Rocket Science » Website

Creative Commons Configurator Plug-in

Brandon Muramatsu — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:30:37 +0000

From a post on Alan Levin’s blog, I found out about the Creative Commons Configurator Plug-in.

So I added it to all of the sites I’m maintaining (though you’ll only see it on the single post page, in each page’s , and in the RSS feeds).

Source: Brandon

License Sample

For Tom: This is the css I’m using with the iNove Theme. I enable all of the options from the plugins configuration page, but I chose to not display the CC logo in the license block on each post (it’s in the page footer in any event). Also, you can change which of the CC logos the plugin uses–but you have to edit the php file directly–0=no logo (which you can set via the configuration screen), 1=31 pixel high logo, 2=15 pixel high logo. If I were to use a logo, I’m more partial to the 15 pixel high logo for this application.

.cc-block {

  width: 95%;

  	font-size:10px;

  	text-align: center;

  	line-height:110%;

  	padding:4px;

  	border: 1px solid #cccccc;

  	color: #aaaaaa;

  	background-color: #ffffff;

}

iPhone Theme for WordPress

Brandon Muramatsu — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:30:17 +0000

While surfing on my iPhone, I ran across a site using the WPtouch theme by the folks over at BraveNewCode. I thought it was cool enough to upload to my personal website and the two project sites I’m maintaining.

Here’s a screenshot of what my site looks like using the theme. (Unless you have an iPhone to access it yourself via the iPhone’s web browser.)

Source: Brandon

Brandon's Website on the iPhone

(…waits for Tom to copy this too…)

Automating my use of Flickr photos

Brandon Muramatsu — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:30:40 +0000

First off thanks to Alan Levine of NMC for the post that inspired me to automate a bit of my process of including Flickr photos.

I downloaded Alan’s script that uses Greasemonkey (for Mozilla) and made a change to match the way I’ve been doing citations on my site.

I commented out the way Alan does his attribution, and inserted what I use on this site:

+ ' Brandon\'s Blog Citation <div id="mura-citation">Photo Credit: @' + '<a href="'+ photolink + '" title="' + phototitle + '">' + usernick + '</a>/flickr</div> ';

So when I go to a flickr page with a Creative Commons licensed photo, I see a small box at the bottom of the left column.

Photo Credit: @muramatsub/flickr

Flickr CC Attribution Helper Script

Which produces HTML which looks like:

Photo Credit: @muramatsub/flickr

That I then include with the photo I’ve linked.

Alan also talks about how he downloads images from Flickr that he uses on his site. I do something similar. On my computer, I’ll keep a copy of the URL directly to the image until I’ve had a chance to write the article or otherwise use the photo. I think modify the filename to include “flickr” and the “username” before I upload or use the photo. This tells me the site I got the photo from (“flickr”) and which user’s photo I’m using (“username”). As Alan points out in his article this is all good as long as the user’s account is still active (or Flickr continues to exist). I think the site Don of the Education Technology that is Changing Alaska blog suggests, Imagestamper is also an interesting way of tracking licenses.

Website–2009 More Stats

Brandon Muramatsu — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:30:25 +0000

D Sharon Pruitt

More Numbers

Another stat from 2009. I averaged 1,656 characters per post (Year End Stats). Using an estimate of approximately 5.5-6 characters per word (4.5-5 characters per word plus 1 space on average), my posts averaged 276-305 words per post.

My 2010 To Do List for My Website

Brandon Muramatsu — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:30:27 +0000

Source: ced

3 Website Tasks for the New Year

…in no particular order…

Convert to a new theme, based on Thesis
Split the personal and professional sections of this site…to highlight the professional posts more.
Figure out what/how/when to cross-post to Twitter

Time…

Brandon Muramatsu — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:27:17 +0000

Source: simpologist

Time...

So, after having written YA1HP (yet another one hour post), I got to thinking about how much time have I spent on this site in the last year.

At 1 hour per post x 277 posts (based on my update from 2009)= 277 hours or 5 hours per week.

That seems a little high, there are some weeks when I don’t work on it at all, or for something like an hour. And there are others were I spend 10+ hours working on the site. The question is, does that average out to 5 hours per week? I’m thinking it’s closer to 4 hours a week on average.

Add to that how long did it take me to setup the site? Probably 40-60 hours over two or three weeks in December 2009.

So, all in all, this has been a non-trivial investment of time.

1 Year Update

Brandon Muramatsu — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:00:06 +0000

Well I’ve been blogging for a little over a year now, and I thought this would be a good time to reflect on what I’ve accomplished.

Writing for this site tends to come in spurts for me. I don’t lack ideas, I do find it challenging to set aside time to write regularly. We’ll see what I can do about setting aside more time in this upcoming year (in addition to the other “habits” I’d like to start or get back to).

I’ve published 277 stories, or on average 3 posts every four days. With 88 “Professional” posts and 187 “Personal” posts, plus a handful of others. I’ve also received 38 comments (2 of which I still need to craft a response to before posting). And I’ve received a few emails as a result of my posts, which technically count as comments. So I’m averaging better than the one in ten commenter to lurker percentage–though I’d like to see more comments.

Coming soon (I hope) is a site redesign and facelift, I’ll be transitioning the major focus to more “Professional” posts at least on the home page. Though I expect that I’ll still have a 2:1 ratio of personal to professional posts, those posts will just be a layer down. I also hope to do more Friday Funny posts.

Selected Statistics

So, here are selected statistics from the three different methods I’m using to track use. One is the analytics package that WordPress makes available from their site, the other is an addon called SitePress, and lastly there’s Google Analytics. It is possible that all of these have not been runnig concurrently. I’ll see what happens in 2010–if the numbers become much more similar across the various analytics packages.

In any case, the search terms and popular pages are interesting. My post on Cool Photo Effects: Tilt Shift and Movies When and How I Want them were the top stories over the year. And my posts on Microsoft Office were surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) popular. Guess lots of folks had similar problems.

And I can definitely say from personal experience Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works. I have a sitemap published in a format that Google understands, and I have an addon that notifies Google (and other search engines) when I post a new entry. Without fail, the next day my Google Alerts lets me know it’s found my new post.

	WordPress Site Stats	StatPress	Google Analytics
Visitors	N/A	3321	2936
Pageviews	6449	17914	4841
RSS	N/A	5112	4718
Comment RSS	N/A	523	N/A

Page	WordPress Site Stats	StatPress	Google Analytics
Homepage	N/A	4173	1316+88
Cool Photo Effects: Tilt Shift	336	N/A	338
Movies when and how I want them!	295	678	195
Curriculum Vitae	194	N/A	107
About	169	N/A	96
WebEx is Stupid	147	N/A	147
Projects	129	N/A	72
Netflix History Analyzer	N/A	900	N/A
Messaging or Why I’m Posting	N/A	517	N/A

Top Search Terms	StatPress	Google Analytics
cool photo effects	220	281
Brandon Muramatsu	65	89
things that make you say hmm	18	46
muramatsu	13	N/A
office 12.2.3	12	18
mura.org	N/A	43
mura@mura.org	N/A	34

Happy 1 Year Blogiversary

Brandon Muramatsu — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:25:18 +0000

Well, the blog portion of my website turns one today! Happy blogiversary to me.

Source: merelymel

I thought I deserved a cupcake!

WordPress Exploit Scanner

Brandon Muramatsu — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:15:21 +0000

Everyone that runs their own WordPress blog (self-hosted) should probably install and run the Exploit Scanner plugin.

This plugin searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.

For what it’s worth, v0.6 didn’t work for me, I had to use the development version.

Now if I can just figure out what all of the

decoration:none

links are all about.

Blog Updates (October 2009)

Brandon Muramatsu — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:25:34 +0000

Here’s an update to my previous two posts about The Technical Details and Blog Updates.

WordPress 2.8.5 (blog software)

New plugins (or ones I forgot to list before):

Dublin Core for Wordpress (embeds Dublin Core metadata in header)
Enhanced Recent Posts (allows more control over Recent Posts widget)
Exclude Pages from Navigation (lets me choose which pages to show/not show in the navigation)
NextGEN Gallery (the defacto standard for Image Galleries for WordPress)
Sociable (adds social media tools to each post such as Facebook and de.licio.us)
Template Override (sneaky little plugin that lets me override the CSS of any of the other plugins, in other words this CSS loads last)
WordPress Admin Bar (adds a top navigation bar to the admin areas of the blog to allow for actions like on WordPress.com hosted blogs)
WPTuner (lets me see the performance of the blog for tuning purposes)

(Read more about the disabled and deleted plugins)

Plugins I’ve disabled because I’m not using them:

Random Image (puts a random image in the sidebar)
StatPress (realtime stats for WordPress)
Slideshare (to more easily include Slideshare slide presentations in WordPress)

Deleted plugins:

Yoast Breadcrumbs (puts breadcrumbs on each page and post, though I suppose I could have coded this by hand)
CiteThis (creates a citation for each page, to meet the attribution requirements of my terms of use)

TIP: I’ve kept a changelog of the tweaks I’ve made, in addition to making a copy of the site before I upgraded it.