The dev team at K2 released an update to K2 0.9, so I updated the 3 Column K2 to 0.9.1 as the new K2 release (0.9.1) fixes a number of bugs and is a recommended upgrade. I have removed all the IE hacks I added in the previous release and modified the css, which I hope fixes all the issues we had in the previous release. For me this looks like the best 3 Column K2 release so far. So, go download it from the 3 Column K2 page and let me know if you still find anything wrong.
Monthly Archives: August 2006
Windows Live writer, UTW and Tag4Writer
I came to know that many Mac users use either Ecto or Mars Edit as their desktop blogging client. My previous idea works in those clients too and infact from any blogging client. Now I want to show how to customize the existing tagging plugin, Tag4Writer for Windows Live Writer. Tag4Writer enables insertion of a list into a template for tags. By default it comes with various templates for Technorati, Delicious, Flickr, IceRocket, Buzznet, 43 things, Live Journal, but there’s no support for local tags in wordpress. We need to add our WordPress blog as a new template in the plugin and just add tags from the plugin interface. This idea is similar to my previous one of using Ultimate Tag Warrior’s embedded tags option.
- Go to Ultimate Tag Warrior options page and then check the box next to use embedded tags option.
- Go to the Windows Live Writer plugins folder and open the xml file (SmilingGoat.WindowsLiveWriter.TagTemplates.xml) in a text editor and add the following code just above the last line and save it. Give your own blog name and blog url in the following code.
- In Windows Live Writer, go to plugins section and open the options for Tag list generator. In the Template drop down box you can see your blog name that you have added in the xml file. Select it. Once you have selected your blog from the list, it remains same everytime.
- Now in the Tag list HTML Template section add the following code and close the plugin preferences.
- Write a post in Windows Live Writer and at the end of the post, click on Insert tags from the sidebar. Write your tags separated by commas and click on insert.
- Publish your post and Ultimate Tag Warrior adds those tags to your post automatically. That’s it.
When you try to edit this post after publishing, you can still see the tags you added, if you want to change them. Ok, I am able to add tags but how to pull the existing tags on my WordPress blog and how to get tag suggestions. If anyone got any ideas or solutions please share with me. I hope someone writes a plugin for UTW with all its features. Sorry for taking so long to post this guys. Happy Blogging…
Ferrari on roll at Istanbul as Massa claims his maiden pole
Massa has done it, the first pole position of his Formula One carrer at Turkish GrandPrix. Michael Schumacher dominated saturday’s third and final practice session of the Turkish Grand Prix weekend, but his team mate Massa was the man who beat him in the Qualifying. It looked all day that no one can stop Schumacher and Ferrari this weekend, but Schumacher who was up all the time in Qualifying went mysteriously slow in his final lap of the session to claim 2nd behind his teammate. With Alonso and Fisichella behind Ferrari in the second row, its looks all good for Ferrari and schumacher. Mclaren who looked strong in the previous 3 races had a difficult session with Raikkonen 8th and his team mate in 12th. Ferrari lock out the front row and with their title rivals Renault behind them, it looks like the Race is going to be a fascinating one. As usual, I will try to review the complete Race tommorow.
Windows Live Writer and Ultimate Tag Warrior
Ten days back Microsoft shocked the blogging world with their wonderful desktop blogging application, Windows Live writer. You can go through some great reviews by some great bloggers in the blogosphere. As a Windows user, I too was playing with this for the past 10 days to customize it for WordPress and one thing I realized was it’s lack of support for tags. Windows Live Writer doesn’t have the support for tags by default but they have released an API by which you can extend the capabilities of Windows Live Writer.
I use Christine’s kickass Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for tags on my blog. Infact my theme, K2 comes prepackaged with support for UTW. So, this goes to all the K2 users using Windows Live Writer too. David Brunelle wrote how to make these two killer applications work together based on some existing hacks. His hack involves editing WordPress xmlrpc.php to add Ultimate Tag Warrior functionality to Windows Live Writer and use its inbuilt keywords section to convert them to tags. This works, but I am not comfortable with the idea of editing any WordPress files. No offence to David here but there is a simple way for adding tags using Ultimate Tag Warrior and Windows Live Writer.
- Go to Ultimate Tag Warrior options page and then check the box next to use embedded tags option.
- Write a post in Windows Live Writer and at the end of the post just use the following format to add tags to your post.
Here tag1, tag2, tag3 are the tags you want to add to the post you just created.
- Publish your post and Ultimate Tag Warrior adds those tags to your post automatically. That’s it.
No need of editing any WordPress files. When you try to edit this post after publishing, you can still see the tags you added, if you want to change them. This method for Ultimate Tag Warrior works from any blogging application. I know some people will ask me, why should I type some extra words like [tag]..[/tags], when David’s idea lets me just type in my tags in the keywords section. I got an answer for that too. It involves Timheuer’s Tag4Writer plugin for Windows Live Writer where you can just click on insert tags and enter your tags. I will write about it in my next post.
Note: Thanks to Christine for suggesting this idea.
Spectacular crash
I have been watching Formula one only from the end of the 1999 season when Micheal Schumacher came back from a leg injury of his high speed crash at Silverstone. After watching almost every race from then, I have started collecting videos of previous years races which I missed. Recently I found this video of spectacular crash at 1998 Belgian Grand Prix where 16 cars crashed. The Formula one archives says only 14 people retired though. But still its a must watch video. Njoy.
Google talk gets new features
Google released a new version of its one year old google talk with some great features.
File transfer: Google blog claims that this was the top requested feature by their users, and they have just done what every one is looking for. You can share any type of file, any size and any number of times if you like. I tested this by sending diff types of files and in diff sizes and it worked perfect. File transfer is fast.
Google Talk makes a direct connection to your friend’s computer whenever possible, enabling the fastest speed available. And even if your super-secure firewall won’t allow a direct connection, we’ll still get it there at a decent speed, because we’re nice like that.
Voicemail: Now you can leave voicemails to any of your google talk contacts when they dont answer your call. Cool.
Music status sharing: Now this is more fun. You can show your friends what you are listening in winamp or itunes. Just change you status to Show current music track and they can see the song your’e listening to as your status message.
3 Column K2 0.9 Release
K2 0.9 Released, so 3 Column K2 was also released. It got all the features the original K2 comes with including sidebar modules. Its just a switch between original K2 and 3 Column K2. Many thanks to Nybble for pointing me towards the changes for enabling sidebar modules for 2 sidebars. I have removed some extra css I have added in my previous versions and I have written notes for all the css I have added, to make it easy for people to customize or change it to their liking. My last release was 3 Column K2 Revision Six, but this release was named version 0.9. why?. Micheal have posted on the K2 dev blog about the upcomming version numbers of the original K2 and I want to follow them as well.
Version Numbers
* 0.9: No bugs release. A stable release of K2 with no known bugs.
* 1.0: Final release. K2 working as advertised.
* 1.5: Next major release. Major new features are relegated to this.
So the next main release will be the final release of K2 and 3 Column K2 as well. I may release some updates based on svn releases in the mean time, but there wont be any changes to the version numbers. So, grab the 3 Column K2 0.9 and test it and leave your comments, if you find anything wrong. Please check the original k2 forums as well for any help regarding K2.
And regarding my current style, I will be releasing a series of 3 column k2 modifications or styles starting this week (may be today too) and when I finally got no more, I will release my current style on this blog. Ya, I am sorry, you still need to wait for my current style. But it wont be that long, I promise. 
Download 3 Column K2
Version 0.9
Version 0.9
A stable K2 0.9 released
Finally the wait is over. The dev team of K2 lead by Michael Hielemann, released a long awaited stable release of K2, an advanced wordpress theme used by thousands of bloggers. They cleansed all the known bugs, therefore its a stable release. Congrats guys. I will be releasing my 3 Column K2 soon based on this stable release. In the mean time download K2 0.9, test it and discuss about it in the forums. Some useful k2 information for all the K2 users.
Button wins unbelievable Hungarian GP
Jenson Button did it finally by winning his maiden Formula 1 race on his 113th start at Hungaroring. De La Rosa and Heidfeld also secured their maiden podium for Mc Laren and BMW. The Championship rivals Alonso and Schumacher both retired from the race leaving the Championship fight as it was at last race. Half way through the race it almost looked like Alonso gonna win the race leaving schumacher without any points and with final 5 laps to go, it looked like Schumi is on his way to grab 8 points as Alonso retired. But the dramatic weather conditions changed everything right from the start to the end of the race. (more…)
Disaster for Schumacher as Raikkonen snatches Pole
Raikkonen snatched his second straight Pole position for tommorow’s Hungary Grand Prix with a stunning last minute lap. It was heartbreak for Massa as he was the fastest driver all day behind Michael Schumacher. Meanwhile Schumacher was given an identical penalty as Alonso for overtaking two cars after the red flags had been deployed to halt the final practice session. Jenson Button’s Honda engine had expired, putting oil down on the circuit. That means that both Alonso and Schumacher came into qualifying with two sec time penalties to be added to their best lap times. As a result Michael and Alonso were out of the final shootout lying in 12th and 15th place respectively. But as Button drops 10 places down from 4th to 14th, Schumacher starts from 11th while Alonso will be pushed back to 16th and his team mate Fisichella will start from 7th place.
Michael Schumacher will have to do everything he can to get the maximum points from 11th on the grid, but it is worth noting that Nigel Mansell started one place lower in 1989 in his Ferrari and won the race. Well Schumi, I cant think of anyone else who can do that as the Ferrari dominated all the weekend so far. As usual I will be posting the complete review of tommorow’s race, which should be an interesting one.