single post template is wider, then you may want to set the embed width dynamically. I had to deal with this on a recent project and the solution was easier than I had imagined. All you have to do is add a filter to the embed_defaults() function and set the height and width values conditionally.

add_filter('embed_defaults', 'custom_embed_defaults');

function custom_embed_defaults($embed_size) {
if (is_single()) { // Conditionally set max height and width
$embed_size['width'] = 640;
$embed_size['height'] = 600;
} else { // Default values
$embed_size['width'] = 460;
$embed_size['height'] = 600;
}
return $embed_size; // Return new size
}

Note: You usually don’t need worry about the height value as long as you
set it high enough. Most embeds are wider than they are tall.

I dropped this snippet in functions.php, but it could easily be turned into a plugin. Hope this help someone. Enjoy!