Curly Quotes in Movable Type

Books, WordPress

I am happy to announce that the “curlyquotes” module for Movable Type has passed out of beta into the release stage. Many thanks to Todd of Dominey Design for testing and providing valuable feedback. Here are the updated instructions. For full details, please see this script’s info page, which lets you receive updates by email, leave comments, report bugs, ask for features, and ask questions, et cetera. Here are the updated installation directions:

  1. Install the MTRegex plugin. (Directions from readme.txt file)
    1. Get file.
    2. Place the ‘regex.pl’ file in your Movable Type “plugins” directory
    3. Place ‘regex.pm’ and ‘postproc.pm’ in a ‘bradchoate’ subdirectory underneath your Movable Type “extlib” directory.
    4. You should end up with something like this:
      • (mt home)/plugins/regex.pl
      • (mt home)/extlib/bradchoate/regex.pm
      • (mt home)/extlib/bradchoate/postproc.pm
  2. Create a new template module called curlyquotes with the code from here.
  3. Add <$MTInclude module="curlyquotes"$> to the top of all your templates.
  4. Replace all occurences of <$MTEntryBody$> with <$MTEntryBody
    regex="1"$>    .

Usage is free, in every sense of the word, but if you could throw a link back this way I would appreciate it. Also if you improve on the code in some way, submit your changes so everyone can benefit.

What this module does: It takes straight quotes/prime mark, and makes them proper typographer’s quotes, sometimes called “curly” or “smart” quotes. So basically it takes "this" and makes it “this” using the proper HTML entities. It also works with single quotes, apostrophes, and multi-paragraph double quotes. It slices and dices!

Why? Because there is no button for a curly quote or apostrophe on the keyboard. No really, see the old post for more.

Massive Site Update

Personal

Well, at about 5 earlier today the finishing touches were put on the curlyquotes module for Movable Type, and I began working on posting it. I had a 5:30 class though, so that put things off for a while. Then there was dinner, then some friends, then the phone, and more distractions (I mean that in the best possible way!) till about 11 p.m. By that time I had been thinking about it forever so I had some neat ideas about how to present things and integrate it into the site. Well, three hours and 1300 lines of PHP later, the site now has a Script section integrated with the new membership system. Whew, Talk about feature creep!

The best writing is rewriting, as is evidenced by the regex module reaching its maturity. The basic functionalities of the member and systems are in now, but watch for it to mature quite a bit over the next week or so.

Google News

AI

Google News has ‘officially’ launched, insofar that it is now a tab on the now-crowded Google toolbar (not toolbar, I guess tab-bar). Although it’s still labeled as beta, those of you who remember what it used to look like know that it’s come quite a way. It seems to have some sort of algorithm running, so check it out. If you’re interested in seeing what else is cooking at Google, check out Google Labs, which currently has such goodies as a keyboard navigable interface, a glossary, something fancy with sets, and an interface that will return results based on your voice commands.

Jazz Quotes Expanded

Books, Jazz

I’ve made quite a few changes to the JazzQuotes section of the site, the most important of which being that it now accepts submissions. I strongly encourage you if you have a favorite jazz quote that isn’t in there already to submit it. I also expanded the database to hold some interesting information in the future. Watch this space.

Search

Books, Gallery

I’m in the process of compiling ht://Dig 3.2.0b4 to add full-featured search to this site. If you don’t have experience with it already, I would highly recommend checking out ht://Dig next time you consider making a search feature. I considered using a FULLTEXT MySQL search but that would ignore one of the largest sections of the site, the Photolog, which is not MySQL-driven (yet).

Makes for a Fun Funeral

Books, Humor

I had the most terrible dream last night that I on death row and today at three I would be put to death. They were going to let me meet Tim-Berners Lee though, who apparently worked across the street from the place. I need to stop mixing late-night snacks with reading W3C specs. Anyway, tho thoughts of my mortality nicely dovetailed with an interesting article on cremation at Wired. I want to be the frisbee :). Warning: article is full of terrible puns.

Note to Self

Personal

Todo:

  1. Buy umbrella
  2. Check if it’s going to rain before I go out in the morning
  3. An active desktop item for this would be cool

That said, I do enjoy frolicking in the rain every now and then, but I have electronics to watch after! I can’t think about just myself anymore ;).

Soundbug

Music

The Soundbug from ThinkGeek came in today, and I got to play with it a bit at House of Pies. So far I’m pretty impressed, but I’d like to try it out on more surfaces. I’ll put a full review up in the Toy section in a week or so. For those of you unfamiliar with the product, the Soundbug turns any surface into a speaker, and can attach itself to basically anything it can suction to. The volume is supposed to be able to go up to 75dBm, and you can hook two Soundbugs together for stereo sound. Pretty cool, huh?