This really showed how rusty I am in my subjects… Although I did manage to solve it with some help from my old (and dusty) notes…

For those curious here’s the question…

• 6.956g of hydrated sodium carbonate Na2CO3.xH2O were dissolved in water and made up to exactly 250 cm3.
• 25 cm3 of this solution was neutralized by 48.80cm3 of 0.05mol/dm3 of Sulphuric Acid.
• Calculate the value of x in the formula.

(p.s. the answer is 10).

Class.FTShorten

The new component of the core plugin. It contains the functions required to request a Short URL from a service provider. I am separating this class into a separate development branch which will allow me to update independently of the core URL Shortener Plugin. As such it will get its own page as well.. For more information, take a look at the FTShorten Class information page. The Class will also be available for download there as well.

URL Shortener WordPress Plugin

Version 2.0 of the, incorporating the most number of changes a version bump has to date. Other than integrating the new class as mentioned above, it includes several bugfix as well. Check out the URL Shortener download page for more information.

Addon Module

Likewise, the addon module also received an update, introducing more URL Shortening services for testing and also a structural change similar to the core plugin. There has been a version labeling change as well, switching to a version tree independent of the core plugin. The latest addon module is now 0.2 instead of being labeled 2.0-Addon. Check out the Addon Module download page for more information as well.

As always, the start of a New Year signifies a fresh start. However, we do have to look back sometimes in order to move forward. So here’s my thoughts, separated into sections.

• About Life
• About Blogging
• About Tech

About Life

2009 is a year where I actually found myself starting to play Facebook games after going on a no-computer-game hiatus for the last 4 years. Thanks to Mousehunt which prodded at my interest. I always thought I will start playing games again when StarCraft 2 comes out (and I’m still waiting…).. Haha.

In general, it was quite a good year, especially with University acceptance and a few other events. Furthermore, there is also the APEC 2009 event as well as the National Youth Assembly which spiced things up. Not to mention the small gatherings and meet-ups with loved ones which always makes me smile..

2010 would mark another milestone, leaving the NS and stepping back into the World Of Studies (not World Of Warcraft…) once again. Really looking forward to school life.. I aren’t  too crazy about the multiplication of work load, but will look forward to it nonetheless..

About blogging

I started blogging since 2004. 5 years on, I’ve moved through 4 blogging services and finally got my own domain at the start of this year.  Many thanks to my friend, who has kindly provided hosting this past year.

I’ve always just maintained a modest blog with no specific target, but come 2010, I should probably start thinking about pushing this blog further.

About Tech

The tech world in 2009 has also seen some new directions. Some of the highlights for me…

• HTML5 is now much more defined.
• Short URLs are all the hype…
  • Google (goo.gl), Facebook (FB.me), Youtube (youtu.be) all joining the already crowded scene which is dominated mostly by bit.ly (which launched a PRO service)
• Acquisitions are also abound as usual. One notable one was Facebook acquiring FriendFeed, signaling real-time friend updates within Facebook.
• Windows 7 was finally launched (oh man! I was one month too early to the free upgrade…)
• Google Wave was announced and in invited beta.
  • It may/may not revolutionize collaborations/email in the future, but has definitely created “waves” with users…

Wonder what seismic shifts will be found in the tech world in 2010.

Anyway, that’s all for now… Happy New Year (2010) once again! Have a great year ahead!

To everyone out there, friends and sponsors:

I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Here’s a “toast” (a virtual one) to a peaceful and great year ahead!

Cheers!

This fact shows up prominently in a RazorTV interview as well as Straits Time Special Report published in it’s Online and print editions.

Granted, the cases in the article are mostly cases of malingering. For example, calling in sick so that they could party, not considering that there is chance that photos of them at the party could  surface on Facebook… One was fired while another was given a warning by their respective superiors.

You could say that they deserved it. However, if we look past the malingering fact,  a few of these cases involve photos that were not uploaded by them.

Would this constitute as an invasion of one’s privacy? Or is it the photographer’s/possessor’s right to the photo and upload it as he/she deems fit?

With companies now searching for and going through their potential employees’ Facebook accounts, and with more and more people citing Facebook in court documents, uploading photos shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially when you’re not even in the photo itself. The simple desire to share a photo of your friend may just have “unwanted side-effects”.

At this juncture, you may be saying:

“That’s b/s.. You’re thinking too much.!”

However the statement:

“Doesn’t mean that something that doesn’t happen often wouldn’t happen”…

…applies here.

I do think that sharing photos is a way of showing people your life, and a nice souvenir shared between the parties involved.. However,  before you upload your next photo on Facebook,  take a step back and think of the impact it will have. If in doubt, especially if it’s a photo of someone else, ask first, then upload.

References:

• The Straits Times, Page A6, “The truth is out there – on Facebook”, 21 December 2009

EDIT: Further Reads

• (27/12/2009) Privacy Theater: Why Social Networks Only Pretend To Protect You (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/27/privacy-theater/)

Automattic has released an upgrade to it’s popular WordPress blogging platform.

Version 2.9, also known as “Carmen” includes quite a notable number of additions like oembed support, batch plugin updating, a simple image editor as well as a “Windows recycle bin”-like feature for posts.

Under-the-hood improvements are also abound in this upgrade, with over 500 tickets and bugs addressed (according to the blog post on WordPress.org by founder Matt Mullenweg). It is also great to see the official support for rel=”canonical” as well as an automatic database repair feature.

Testing it out, the current 2.9 upgrade has been as smooth as always. However, one small issue I have so far is that the embed support doesn’t work consistently, with some videos not being embed as expected. I’ll have to monitor first and verify if it’s indeed a recurrent issue.

With commentsmeta now available officially, I’ll most probably include avatar support for the Facebook Connect and Google connect feature on my site. Once it’s stable, it will be released as a plugin for public usage. Unlike other plugins, it doesn’t really create a user signup entry in the WordPress database which is ideal for blogs, minimizing the clutter of users in the backend.

At the same time, I’ve also made a small update to my URL Shortener Plugin, bumping it up to Version 1.7, to take into account the inclusion of WP.me shortlink generation in the stats plugin as well as the “Get Shortlink” button included in the WordPress Core.

EDIT: A short video summarizing some of the new features of WordPress 2.9:

What this entails

With version 1.6 of the stats plugin, the once exclusive WP.me shortlink feature will now be available to all users of the self-hosted WordPress. It is definitely a welcomed change as the close control of the WP.me shortening service means that it is less open to abuse.

Of course, now there would be a problem of robot blogs (blogs which auto generate content from other blogs) generating shortlinks as well.

However, one caveat is that the WP.me generation comes with the plugin and there is no way to deactivate it. These leave little option for users who doesn’t want to auto-generate or use the integrated shortlink feature.

Showing WP.me shortlink in themes

With that said, I’ve update my template to reflect the shortlink as well.. You can find a WP.me links on top of the 3rd Partly shortlink in the shortlink section below.

For those who want to display the WP.me shortlinks, add the following to the template :

<a href="<?php echo get_shortlink($post);?>"><?php echo get_shortlink($post); ?></a>

Remember it has to be placed within the WordPress post loop

Future of my URL Shortener Plugin

With this release, I wonder what will be the future of my URL Shortener plugin.

Probably I will now consider adding WP.me support to my URL Shortener plugin. This would thus allow users who don’t use WordPress.com Stats plugin to access the service as well.

Anyway, the 4 songs are:

• “Teardrops on my guitar” by Taylor Swift
• “Crazier” by Taylor Swift
• “Mad” by Ne-Yo
• “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus

Here are their official music videos from youtube:

“Teardrops on my guitar” by Taylor Swift

“Mad” by Ne-Yo

I guess part of the reason why I like “Mad” so much is also thanks to the TV Competition series: “So You Think You Can Dance”. The lyrical dance choreographed to this song was, in my opinion, “fantabulous” (fantastic and fabulous).

I’ve probably posted that dance video on my Facebook stream sometime back.

Going back on topic, the following 2 songs are from “Hannah Montana The Movie”…

“Crazier” by Taylor Swift

“The Climb” by Miley Cyrus

…and that’s all from my last.fm/grooveshark playlist.

Of course, I couldn’t resist taking some photos…

Details and photos

Camera: W995
Exposure: Varies
F-Stop: f/2.8
ISO Speed: Varies
Size: 2448 x 3264 or vice versa

Steps of Water

The Christmas Tree

The Doorway into the Tree

Into The Tree

Looking within the Tree

My favorite is the view within the tree. It feels like you’re in a fantasy when you look up at it. Furthermore, it makes a nice (but a little too bright) desktop background as well.

Although the title of the post states that it is a tutorial, I haven’t really tested the following code extensively. It works on my test environment as well as a live blog which I tested it with.

Here’s the initial code:

function SaveTitleAsTag($post_ID) {
 $gpt = get_post($post_ID);
 $posttitle = $gpt->post_title;
 $posttitle = strtolower($posttitle);
 if(get_the_tags($post_ID)){
    foreach(get_the_tags($post_ID) as $tag) {
      $tag_name = $tag->name;
      $tag_name  = strtolower($tag_name);
      $posttitle = str_replace($tag_name, "", $posttitle);
    }
 }
 $splittotags = explode(" ", $posttitle);
 foreach ($splittotags as $atag){
     $atag = str_replace(" ", "", $atag);
     if($atag !=NULL){
           wp_set_object_terms($post_ID, $atag, 'post_tag', true );
     }
  }
}

add_action('save_post', 'SaveTitleAsTag');

I’ve wrapped the above code up in a plugin. Just download the file, upload to your WordPress plugin folder and activate.

Download

NOTE: For the latest version of the plugin and updates to the code, please visit the download details page: http://fusedthought.com/downloads/autosave-post-title-as-tags-wordpress-plugin