New and Improved, or New and Unproved?

Because I had a positive experience playing around with WordPress 2.5 on Rileycat’s blog, I asked David to go ahead and upgrade me here.

Some of the new features replace various plugins I was using before (Image Manager, and ST Visualize Advanced Features ). I’ll be using a new plugin – my husband David wrote a simple one for converting WP tags to Technorati tags, so I’m going to give that one a whirl. Whee!

I will say that I like one feature; the edit window has a visual editor tab and an HTML editor tab, and previously, it would always revert to the visual editor as soon as you clicked SAVE on a post you were editing in raw HTML (or at least in WP’s version, where line breaks are built in with the return key). Now, it stays in whichever edit pane you were in, even when starting a new post.

I moved some widgets around in the sidebars – that looks very different from the method used before, and after I got used to it, I eventually liked it (especially when I was finally able to remove something that was a “feature” of the Talian theme).

However, there are some things I’m not crazy about at all – many of the most frequently done functions when editing used to be in the right hand column, like making a post a “mini-post” or adding categories. You could move them up or down or minimize them if you didn’t use them. Now, all the posting options are below the edit window, requiring a long, tedious scroll each and every time you post… and now the checkbox to make an “aside” (ie., a mini-post) is at the very bottom.

Many other users are unhappy about the look and the feel, so I’m not alone. Also, why doesn’t clicking control-K in WordPress invoke the link/make a URL dialogue box anymore? Boooooooo!

But I’m going to try a few of the new media button goodies and see how they work.

The advanced “upload image” button works fine, but it’s a little fussy – it tells you up front you can’t upload an image bigger than 2M. Okay, fine, I’m used to resizing photos to export to Flickr and such.

But wait, there’s a second image button, what does that do? Not that much for me, because it’s only used for adding images via URL (in other words, hotlinking). I prefer to upload images and host them. So I’ll be using the advanced version. In my previous WP 2.3 installation, I was using Image Manager to do this, but it was kind of annoying to deal with and wouldn’t resize itself automatically when invoked, and apparently the author was not updating it (or may have died), so I was stuck with some pretty annoying behavior.

Hmm, now what does this “Add Video” button do? Previously, I was using Anarchy Media Player to handle embedded video clips and things, which I’ve deactivated to test this out.

Stephen Hawking at TED: the nature of the universe

Hmm, that just inserted a standard URL. One moment, it may want the actual vid URL and not the page URL.

Stephen Hawking at TED: The Nature of the Universe and Aliens Too

Okay… I’ll try an actual embed of YouTube’s thoughtfully provided code:

That seems to work, but one of the problems I had before was that the embedded video player would not show up in my feed, so it remains to be seen. The video is awesome, a 10 minute talk by Stephen Hawking using his own kind of visual editor… in it he discusses the nature of the Universe, and theorizes that the aliens must be out there, but not close enough for us to tune in to their quiz shows. He does not credit UFO sightings, and wonders why it is that those particular aliens choose to appear only to cranks and weirdos. There’s a rather musical cadence to his artificial voice, and I’d really like to hear it set to a background of music.

Okay, “Add Audio” is the next new media link (they’re not buttons, they’re little image links above the rest of the visual/html editor buttons). This is the one I’m most interested in playing with.

Cordero: Vamos Nenas

Er, that just added a link, but I filled out a bunch of other fields, including a title and caption. One moment.

Cordero: Vamos Nenas

Still just a link, but at least it works, although it’s got a 2M limit on it, too. I’ve re-activated Anarchy, but the buttons are only visible in the HTML editor for now. I see now in preview mode that it adds a little “audio mp3” graphic.

I had previously played with the “custom fields” doohickey… in one theme, I even had a stylesheet for it. I’ve added a couple of fields but don’t know if they’ll work until I publish…

All told, I’m reasonably happy with the upgrade (and there was a security bug with my previous installation, so I had to either go to the bugfix or WP2.5) but I’ll be watching for some fixes and tweaks.

UPDATE: I’ve been messing with custom fields, but haven’t found the spot where I put the

meta

tag yet. Hmmm.

Drop a Dime: Countdown To Reality

Daily Kos: State of the Nation
The United States got itself in to a strange situation with Musharraf, in which the structure of its aid to the Pakistan government essentially incented the government not to find Bin Laden because if they found him they had reason to fear that the US would end this flow of more than $10 billion that it was providing directly to the army. The democratic government came to power arguing to Washington that constitutional democracy was a better counterterrorism strategy than reliance on an authoritarian military leader. So, I think they understand, if they can deliver Osama, theyre not going to be punished for it, rather theyre going to be rewarded. So, for the first time, you have somebody in the Pakistani government who has motivation to find him. And at the same time, the population in which hes hiding has turned more hostile to him, so the possibility of someone dropping a dime on him is much greater now than it was a couple of years ago.

Here’s a thought: As One Utah’s Richard Warnick notes, it’s the election silly season. Rather than endlessly dissecting Barack Obama’s terrible bowling scores and Hilary’s bravery under Bosnian sniper fire, it might be nice if the Democrats collectively figure out a position on Bin Laden to signal the new democratic government of Pakistan that it might be nice if they captured OBL.

When? Just after Reality-Based Lifeforms’ Liberation Day would be good, but I think the world would understand it wasn’t really Bush’s Mission Accomplished if Bin Laden is delivered before Election Day.

By the way… I hadn’t realized that “Bush Countdown Clocks” had become such a robust little subset of national industry. Maybe Bernanke wouldn’t be so fast to use the “R” word (as noted by WWDTM in this morning’s show) if he knew how big the market for anti-Bush tchotchkes was.

A Painting With a Nazi Past

Wow! A friend of mine has a connection with this story, which I had scanned briefly via RSS/newsfeed a few days ago. Thus when she mentioned it, I recognized the painting immediately.

Just as an aside, I love the hat. Every naked lady should wear one.

cupidscomplaint.jpg

A Painting With a Nazi Past

Britain’s National Gallery announced Thursday that new research has disclosed that a painting in its collection, “Cupid Complaining to Venus,” by the German Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, was once part of Hitler’s private collection.

“We’ve never had anything like this before,” said museum spokesman Thomas Almeroth-Williams. “It’s incredibly rare.”

The museum is investigating to determine the exact provenance of the painting, which was painted in about 1525, with particular emphasis on whether it might have been looted from Jewish owners by the Nazis.

So far, Almeroth-Williams said, the museum’s experts have been unable to account for the painting’s ownership or whereabouts from 1909, when it was sold at auction in Berlin, to 1945, when U.S. soldiers allowed a U.S. war correspondent to remove it from a warehouse of art they were guarding in southern Germany.

A researcher, Birgit Schwartz, who has been studying Hitler’s art collecting, spotted the painting in a photograph of Hitler’s private gallery contained in an album at the Library of Congress in Washington.

My friend Debbie has been working to catalogue the Third Reich photo album collections at the “LC,” and this researcher Birgit Schwartz was thus able to spot the painting and make the link to Hitler’s collection of possibly stolen art. The painting’s later history was almost as colorful, as it was given to a female war correspondent who had a distinguished career before retiring to Hawaii.

Another article with different information appeared in Friday’s Guardian newspaper in London. Curators there contacted curators here and are now sorting it all out. I just catalog ’em. This album has been in the collection for a long time and was mentioned in a bibliography published in 2000. I made the online public catalog record for it back in November of 2004.

Evidence Supports Earlier Date for People in North America – New York Times

Evidence Supports Earlier Date for People in North America – New York Times


Exploring Paisley Caves in the Cascade Range of Oregon, archaeologists have found a scattering of human coprolites, or fossil feces. The specimens preserved 14,000-year-old human protein and DNA, which the discoverers said was the strongest evidence yet of the earliest people living in North America.

Other archaeologists agreed that the findings established more firmly than before the presence of people on the continent at least 1,000 years before the well-known Clovis people, previously thought to be the first Americans. Recent research at sites in Florida and Wisconsin also appears to support the earlier arrivals, and a campsite in Chile indicates migration deep into South America by 14,600 years ago.

The find was published online Thursday by the journal Science, www.sciencexpress.org.

The cave explorations in 2002 and 2003 were led by Dennis L. Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon. The primary DNA analysis was conducted by Eske Willerslev and M. Thomas P. Gilbert of the Center for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Why, that’s my alma mater in the news! At one time, I flirted with the idea of majoring in archeology or anthropology, but was put off by a number of factors that in retrospect were meaningless.

Here’s the official description of the Paisley Caves dig.  Naturally, the New York Times article and BoingBoing focus on the “Hey! It’s ancient poo!” aspect. Both articles are headed by a photograph of some human coprolites – that’s fossilized shit to you – but the description is more excited about the presence of large animal fossils, although they’re a bit cautious. A previous excavation in the 30’s wasn’t conducted very carefully, leading to wild claims of humans and extinct mammals living at the same time, so this excavation is taking a lot of care to ensure that cultural and animal remains found together really do belong together in the same context.

Interesting reading, although I’m not current with some of the terminology. Dates are given like this: “ca. 12,000 to 14,340 cal. BP.” I think that means “circa (around the time of) 12,000 to 14,340 calendar years before present.” This gets avoids things dating “BC – before Christ” or “BCE – before Christian Era” and all the religious and mathematical issues that arise from that system. “Debitage” apparently means all the waste material produced when shaping and shipping stone tools.

I totally get what they’re saying about that, because I’ve actually attempted to shape chert or other flakeable stone into primitive tools (I really was a weird tomboy). And as a kid, I went on arrowhead hunting trips with my “Uncle Chuck” and his collector friends in Grand Junction.  One place we visited was a rock shelter that had been used as a lookout, somewhere in the back country behind the Colorado National Monument. It was a short scramble up a talus slope, and consisted of a shallow cave in a sandstone wall, with some petroglyphs visible higher up, and a lot of rockfall where big chunks of former cave roof came down. Farther up, there was a little alcove arch that went completely through the narrow wall, so it truly was a great place to sit, make arrows and arrowheads, and watch for game or enemies. There were a couple of grooves in the floor where supposedly the watchers had straightened arrows, or sharpened the blunt wooden ends before installing the chipped points. We didn’t find much that day, but it was really fascinating.  I was all of about… 9 years old, as Pop was still alive then.

Yeah, I wish I’d done more in college with it, but then my life now would have turned out totally differently, so I’m content to just be an armchair enthusiast. Yeah, the fossilized poop story is interesting, but there’s a lot more to  it than just that.

By the way, the collective noun for ancient shit appears to be “a scattering of scat.”

[tags]BoingBoing, NYT, coprolites, fossilized poo, scat, archeology, Oregon[/tags]