Monthly Archives: August 2006

N 37° 9' 30.96" W 121° 46' 54.36"

These photos were taken while standing at N 37° 9′ 30.96″ W 121° 46′ 54.36″. This is along the Bald Peak Trail in Calero County Park at about 1600 feet. Hiking to this point from the Calero trailhead takes you through 1000 feet of elevation change. This is a nice little uphill trek that provides a lovely view of Santa Clara Valley to the North and the Santa Cruz Mountains to the South and West once you get to the top.

img_1216.jpg Facing North

img_1217.jpg Facing Northeast

img_1218.jpg Facing East

img_1219.jpg Facing Southeast

img_1220.jpg Facing South

img_1221.jpg Facing Southwest

img_1222.jpg Facing West

img_1223.jpg Facing Northwest

Subaru Aux-In Kit

The 2005 and 2006 Subarus are notorius for not providing an auxiliary stereo input and making it impossible to replace the factory stereo. On my 2005 Outback 2.5 XT the stereo is integrated with the climate controls. If you remove the stereo, you remove the AC. No good. So I’m stuck with a factory stereo that is lacking an auxiliary input. To add an aux-in you must tap into the CD line levels. This requires some engineering and the use of a CD that plays silence. There are some hacks floating around various Subaru forums describing how to do this yourself, but an enterprising fellow packaged it up into a kit complete with an aux-in board, the necessary ribbon cable, a silent CD, patch cords, ground loop interrupt, and complete instructions. I just installed the Aux-in Pro Kit from Jazzy Engineering and now I can hook my DAP up to my car stero without having to use those useless FM tuners. Installation requires removing lots of screws and taking your center console and stereo apart, but the whole process wasn’t too bad. Just keep track of those screws. If you have a 2005/2006 Subaru and want an aux-in, check it out.

Timbuk2 Blogger Bag

While looking around my favorite toy store, REI, I spotted the Timbuk2 Blogger Bag. I recalled hearing good things about it at Gizmodo and Laughing Squid. Although I usually go for backpacks since they're better suited to the long walks I often go on, I've been considering trying a vertical brief for those short trips to the coffee shop with the laptop. So I gave the Blogger Bag a lookover and decided to bring it home. The Blogger bag has a very simple layout. The single main compartment has a corduroy covered laptop sleeve toward the back leaving room for a power supply, a book or two, and other oddments in the rest of the compartment. A zippered exterior compartment houses an organizer. The exterior compartment has plenty of room for a camera, phone, wirleless mouse, and other small items. On the exterior compartment are a couple of little slip pockets, one of which is zippered. A large flap folds over the whole thing in true messenger style. The shoulder strap is well-padded, and Timbuk2's usual sturdy construction is in evidence. I loaded the bag up with my Vaio and its power supply, hardcover novel, point-and-shoot camera, headphones, handheld GPS, small first-aid kit (I always have one handy), and a pen and small notebook. The Timbuk2 held it all handily and poised itself nicely on my shoulder. I like the way vertical briefs look and ride. Laptop access is quick and convenient. One thing lacking is a water bottle pocket. This can be remedied with a bottle leash or bottle bag attached to the shoulder strap D-rings, but having one built-in would be nice. That said, whenever I'm walking far enough to want to have water at hand, I use a backpack rather than a shoulder bag. Backpacks are more comfortable and easier on the back. Messengers and briefs, however, are usually more easily accessible than packs, making them great laptop bags for those cafe runs.

The Blogger Bag is well made, nicely styled in Timbuk2's signature three panel design, comfortable, and suited to task. Definitely worth a look.

Garmin StreetPilot c550

I recently added the Garmin StreetPilot c550 to my arsenal of gadgets. This is one of the nicest bits of consumer electronics I've ever used. It truly is plug-and-play. The UI is brain dead simple. Poke the touch screen with your finger to navigate to points-of-interest, addresses, and intersections. If you want to find the nearest Mexican restaurants, press Where to? > Food > Mexican. A list of the nearest Mexican restaurants will display. The list will update as you drive around so you can do some wardriving for Mexican food. If you press the name of a restaurant you can navigate to it or call it if the c550 is connected to your mobile phone via bluetooth. This hands-free calling is pretty nifty. With the press of a finger you can call the phone numbers for any of the included points-of-interest. You can program a call home number as well. If your phone supports it, you can access your phone's address book from the c550. The address book of my Blackberry 8700c shows up just fine. Incoming calls are displayed with your phone book information to provide better caller identification.

The c550 integrates an FM TMC traffic receiver. If your area provides traffic information, the c550 can display traffic alerts and route around congestion. This has worked pretty well for me in San Jose. A list of congested areas is displayed, and the c550 will route around them at my request.

The map can be panned by dragging your finger. You can then set a pointer on a location on the map and click "Go" to navigate to that point. Pretty slick.

The turn-by-turn voice prompting is clear and intelligible. You can choose a number of synthesized voices in various languages. "Jill" handles American English navigation. Jill hasn't led me astray yet.

The suction cup windshield mount hasn't accidentally released on me yet. It seems sufficiently sturdy to keep the c550 attached to the windshield and angled to your liking. If you live in California, it is illegal to attach things to the front windshield. I ignore such silly, intrusive laws, but if you're worried about Johnny Law, an adhesive plate is provided that will allow securing the c550 to your dash.

The c550 is full of nice conveniences and the interface is simple and lucid. So far I'm loving it.

Prototype and the Script Loader

The development branch of WordPress now bundles Prototype 1.5. A number of themes and plugins have been bundling Prototype, so we decided to make it available out-of-the-box. We also use it internally for the new autosave feature.

The development branch also has a nifty script loader from mdawaffe that makes including JS in a cacheable way very easy. For example, if you want to use Prototype in your theme, include it like so:

wp_enqueue_script('prototype');

Dell Customer Service

You're probably expecting a horror story given Dell's typically bad press, but I have a story with a happy ending. My D810 had problems powering up as of late. Sometimes it just refused to turn back on after being shutdown. After walking through the troubleshooting guides on Dell's support site, I sent them a support request describing the problem and the various remedies I had attempted. An hour later they replied saying that they needed to replace the motherboard and would arrange to have DHL come to my house to retrieve the laptop. The next day, DHL arrived to pack up the laptop and spirit it away. Four business days later my laptop is back in my hands and running nicely. I received email and phone notifications every step of the way as the laptop traveled from DHL to Dell, to the Dell technician, back to DHL, and finally to me. Props to Dell for fixing the problem promptly and without hassle.

Deutsch, Español, and Português

We have enabled three translations here at wordpress.com — de, es, and pt. If you use one of those languages on your blog, send feedback on any problems you notice. Since we here behind the scenes don’t speak every language there is, we need help from you to correct incorrect translations. If you don’t like how something is translated, visit translate.wordpress.com to propose a new translation. Here’s how:

  • Visit translate.wordpress.com
  • Login using your wordpress.com username and password
  • Select your preferred language from the dropdown list and click “Set language”
  • Click on “All Items” to see a list of the original English strings and their translations
  • Using your browser’s search facility, search for the string you want to correct. (I’ll add a built-in search sometime soon.)
  • Once you find the string, click the “Edit” link for that string
  • Review the translation history of the string. To add a new translation, click “Add a new translation”
  • Type in a new translation and click “Add Translation”
  • To make your new translation the active translation, click “Approve”
  • You’re done

Your translation will take affect the next time I update the language catalogs. I’m doing the update manually during the testing period, so you might have to wait a little while to see the new translation on your blog. When translating strings, make sure you are using the correct locale. If you are translating Brazilian Portugese, select Português do Brasil rather than Português. Also, please note that not all themes are i18n ready. Making all themes translatable will take a little longer, but we’ll get there. Until then, you will still see English strings with some themes.