November 2012 Archives

Ok, something totally unexpected happened.  Last saturday I was watching something on TV with my tablet on my lap, and someone I know asked a question about it on Twitter.  I fired off a quick reply because I happened to know the answer:

And then inspiration struck me: there must be thousands of questions on Twitter that never get a reply.

I recently needed a quick way to use the values of a number of configuration directives in my mt-config.cgi file directly in a template.  So I created a little plugin that adds an <mt:configdirective> tag to Movable Type.  You can use it to do things like <mt:configdirective name="SearchThrottleSeconds"> for example.  Warning: it can also be used to expose your database password etc., so don't install this plugin on a system where anybody can edit the templates.  The plugin can be downloaded here: https://github.com/mschenk/mt-plugin-configdirective

Six Apart announced in New York that a raft of new plugins for Movable Type were translated from Japanese to English and would shortly be available.  They made good on their promise, publishing the full list here.  CMS Wire has more.  I'm looking forward to trying out FacebookPoster, GoogleAnalytics and MultiUploader myself!

In my spare time I've been working on http://www.trendolizer.com, a site that automatically finds and posts stories, videos, images etc. that are trending on Facebook.  I recently redesigned the site using the Bootstrap framework, and today seems to be an excellent time to point out that there is also a 'politics' section at http://politics.trendolizer.com where you can follow what is trending regarding the U.S. presidential election.  Read on if you want to know more about the technical details.