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I am not actively maintaining my blosxom software any more, and was recently contacted by some developers who are. My plugins are now being hosted by the sourceforge development effort. Hopefully everything will get moved over and be more accessible and more up-to-date.
In any case, for now you can still access most of my blosxom software at my old site:
http://fletcher.freeshell.org/wiki/BlosxomPlugins
Here is a list of the plugins I have released to the public:
I needed to set the group id bit on the cgi scripts so they could write to the directories. This may or may not be a security issue.
I had to use /mt-static (no trailing slash) to identify where the mt-static directory would be.
I need to figure out exactly how to lock things down with htaccess for better security.
While I want part of my site to be a blog/journal/etc for posting periodic updates and thoughts, I want a large part of it to be more of a standard website.
To mimic this functionality with Movable Type, this is what I have discovered so far:
Decide on whether you like foo-bar or foo_bar and set the appropriate paths in the archive templates.
Change archiving to Entry
Disable the index page for archiving by adding something extra to the path so that it doesn’t overwrite manual pages
Archive pages to the appropriate folder/basename/index.html so that your pages create categories
Ensure that your categories and Pages match
Now you can have a custom page, and posts can be assigned that category in order to appear in the appropriate directory
Good explanation for how to clean up the URLs:
What I did is remove the html extension, and then ensure that each page is archive mapped to folder/page_basename/index so that the page doesn’t try to overwrite the category folder. If you create a home page named index, you can soft link index.html to index/index so that you don’t have to manually copy the home page after each update.
\indexI have written several modules for Oddmuse. Rather than duplicating effort at maintaining pages, those modules are now described solely at the Oddmuse site:
]]>AntiSpam Module - attempt to hide email addresses from spammers
ClusterMap Module - automatically generate a Site Map from your Clusters
CreationDate Module - permanently store the author and date that a page was created
FlickrGallery Module - automatically create an image gallery from a Flickr photo set
HtmlLinks Module - allow the use of raw HTML on specific pages
LogBannedContent Module - record information about people trying to spam your site
Login Module - require users to have an account and login before editing your site
Markdown Extension - originally written by Alex, now maintained by me. Allows you to use the MultiMarkdown syntax for your Oddmuse wiki.
PDF Module - use MultiMarkdown to generate a pdf version of pages in your site
PlainClusterRC Module
PlainSite Module - make your site appear less like a wiki and more like a “regular” site
Sitemap-index Module - add a plain text list of all pages in the wiki, suitable for indexing by Google
Static Hybrid Module - pregenerate pages as html files, greatly speeding up the time it takes to serve your site
TagMap Module - similar to the ClusterMap Module, this creates a map of the tags in use on your site, and automatically generates a hierarchy based on basic set theory
WrapperDiv Module - fixed a flaw in the layout of <divs> in Oddmuse (this has now been wrapped into the core Oddmuse functionality and this module is no longer required.)
For those who don’t know, in my “other life” I am an academic hospitalist. Having appropriate medical utilities on my iPhone is quite a boon - no more carrying my palm pilot AND cell phone around…
]]>(as of Aug 31, 2008)
This program has a large number of formulas and tools, and also has the handy “Favorites” ability. I certainly appreciate having a large selection of formulas on hand, but I also want a “short list” of the ones I actually use on a daily basis. In fact, some of the included formulas are ones I have not heard of - I have some reading to do….
The list of included formulas is fairly comprehensive, and hopefully will continue to grow with each update. So far, this is looking to be my top utility (behind Epocrates Rx, of course). And because the overall app is working well, it should be fairly easy for the developer to continue to add in new features — this app could easily incorporate many of the functionality of some of the other medical “one shot” applications.
Well worth the $4.99. Especially since I was considering writing a program like this, and would much rather pay $5 than spend the hours it would have taken me to do this….
Update: Version 1.0.3 adds new features including a fairly complete pregnancy calculator. I am definitely happy every time I can get rid of an application that only does one thing in favor of an application that does the work of multiple other apps.
One complaint - how much longer until they release the iPhone equivalent of the Pro version - I paid for another year after being told that my subscription would transfer. That implies that there is a paid iPhone version, and not just a free version that doesn’t require a subscription….
http://home.comcast.net/~mdecaro/abg/
Just released today, this app fills a void in the “Palm-iPhone” gap. In addition to a basic acid-base interpretation, it includes a calculator to predict FiO2 requirements for a given PO2, and will also calculate some cardiac output related values.
My biggest complaint is that this app, like many of the other ABG interpreters available for the Palm, doesn’t perform a very thorough analysis of the ABG data. In my mind, this renders it useless for patient care, or for educational purposes. Hopefully, the author will update this function for the next release and make this a “best of breed” app.
This app is free, which is nice, but is pretty limited. BMI, Corrected Na, FeNa, MELD, and Parkland tools are all available in Mediquations. It does calculate a Bicarb deficit (honestly, I don’t think I have ever used this one), and corrects CSF WBC count (handy, and saves working it out by hand). Neither of these are deal-breakers for me, so I will stick with Mediquations for now.
On a more positive note - the Pregnancy Wheel in this program is quite nice, and much better than the also free OBWheel.
This application is also undergoing further development, so there will be additional features in the next version.
http://dr-chris.org/iPhone_Apps/iPhone_Apps.html
This app works, and shows gestation age and due date based on LMP. But, again, the pregnancy tools in Medical Calculator and Mediquations are more full-featured.
http://www.deathraypizza.com/deathraypizza/PubSearch_Home.html
I guess this is handy for searching PubMed from the iPhone, but since you can’t do much with the results it seems like a waste for right now. Perhaps the next version will be more useful?
Since writing this, a few new apps have come out. I have not tried them, so cannot say if they are better or worse than the ones I have used.
MediMath - http://www.medimath.com/MediMath/MediMath.html
Doctor’s Aid - no working web site available
Both of these of appear similar to the others by screen shots, and the lists of formulas are not yet as thorough as Mediquations. However, I am sure that subsequent releases will add more features. The difficulty is going to be when each app has one formula you need that the others don’t. I was hoping that a good open source calculator would come out that would allow users to contribute formulas. But I guess it’s better to have 4 options than 0 options….
]]>People and WhitePages Mobile have similar features, but People allows you to search for residential listings in your immediate area, without knowing names. Useful for finding new neighbors, etc.
SearchQuest GPS - this application has a lot of buried features: it can display the datafrom your GPS (lat, long, elevation, etc), it can email your location (a la Here I Am). It may or may not be able to replace several single trick GPS apps.
I like FastContacts better than My Street - it seems to do everything the latter can do, and much more.
The games I use the most are definitely the free ones - Morocco and Sol Free Solitaire lately. I shouldn’t have wasted money on the others, but wanted to see what the iPhone was capable of.
OmniFocus is fantastic - like many others, I missed having To Do’s on my iPhone, but in reality my computer based to do system was sorely lacking. I have made a concerted effort to try and be more organized — using OmniFocus and Omnifocus for iPhone has made a big difference. It’s far and away the most expensive iPhone app I have purchased, and it was completely worth it. I still believe that GTD is something of a cult, but there are a few tips and strategies in the system (and the book) that have influenced my approach to tasks and projects in a positive way.
Having my iPhone stolen (at gunpoint, no less) definitely reminded me of the need for security. I have passwords on the iPhone, as well as the SIM, and keep secure information inside of 1Password. Since I use 1Password on my computer, this is easily synchronized. Having secure notes inside of it also makes it easy to jott free form information there and I know it will be safe. Now, if only there were a “self-destruct” signal, similar to what I understand Blackberries to be capable of.
This will be where I track which applications I am using the most (subjectively), and leave comments about some of them.
]]> (This table is created using my usual glicko technique.)| iPhone Application | Rating | RD |
|---|---|---|
| NetNewsWire | 1903 | 221 |
| OmniFocus | 1839 | 219 |
| Google Mobile App | 1836 | 226 |
| Stanza | 1810 | 226 |
| 1796 | 212 | |
| Epocrates Rx | 1791 | 223 |
| Morocco | 1778 | 230 |
| Sol Free Solitaire | 1770 | 225 |
| FastContacts | 1722 | 192 |
| WeatherBug | 1710 | 188 |
| Koi Pond | 1646 | 215 |
| People | 1630 | 219 |
| Jott for iPhone | 1624 | 214 |
| IM+ All-in-One Mobile | 1575 | 223 |
| TouchFS | 1557 | 213 |
| Dashbuster | 1554 | 218 |
| Mediquations | 1541 | 204 |
| Wikipanion | 1484 | 214 |
| iPhrase - Touch Poetry | 1467 | 217 |
| Caissa Chess | 1452 | 192 |
| Yelp | 1451 | 225 |
| Now Playing | 1428 | 198 |
| WhitePages Mobile | 1416 | 204 |
| Weight Tracker | 1405 | 185 |
| 1Password | 1395 | 221 |
| AP Mobile News Network | 1395 | 222 |
| Remote | 1373 | 220 |
| Exposure | 1355 | 200 |
| Taxi! | 1345 | 214 |
| Medical Calculator | 1310 | 214 |
| SearchQuest GPS | 1305 | 179 |
| PubSearch | 1296 | 230 |
| Midomi | 1255 | 219 |
| Super Monkey Ball | 1209 | 226 |
| Talking Spanish Phrasebook | 1189 | 209 |
| Here I Am | 1189 | 225 |
| Trism | 1180 | 206 |
| OBWheel | 1098 | 204 |
| Evernote | 1097 | 206 |
I have thus far not been able to redirect my old URL’s to these new ones for automatic updating…
]]>However, that seems unlikely to happen any time soon, unfortunately.
]]> Specifically, I was having trouble meeting the following criteria:content-type needs to be application/xhtml+xml for Firefox and other
real browserscontent-type needs to be text/html for IEBecause I want MathML to work on my site (more as a matter of pride than for
any real purpose), I have to serve the content as application/xhtml+xml.
With this content type, a real browser (e.g. Firefox) knows what to expect and
handles it appropriately. This allows the display of mathematical formulas,
such as:
However, as soon as I enabled the proper serving of XHTML 1.1, it effectively
turned off access to my site from Internet Explorer. Instead of accessing a
page, the user was offered the chance to download the page as an unusable
file. Therefore, IE needs the content served as text/html.
I could have two versions of the content, one ending in .html and one in
.xhtml so that different browsers are served the appropriate version, but
that would be a pain to keep up with. So this “solution” was not acceptable to
me.
I think, finally, that today I have solved this problem.
After much digging on the internet, I finally found a solution that I was able
to implement on my site via .htaccess.
I had already set the default data type:
DefaultType application/xhtml+xmlThen I had to change the content-type to text/html for requests from IE:
# Make Internet Explorer Happy
# If getting homepage
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.*
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?$
RewriteRule ^$ index.html [T=text/html]
# If asking for a directory, serve back the index (it has no extension here)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.*
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ..*\/$
RewriteRule (.*)/$ $1/index [T=text/html]
# Otherwise, try to just send the file as html
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.*
RewriteRule .* - [T=text/html]I have multiple steps in order to match certain request. Step 1 matches
the home page, which is stored in /index.html. Step 2 matches directories,
which store their main page in the directory in a file named index with no
extension. Step 3 matches everything else (which might cause problems with
images and other files down the road, but I’ll deal with that later….)
This seems to work so far - I still have access to MathML from Firefox, and I seem to be able to access the site from IE on Windows. But it’s still a crock to have to do this.
(Of course, getting the layout and other features right is another story. But for now, I’ll settle for seeing that the site exists!)
]]>
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There is.
Using Google, I found a page with a solution (since my SQL is not very strong yet):
I modified this to suit my needs:
UPDATE `mt_entry` SET `entry_convert_breaks` =
'multimarkdown_with_smartypants' WHERE `mt_entry`.`entry_convert_breaks`
= 'multimarkdown';Now, if I can just get the TextMate blogging bundle to stop defaulting to ‘markdown_with_smartypants’, I will be much happier.
]]>I had previously thought about using OpenID to allow visitors to register to edit my wiki, but Movable Type has its own registration system, in addition to allowing OpenID. So, for now, I’ll stick with both unless a compelling reason to change comes up in the future.
]]>Find the writeCommenterGreeting function
add the following line as first step:
container = document.getElementById("comment-form-external-auth");all instances of document.write need to be changed to container.innerHTML = and set to equal the string that was to be written
The content written to innerHTML needs to have all ampersands written as & to be XHTML 1.1 “safe”
Next, you have to change the Comment Form Template to remove the “” around the javascript section to make it XHTML 1.1 safe.
Rebuild your site, and I think comments will now work with the rest of your XTHML 1.1 site, when served as application/xhtml+xml.
Please let me know if you find errors on my site in this (or any other) regard.
]]>text/html, and MathML doesn’t work for the
moment.
More to come.
]]>BTW, my blurbs below don’t really do the books justice. It’s worth looking at the full Amazon page and seeing other reviews…
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
An interesting look at the way we make decisions, and how this process sometimes goes awry.
Chances Are by Michael Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan
Discusses some fundamentals of statistics in an easy to read, readily applicable manner. Despite what could be a dry topic, it’s a pretty good read.
Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio
A look at the way in which social understanding is used by the brain to contribute to logical decision making.
Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
A collection of essays from Paul Graham, author of “A Plan for Spam” that inspired a host of Bayesian spam filters, speaker, and venture capitalist. Somewhat computer oriented, but worth reading.
Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
This book describes characteristics of networks (social, business, natural, and computer) and points out properties that are shared by networks in disparate fields.
The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
Johansson examines various breakthroughs in history and points out a number that came from combining fields that would at first glance appear to be unrelated.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
In this book, Gladwell discusses the large impacts of small changes.
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Surowiecki discusses ways in which group dynamics can lead to better decision making than any individual member of that group, and ways in which groups can be destined to make poor decisions.
If you decide to purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, I welcome you to do so using the links above. This will contribute a referral fee towards the support of my web site and software, at no cost to you. Thank you.
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