Emma has her own computer now. Someone was going to throw away an old Gateway with 256 MB RAM, so I took it and isntalled Edubuntu, the Ubuntu Linux version that is made for kids. So far it's working great. I had to monkey around with it to get the sound working on some of the games, then I just created a user account for her and added icons to the taskbar so it's easy for her to launch her favorite programs. She likes gcomris, tuxpaint, tuxtype, gedit and this page in Firefox. She can type her name. She might learn to type before she learns to read. I still need to get the USB wireless adapter working so I can move it back to her room. This is going to be a good first computer. At this rate I should be able to introduce her to Bash at 6, shell scripting at 7, HTML at 8, PHP at 9, MySQL at 10 and she should be able to get into Stanford or MIT right out of elementary school.

Ever wondered how the comment spamming jerks do their thing? Here's one of the programs they use:

http://holygrailofadvertising.com

I'm not making this a link because I don't want to give them any help in search rankings, so copy the url and paste it in your address bar. He's even got a video tutorial which proves that you don't have to be smart to run these comment spamming programs:

http://holygrailofadvertising.com/quickvsearchtutorial/intro.html

Here's another one. Flashier site, cheaper program:

manifestingpower.com/seo/seo.html

These bottom feeders waste so much of my time. Reading their descriptions of what they do almost makes me sick.

Now these guys know how to fish. I found this video on Snopes.com, and they say it's genuine. I find it hard to believe, but I guess stranger things have happened.

YouTube plugin - Insert YouTube.com hosted videos into a blog post.
b2media - Easily add images and links for Amazon products.
Democracy Poll - Add a poll to your blog sidebar.
Star Rating Plugin - Let users rate your posts by clicking on stars.
Sideblog - Display another blog in your sidebar.
Most comments - Add a list of posts with the most comments in your sidebar.
Bookmarklet 2 - An alternate version of the stock bookmarklet plugin that adds the link to the body of the post rather than the Link to Url field.

Purpose
This plugin gives you an easy way to add images and links for Amazon.com products to your posts. If you get an Amazon Associates ID and enter it in the plugin settings, then you earn a referral fee if someone clicks your link, then buys the product. Mostly, this is just a nice way to add an image to a post or to maintain a blog in your sidebar that shows what movies you're watching.

Installation
Requires b2evolution 1.7 or later

1. Download this file: _b2media.plugin.txt.
2. Replace the .txt from the filename with .php and upload it to your b2evolution plugins folder.
3. In the backoffice, go to Settings > Plugins and find b2media in the list. Click "install".

Usage
The plugin adds a sub-tab to the Tools tab in the b2evolution backoffice. You can search for Amazon products there, but that won't give you the option to add images into a blog post. To get that you need to go to the Write tab, then click on the button below the writing area that says "Amazon". This will pop up a window that looks very similar to the Tools sub-tab, but now when you search, each result has a button labeled "img". Click on that button to add the code to your post.

Amazon Associates Program
You can use the backoffice plugin settings to change the Associate ID that is added into the links. If you want to make a little money with this, then sign up for the Amazon Associates program (it's free), then log into your blog backoffice, go to Settings > Plugins > b2media and replace my ID with yours. If you're not interested in any of that, just leave my ID in there. You may end up adding a few cents toward my daughter's college education.

Sideblog
I like to use this plugin to create a section in my sidebar showing what movies, music and video games I'm consuming. I call it my mediablog. It's actually a separate blog in b2evolution that can be viewed on its own or included in the sidebar of my main blog. If you want to do something like this, then copy the code from this file and add it into your skin. Remember to replace the fives with the number that matches your mediablog.

Misc info
This plugin is based on Jaap's Free Amazon Script. I first released it as a hack for b2evolution 0.9.0.12. Installing it involved putting four files in two different directories. And it still didn't look or work that good. The plugin version is one file and it matches the look and feel of the b2evolution backoffice. I also fixed some bugs.

This plugin has been replaced by Mini Stats.

Purpose
This plugin creates a section in your blog sidebar that lists the most commented posts on your blog. It's an easy way to keep track of your most popular/controversial posts. It may even lead to those posts getting more comments.

Installation
Requires b2evolution 1.7 or later

1. Download this file: _mostcomments.plugin.1.7.txt.
2. Remove the .1.7.txt from the filename and upload it to your b2evolution plugins folder.
3. In the backoffice, go to Settings > Plugins and find MostComments in the list. Click "install".

4. Add this bit of code in your skin where you want the list to appear:

   <?php
// MostComments plugin:
$Plugins->call_by_code( 'mostCmts', array(
'limit'=>5,
'list_start'=>'<ol>',
'list_end'=>'</ol>'
) );
// Add parameters in the array.
?>

   
   You can edit the limit value to make it show more or less in the list. If you want an unordered list instead of an ordered one, then you can change those tags, too.

Misc info
If you're interested, you can check out the forum thread where the idea for the plugin came from. Thanks to MarcDK for suggesting it. And here is the most commented post on my blog. Actually, my wife wrote the post. A lot of people have strong feelings on this issue.

Purpose
Quickly blog about another webpage. This plugin automatically adds a link to the page into the body of your blog post.

Installation
Requires b2evolution 1.7 or later

1. Download this file: _bookmarklet2.plugin.php.txt.
2. Remove the .beta.txt from the filename and upload it to your b2evolution plugins folder.
3. In the backoffice, go to Settings > Plugins and find Bookmarklet 2 in the list. Click "install".

Usage
This is just a slight modification to the Bookmarklet plugin that comes pre-installed with b2evolution. I'll explain how that one works, then tell how mine is different. A bookmarklet is a link that you find in the Tools tab of the backoffice. You right click and choose to bookmark the link (or 'Add to Favorites' for Internet Explorer users). Then, when you're browsing a web site that you want to blog about, just click on your bookmark (I keep mine on a toolbar where it's easy to get to) and as soon as you do, a window pops up with a trimmed down version of the b2evolution backoffice. It automatically adds to your new blog post a link to the page you were on when you clicked the bookmarklet. And if select some text before clicking, it will get added, too. My version of the plugin is just like the stock version, except that it adds the link to the post body, rather than to the "Link to URL" field (which I never user).

Misc info
This was originally a hack I made right after switching from Movable Type to b2evolution. Some of the people I share a site with wanted the bookmarklet to work the way it did in Movable Type.

I've always been intrigued by the stories about guys like Thomas Edison (oops, I guess the stories about Edison's sleep patterns are just legend) who slept only a few hours a day in short naps. I don't know if there's much scientific research on the subject, but I just read the journal of a guy who set out to try it for 30 days. He started taking six 30-minute naps per day. He's pleased with the results and said he doesn't plan on going back to normal sleep. He's gone almost 90 days now. The first week is pretty hard, but after that your body is trained to enter the all-important REM sleep almost as soon as you fall asleep. Interesting read.

(via Digg)

I just posted a new photo album. Emma was showing off her new gymnastic skills and just generally hamming it up.

And the award for most overrated movie of 2005 goes to . . . Wedding Crashers. We heard this was one of the funniest movies of the year, but it's more like a 2 hour snooze fest. We laughed out loud maybe 7 times in the whole movie. Most of the time it felt like they weren't even really trying to be funny. Even an appearance by Will Ferrell in the third act couldn't save this thing. I've never thought Vince Vaughn was funny, but I expected better from Owen Wilson. I guess he doesn't have what it takes to carry a picture without the likes of Ben Stiller.