I decided to add Hashmask as a plugin to the WordPress login form, mostly because I hated the problem that arc90 fixed. Wasn’t really that complicated, nor is it world stopping, but it’s totally my first submitted plugin!

• The plugin page
• I made it a github page too if anyone wants to pull and edit it

Screenshot of Hashmask in WordPress

Good idea, that doesn't work.

For me at least anyway, and I’ve only tried it on two WordPress installations running bleeding edge 2.8. I get this message, click allow, and then all pages work once. Caching on the first load.

Then, if I refresh the page, or go back to it later, everything loads without the style sheet and JavaScript – the cached stuff. To fix it, I had to go into Options > Advance > Network and then remove my websites from the list.

I guess they’re for some reason competing with Google Gears, which makes little sense. Why compete? Why not just advertise Gears? They do exactly the same thing from what I can see.

Update: A lot of people are getting here to find out how to use Gears in the Firefox beta. You can use all your extensions (even if Firefox says they’re not compatible) by editing a single option. Of course, if you do that you could end up crashing Firefox or something, but you can just start in safe mode and disable it again.

Type about:config into Firefox’s address bar and click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.

Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.

Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.

Restart Firefox.

When you need to make one you kinda run into problems though. The documentation is so damn iffy, and the support is fairly slow moving. The irc channel sucks. So, for the good of everyone, whenever I have spare time I’m going to do a bit on the documentation (which is in a wiki format). I can’t believe there are still some fairly common functions that’re used in WordPress that aren’t even covered yet.

A while ago the only support I could get was from a wiki page in French. Fortunately I could read it, but still. That’s just not good.

None of the code for WordPress is commented either, which I think is a really important thing within an open source project! You can’t get more developers if they can’t understand what your code is doing without rummaging through every include. It’s just not cool.

It’ll be interesting to see what this looks like next year.

Onwards. In 2008, I frequently used the following websites or services:

• digg.com
• WordPress
• Google Talk
• GMail
• YouTube
• last.fm
• 4chan (though, permaban ftl)
• Google Reader
• Google Notebook
• Wikipedia

That’s pretty much the websites I bounce around…

And because I told Google not to save index this blog, it didn’t cache anything either.

Oh, looks like I do keep good backups.

I just write up my CV, which I just need to get someone to check (I’ll probably email Paul, and ask him to take a look at the online version). It’s a paragraph over a page, so I’m not sure what to do with that. I read a post somewhere that the requirement for CVs to be only a page is silly now, since people have more roles within their jobs than before, so they take up more space explaining.

I have a list of job openings that I’m perfect for all printed off and ready for me to sort out. They’re based sort of around the West Midlands, which means I’ll be able to move out. I’m very nervous, and don’t feel like I have enough confidence to have other people relying on me yet. I suppose the only way to get that confidence is to do it; fake it till you make it.

I might actually start writing up a plug in for WordPress, for the competition, though I’m not sure when the deadline is. Either way, a useful plug in would still generate traffic, and hopefully donations! More importantly, it’d be something good to put on my CV as actual work experience. At the moment, I’ve had to really talk up what experience I do have.

As soon as I get £10 availiable I’ll start an AdWords campaign, which would be fun to try out, since I’ve only ever played with the sandbox before. If I pick keywords well I should get a ROI pretty fast. It’s not really like I can lose money, unless lots of people come and don’t buy.

It could be awkward doing business on the same domain that I’m using personally though… Well, at least they’ll read that I’m excited about helping them, and commited.

Oh, yeah. Also, I was going to say that I’ve emailed the WordPress theme place to see if I can get registration there to upload Eventide. That should increase traffic here, hopefully, which may send traffic to my WordPress hosting. If not, at least people will stop using Beccary’s broken version.

Anyway, lets forget about that for a little while, it’s giving me a headache.

There’s a WordPress plugin competition! I was thinking the other day that I really wanted WordPress to do something for me, and I couldn’t find a plugin for it that works well. So, I might as well write it myself and potentially win a prize! The caveat to that though, is that I can’t tell people what my idea is, else they’ll steal it so I’m not even sure if it’s a good idea. Meh, I need it, so if nothing comes of it, at least I’ve gotten what I want. In the process, I’ll be learning new stuff about WordPress so it’s a win-win even if I lose.

The competition opens after my exams, so I won’t be having to mix it with reivision. I might have to mix it with finding a job though… If I win, it’d look awesome on my CV though!

Finding a job is another stress point (though, not too much), so I’m not going to talk about that either just yet.

So, you can go ahead and download Eventide – my version of Dusk – over on my goodies page. It’s under GNU GPL, so use it however you want.