Unwakeable was again denied for inclusion in the WordPress Themes Directory. All the issues you see listed on that trac ticket have been fixed. I have yet to submit Unwakeable 1.5.6 to the themes directory.

You can find a detailed list of changes at the Unwakeable GitHub repo. If you notice any problems please report an issue.

The biggest change in 1.5.6 is the inclusion of comment_form. The WordPress Themes Directory requires use of comment_form. K2 had a custom form in place for comments, so I removed that form and replaced it with the comment_form function. Changes other than that were pretty negligible (ie: replacing blog_info(‘url’) with ‘echo home_url()’).

You can see Unwakeable 1.5.6 in action here.

Not a whole lot has changed since 1.5.3, but the changes that were made are significant. Unwakeable 1.5.5 is compatible with WordPress 3.1.

The most notable change is the removal of title.gif file. That was the image file with “Unwakeable” written on it that sat in the top left corner. Instead of that image, text is now used. The name of the WordPress site is pulled and used in place of the image. You can see a demo over at the Unwakeable demo site.

I’ve also added support for custom menus that were introduced in WordPress 3.0. By default, the top menu is a list of pages. If you want to use a custom menu just set one up in your WordPress dashboard (Appearance –> Menus) and set that menu as the “primary navigation”.

My goal with this release of Unwakeable was to get it included in the WordPress theme directory. It’s still pending approval or rejection in the theme directory. If it’s rejected I’ll make the necessary changes, bump the version number, and submit it again.

If you’re interested in the exact changes that were made in Unwakeable 1.5.5, have a look at the following revisions in subversion:
r131
r132
r133
r134

The latest revision is r135 but that was just to tag the 1.5.5 release in subversion.

If you have problems or find something broken, please submit an issue on Github and I’ll look into it.

I came across the Mystique theme the other day and thought it had a nice look to it, so that’s what I’m using now. Just a base Mystique install, nothing changed but a bit of custom CSS added.

I’ll probably stick with Mystique for a while before switching to something else again. I do know that I’m not going to keep this theme as long as I did Unwakeable. I’m going to try switching up themes every six months or so.

Also been thinking about moving this site to Drupal for a while. I’ve never really used Drupal much, never on a live site anyway. We’re starting to use Drupal at work and I’ve liked it pretty well so far, although I still like the WordPress dashboard better.

What do you think of this new theme?

Update 1/21/2011:
I did end up having to modify an image that comes with Mystique. The image was box.png and it overlays the categories, tags, archives, etc on the right sidebar. I have an extensive archive (going back to March 2002). The image was only 2000 pixels high, so I had to make it a bit taller. So that’s really the only change I’ve made, bringing that image from 2000 pixels high to 3000 pixels high.

I wanted to document them here as well for future reference. I also get quite a bit of traffic related to Xbox 360 stuff, so someone else reading might find it useful.

Please be aware that this is not a complete list. This list mostly covers voice commands that let you interact with the Xbox 360 Dashboard, not specific games. There are, however, voice commands for some apps: Hulu Plus, Last.fm, Netflix, ESPN and Zune.

You need to say “Xbox” before saying these voice commands.

Open Tray (only if there’s no disc inserted) -> Opens Tray
Kinect -> Opens Kinect Hub
Dashboard -> Takes you back to dashboard
ESPN -> Starts ESPN
Zune -> Starts Zune Marketplace
Video Kinect -> Starts Video Kinect
Trailer -> Starts Trailer
Dance Central -> Starts Game trailer
Play Game (disc) -> launches game
Next – > Takes you to next blade
Previous -> Takes you to previous blade
Sign In -> Signs you in
Achievements -> shows lists of achievements
friends -> shows friendslist
Face Id -> starts Face ID
Yes
Cancel
No
Last Fm -> Starts Last FM

Voice Commands In Last FM:

Love -> hearts song
Ban – > bans song
next -> skips song
play -> plays playlist

Voice Commands for Last FM, Hulu Plus, Netflix, ESPN and Zune

fast-forward -> Fast forward a video or song
rewind -> Rewind a video or song
pause -> Pause video or song
play -> Play a video or song
next -> Skip to next video or song
previous -> Skip to previous video or song

If you’re aware of any voice commands that are missing, please leave a comment describing the voice command and I’ll get it added to this page.

UPDATE 1/3/2011:
I just came across the official Xbox Support “How to control your Xbox 360 console by using your voice” page. It doesn’t list all the voice commands listed above, hopefully they will update it with all the voice commands at some point.

UPDATE 1/17/2012:
Martyn Herb left a comment with a tip on how to turn your Xbox 360 off via a Kinect voice command. Before you can turn your Xbox 360 off, you need to say “Go to settings”. Once you’re at the system settings panel, you can then say “xbox turn off” to shut your Xbox 360 down.

Most modern web browsers support webfonts. The Google Font API FAQ would be a good place to visit if you have questions or are curious about some of the limitations.

Making use of these fonts in your WordPress theme is extremely easy, as long as you have a basic understanding of CSS. Now let’s get down to using these in your WordPress theme, we’ll keep it short and simple.

First, head over to the Google Font Directory and pick a font to use. I’ll be using IM Fell as an example, since that’s the font I use for post titles on this site.

Once you find a font you like, click on it. If the font you chose has variants, you will need to click on a variant to use. Once you’re on the font page, click the “Get the code” tab and google will generate the code for the font. You will embed this code in the header.php file for your theme. I usually put it right before the line that calls the theme stylesheet file. Here’s the code I used to include the IM Fell font:

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=IM+Fell+DW+Pica&subset=latin' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' />

After that, all you have to do is use the font in your CSS, typically the style.css file in your WordPress theme directory. To get my post titles to use the IM Fell font, I did this:

.entry-title, h3 {
	font-family: 'IM Fell DW Pica', arial, serif;
	font-size: 28px;
	font-weight: 600;
}

The font-size property defines what size of font to use (duh!). The font-weight property defines the thickness of the font (degree of boldness). You can apply the font-family property using the Google Font to pretty much any piece of CSS that targets text. You can use it for post content, links, widget titles, or whatever you want really.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out!

User bazil749 suggested doing this, I’ve updated it to include jQuery 1.4.4:

<?php
if( !is_admin()){
	wp_deregister_script('jquery');
	wp_register_script('jquery', ("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"), false, '1.4.4');
	wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}
?>

I added that piece of code to the proper place in the header.php file for the theme and it worked like a champ. jQuery was now loading from Google. The Use Google Libraries plugin does the same basic thing, except it can use libraries other than just jQuery, like jQuery UI, Dojo, MooTools, and Protoype.

There are a number of good reasons to let Google host jQuery for you.

I backed up all of my important files and some configuration files to a second drive, /dev/sdb. My previous Ubuntu install was installed on /dev/sda1 and I used the sdb drive for photos and videos.

When the installation got to the point of configuring partitions, I was a little bummed to see that my first drive, /dev/sda, wasn’t included in the list of drives and partitions. This machine needed a fresh install badly, so I posted on the Ubuntu Forums to see if anyone knew of a fix.

After a few days of no replies, gregmo posted and offered a solution. He suggested running the command below while running the live cd, prior to installing. This removes dmraid from the system running off the live cd.

sudo apt-get remove dmraid

After removing the dmraid package, I fired up the installer and was able to install to /dev/sda1 just fine. For some reason, removing the dmraid package allowed the partition manager to see /dev/sda.

Blackbird Pie is a tool provided by the Twitter Media team that allows you to embed tweets directly in your blog posts or any website really. Here’s a good description of Blackbird Pie from a post at media.twitter.com:

The origin of the script is both self- and user-centered. Mostly, we just think it’s a pain to take screen grabs of tweets. But of course we also think it’s a much better user experience to have @-mentions, hashtags and the account itself all linked and clickable.

This is my 6000th tweet. Oh, and Blackbird Pie (http://bit.ly/9WG6vd) is cool!

May 10, 2010 12:45 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

@tlongren

Tyler Longren

It’s a neat tool, sure to be of use to folks who like to embed tweets in their site. Blackbird Pie is a way better option for embedding tweets compared to simply taking screenshots of tweets.

UPDATE 11/22/2010: A WordPress plugin for Blackbird Pie has been released. Check it out if you were using Blackbird Pie manually before. I’ve used the Blackbird Pie plugin to embed the tweet below:

Check out the I-35 Spirits website, it's coming along nicely but not quite finished yet. http://goo.gl/KcD9x

November 20, 2010 8:24 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

@tlongren

Tyler Longren

Steve’s code is exactly what I was looking for. I made a few modifications to his code and wrapped it all into a custom PHP function, which you can see below.

Download The Code

The function returns an array that contains each category name, the CSS class that should be applied to the given category, and the category ID for linking to the page showing only questions in that category.

<?php
function tagCloud($maximum=0) {
	$cats = array(); // create empty array

	$query = mysql_query("SELECT categories.catDesc, categories.catId, COUNT( questions.id ) AS totalQuestions FROM questions, categories WHERE questions.categoryId = categories.catId GROUP BY categories.catId;");
	while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
		$cat = $row['catDesc'];
		$counter = $row['totalQuestions'];
		$catid = $row['catID'];

		// update $maximum if this term is more popular than the previous terms
		if ($counter> $maximum) $maximum = $counter;

		$percent = floor(($counter / $maximum) * 100);
		if ($percent <20) {
			$class = 'smallest';
		}
		elseif ($percent>= 20 and $percent <40) {
			$class = 'small';
		}
		elseif ($percent>= 40 and $percent <60) {
			$class = 'medium';
		}
		elseif ($percent>= 60 and $percent <80) {
			$class = 'large';
		}
		else {
			$class = 'largest';
		}
		$cats[] = array('term' => $cat, 'class' => $class, 'catid' => $catid);

	}
	return $cats;
}
?>

You’ll also need some CSS to style your tag cloud. This CSS is pretty much identical to what Steve published, I only made some minor changes to font sizes.

#tagcloud {
    width: 300px;
    background:#FFFFCC;
    color:#0066FF;
    padding: 10px;
    border: 1px solid #FFE7B6;
    text-align:center;
}

#tagcloud a:link, #tagcloud a:visited {
    text-decoration:none;
}

#tagcloud a:hover, #tagcloud a:active {
    text-decoration: underline;
    color: #000;
}

#tagcloud span {
    padding: 4px;
}

.smallest {
    font-size: 10px;
}

.small {
    font-size: 12px;
}

.medium {
    font-size:14px;
}

.large {
    font-size:16px;
}

.largest {
    font-size:18px;
}

To use the function, do something like this:

<?php
$tagCloud = tagCloud();
foreach ($tagCloud as $t) {
	$cat = $t['term'];
	$class = $t['class'];
	$catid = $t['catid'];
	print "<span class=\\"$class\\"><a href=\\"category.php?id=$catid\\">$cat</a></span>";
}
?>

I am still testing this code, but so far it seems to do exactly what I need it to do. It’s best to use tagclouds in a virtual private server provider that supports PHP, MySQL and CSS. If you experience trouble with the code or if it doesn’t act as expected, please let me know in the comments. If you’ve got ideas on how to improve the function, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!

K2 1.0 added more support for WordPress 2.9. For example, K2 1.0 supports new WordPress features such as post thumbnail images. One of the more noticeable changes to K2 since the 1.0 release is the absence of SideBar Manager (SBM). It sounds like it was simply too much work to maintain SBM, and was beyond the scope of what K2 is:

It’s worth mentioning that the last remnants of the old SideBar Manager, or SBM, have now been removed from the codebase. It started out as a fully-fledged replacement for WP’s lacking widgets system and ended up as a patch-of-sorts to the widget system, allowing for widgets to be placed only on specified pages. But in the end, while the native widget system is still very much in need of an update, it didn’t feel right for K2 to try and cover that particular area of the administration interface. And besides, other plugins for doing just that exist already.

So instead of spending our time patching that system for an ever-changing WordPress, our time is probably better spent on more theme-specific functionality, like the rolling archives or livesearch systems, as well as keeping up with new WordPress features, like for instance Post Thumbnails.

Rather than break down all of what’s changed in recent versions of K2, I’m going to make it easy on myself and direct you to the K2 1.0 release announcement. Just know that Unwakeable 1.5.3 sports all the features found in K2 1.0.3. You can comment on this post or on the Unwakeable page with questions or comments.