I got tired of putting a large formula container into the diaper bag so I measured out single servings into sections of a vacuum bag. I can rip open the number of packets needed to fix up a bottle the size I need.
I also made a couple of these kits to keep in a coat pocket. They contain a diaper, two wipes, baby powder and formula. I can take care of the baby’s needs going in or coming out.
Today, I ran across an interesting article on URL Sentences by Chris Shiflett. The idea that a URL should read like a sentence just tickled my fancy. I like to tweet my blog posts, and being able to tweet a full URL that actually meant something in and of itself would be priceless.
So I did it. I figure I had recently migrated my site to WordPress and mapped all my URLs, I just as well map them again. I changed both my Categories and Tags URL structure. The Categories URL now has a verb + subject and the Tags looks like my ruminations on a particular topic.
For example, This article will be in the blogging category which looks like http://mike.creuzer.com/does/blogging and the URLs tag, which looks like http://mike.creuzer.com/on/URLs.
Like I said, this just tickles me 3 shades of pink, this day of URL shorteners like http://ow.ly/1TcIq.
I used a couple of plugins to make this happen.
The Top Level Categories plugin removes the need to have a top level category in the URL, so now I can just have the categories without needing /topics/ or /category/ in the URL. The old URL structure http://mike.creuzer.com/topics/blogging still works fine, so any links and searches come up ok. It will take time for the search engines to migrate over to the new URL structure, but that’s fine.
The Redirection Plugin is what I used to map all my old blogger URLs over to the WP URL space. I just added a new entry to map the /tags/ to /on/ after I changed the PermiLinks Tag Base to ‘on’. /tag/(.*) => /on/$1 using the 301 moved permanently setting.
I checked a few of the highest traffic category and tag pages, and made sure that they still worked. My Topics and Tags are the #2 and #3 ‘sections’ of my website, beat out only by ‘2009’, the archive section for last year.
I can’t wait to start tweeting my really readable URLs in the near future!
I was looking for a way to incorporate my Twitter tweets into my blog in a way that the TwitPic.com photos are displayed as images on my blogs instead of links. I looked over a ton of plugins and even installed a few.
In disappointment at finding nothing useful ‘out there’, I decided to come at the problem sideways. I started to look for unobtrusive javascript scripts that would do what I wanted. Again, nothing.
But, I did find a jQuery example that does something similar. It will create an image of a website’s favicon as part of the link. This is pretty cool, so I added it to my blogroll in the side menu of my site. This is also functionally what I am wanting to do, so I used this as the base for creating my TwitPic.com image linker.
The author of the CC favicon script is Andreas Lagerkvist and his work can be found at http://andreaslagerkvist.com/jquery/favicons/
I did a little bit of tweaking to his script and came up with exactly what I needed. I edited the footer file of my template to add the javascript code. If you view the source of this page, you should see something that looks a lot like:
<!-- http://andreaslagerkvist.com/jquery/favicons/ -->
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery.fn.favicons = function (conf) {
var config = jQuery.extend({
insert: 'appendTo',
defaultIco: 'favicon.png'
}, conf);
return this.each(function () {
jQuery('a[href^="http://"]', this).each(function () {
var link = jQuery(this);
var faviconURL = link.attr('href').replace(/^(http:\/\/[^\/]+).*$/, '$1') + '/favicon.ico';
var faviconIMG = jQuery('
')[config.insert](link);
var extImg = new Image();
extImg.src = faviconURL;
if (extImg.complete) {
faviconIMG.attr('src', faviconURL);
}
else {
extImg.onload = function () {
faviconIMG.attr('src', faviconURL);
};
}
});
});
};
jQuery.fn.twitpic = function (conf) {
var config = jQuery.extend({
insert: 'appendTo',
defaultIco: 'http://twitpic.com/favicon.ico'
}, conf);
return this.each(function () {
jQuery('a[href^="http://twitpic.com"]', this).each(function () {
var link = jQuery(this);
link.attr('target','_blank');
var faviconURL = 'http://twitpic.com/show/thumb' + link.attr('href').replace(/^(http:\/\/[^\/]+)(.*)$/, '$2');
var faviconIMG = jQuery('')[config.insert](link);
var extImg = new Image();
extImg.src = faviconURL;
if (extImg.complete) {
faviconIMG.attr('src', faviconURL);
}
else {
extImg.onload = function () {
faviconIMG.attr('src', faviconURL);
};
}
});
});
};
jQuery('.blogroll').favicons({insert: 'insertBefore'});
jQuery(document.body).twitpic();
</script>
So, now I have my TwitPic.com image previewer and it works anywhere on my site, whether it’s on a blog post or in a widget. I am quite happy with the results.
Isabella found out that sitting up at a table is hard work!
A friend of mine from college and her husband have created a pretty unique website – Parent Powered Vehicles. This site is unique in that it’s all about baby strollers and is targeted for the geeky dad type. There is a balance between the his/her viewpoint which is really cool, as it helps us ‘guys’ relate to what ‘she’ may want in a stroller.
On their website, they discuss different types of strollers and accessories and go over the pros and cons of each model. They are in New York City, and target that area specifically, which I found pretty interesting, because I didn’t realize how different stroller usage could be between a city like that and where I live.
They offer a Stroller Consultation Service where they learn about you and help you pick out a stroller that suites your needs. We spent about half an hour on the phone, and came up with a few recommendations during the phone call. Let me tell you, these people can totally get geeky with you if you want – we discussed force body diagrams when talking about Stroller Geometry!
About an hour after the phone call, I got an email with a specific model that was in my price range. My parents got us a model very similar to what was recommended, and I would have preferred the recommended model over what we got, now that I have used the stroller a few times.
If your looking into getting a stroller, check out Parent Powered Vehciles before you make a buying decision!
