Whatcha think?

I’ve been following the development of WordPress 3.0 more closely than previous versions, and one of the features that has intrigued me the most is the new theme being developed. Twenty Ten is shaping up to be an elegant and innovative theme and I’m excited to see what it becomes before the final release of WordPress 3.0.

One of the nifty WordPress 3.0 features Twenty Ten takes advantage of is the new API for choosing a header and background image. In previous WordPress versions, theme authors would have to include complicated forms and form handlers if they wanted to allow their theme’s header and background to be customized. Now the theme simply has to indicate to WordPress that it supports custom headers and/or backgrounds and mention any images that are included in the theme. WordPress takes care of the rest, allowing administrators to choose between the available images or even upload an image of their own. Not only does Twenty Ten utilize this API, but it includes eight (so far) beautiful images to choose from.

The really nifty thing about having this standard API for custom headers/backgrounds is that it’s easy to customize. For example, I was able to write a plugin that randomly chooses between the available headers using a standard (to WP 3.0) filter. What’s neat is that this plugin should work with any theme that uses the new API and includes custom headers (though it’s hard to test since no other themes support currently do).

If you haven’t seen what Twenty Ten looks like, you can find my own instance here. I have the custom header plugin installed, so if you refresh the page the header image should change.

And that’s about it. If you want to check out my random header plugin, it has its own plugin page.

Plugin page (basically the same instructions as this post).

Direct Download

A problem I sometimes notice, though, is that people’s gravatars don’t always match the the mood of the conversation. There are two extremes. One could be discussing a serious subject, but have a gravatar that is jovial and humorous. This might not always be appropriate. On the other hand, they could be involved in a humor thread, and then have a serious gravatar that just doesn’t fit the situation.

You can, of course, have multiple emails associated with your Gravatar account, but who wants to set up an email account for every mood they might be in? Once again, Google Plus Addressing comes to the rescue.

So what you can do is to map different gravatars to the same email, with different plus addresses.

Here are some examples I just create (note: I took two of the pictures with my phone, and yes, my hair is getting long).

will+happy@itsananderson.com

will+sad@itsananderson.com

will+surprised@itsananderson.com

This is a boring example, but hopefully you get the idea.

Unfortunately, you still have to verify each email on Gravatar, even though it goes to the same inbox. Wouldn’t it be great if Gravatar let you do this automatically? Just upload a picture and associate it with an email, then choose a tag that can be used to access that picture. I don’t think it would be that hard, and it would be totally awesome to use!

Go ahead and grab the new versions of Code Snippets and Short Comment Filter.

If you’re familiar with ASP.NET you probably know that every page has a presentation layer (a lax form of XML) and a business layer (C# or Visual Basic). This is a brilliant way of organizing a website because it separates your data (the presentation layer) from your complex logic (the business layer). This gives you several advantages (not by any means an exhaustive list):

1. Complicated logic is easier to understand when it isn’t cluttered with HTML tags
2. Because the presentation and the business layers are loosely linked, changes in one often don’t require a change in the other
3. Object oriented principles can be used in both the presentation, and the business layer, promoting code reuse

Now that I’ve sung the praises of the ASP.NET paradigm, it’s time to talk about one of the challenges it presents: AJAX calls, specifically JSON responses. If you’re not familiar with JSON, the idea is that rather than passing information as plain text or XML, it can be passed along in “JavaScript Object Notation”. In plain terms, this means that you pass a string which can be parsed to create a JavaScript object. Because JavaScript treats associative arrays and objects essentially the same, meaning that an array can be used to represent a JavaScript object. Confused yet? Here’s an example. For the sake of simplicity, I’m just setting the object string directly. Normally it would be the result of an AJAX request.

var json = '{ name : "Joe Smith", age : 23, job : "Consultant" }';
var func = Function('return ' + json);
var jsonObject = func();
alert(jsonObject.name); // Joe Smith
alert(jsonObject.age);   // 23
alert(jsonObject.job);    // Consultant

Ok, so now we’ve got the ASP.NET and JSON explanations out of the way (if you were already familiar with these technologies, thanks for sticking with me). Here’s the challenge I ran into, and how I got around it.

Let’s suppose you’re using ASP.NET and C# to run your website, and you have a directory of users. For this example let’s suppose that you have a page which lists the usernames for every member of your site. Clicking a user’s username should bring up their other information (in this case, their name, age, and job). Being an eager developer, you decide to display this information via JavaScript and AJAX because that seems like the Web 2.0 thing to do. So you’ll make a request to another ASP.NET page and parse the response as JSON. This is great, except that ASP.NET pages are generally served as HTML (which in a stretch could be treated as XML). Not exactly your optimal solution, especially if you aren’t comfortable with traversing a DOM tree. Fortunately there’s a really simple solution. Leave everything out of your ASP.NET page except for the tag to include the C# file. Then in your C# file you can print the JSON information directly. Let’s look at an example.

The first file is GetUserInfo.aspx, which is very basic.

< %@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="GetUserInfo.aspx.cs" %>

The second file is the GetUserInfo.aspx.cs, which is also fairly simple. I’ll just show the Page_Load function for brevity.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    String json = "{ ";
    //
    // Get values from database and add them to the json string
    //
    json += " }";
    Response.Write(json);
}

And that’s all we have to do for this page (except for getting the values from the database, which is straight forward). I’ll note that there are actually libraries for generating JSON strings, but I left them out for the sake of simplicity. To learn about available libraries (and JSON in general) check out www.json.org.

Now I only talked about my experience with JSON and ASP.NET. I’m by no means claiming that this is the best solution, or that JSON is even how you’ll always want to receive AJAX responses. This is simply what worked for me. If you know of some reason this isn’t a good idea, or of a better way of doing it, feel free to point it out in the comments.

Since my last post, the spring quarter at Rose has (finally) ended. I love school, but toward the end of the quarter my lack of sleep was really starting to wear me down. Now that I’ve had time to recuperate, I’m already excited for next year.

Work

I started work at ANGEL Learning June 1^st and have been loving it so far. In the 2 and a half weeks I’ve been at ANGEL, I feel like I’ve learned as much about the various aspects of software development as I would in an entire class. ANGEL was acquired about 5 weeks ago by Blackboard, a company that offers a competing product. Being able to see the way this transition occurs from a “safe”, low stakes position has been, and I’m sure will continue to be an invaluable experience.

Conferences

A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to attend an ANGEL Users Conference on the coat tails of the RosEvaluation tool. This was about a week after ANGEL’s acquisition by Blackboard. It was interesting getting to see the different customer’s reactions to the acquisition.

During the conference, I got to give a talk about some of the things our team had learned while extending ANGEL with the RosEvaluation tool. At the end of the conference, Will Mathies, Timothy Chow, Kevin Davidson, and I received an ANGEL Impact Award for our work with RosEval. If you’d like, you can read the news article Rose put together about it.

I also got to attend WordCamp Columbus, where I met Jeff Chandler of WP Tavern as well as a handful of other well known people (the event had quite a few attenders, I’m just not very outgoing, so I didn’t meet most of them). I had a great time, and came away with a few neat tips and tricks (see previous post). Even though it’s a bit of a drive getting to Columbus, I feel it was well worth the effort and I hope to attend the next one if my schedule permits.

Family

Both frightening and exciting events have taken place in my family in the last month or so. While I was at the ANGEL Users Conference, my younger sister was rushed to Riley Children’s Hospital after slipping into a diabetic coma. She recovered fairly quickly and was able to go home, but the last month has been a trying time for everyone (especially her). Taking care of her diabetes has required some big schedule adjustments (and lots of needles).

On a more up beat note, I’m now the uncle of a second nephew. My older sister and her husband are the proud parents of their first born, Stephen Mathew Agapie.

The End

And that just about wraps it up. I’m working full time this summer, as well as working on a few side projects, but I’d really like to start posting more (both personal posts, and more technical fare). So if I go very long without posting anything (I’d say a week is probably a reasonable limit) by all means bug me about it.

First of course you need to download WordPress and then upload it to your server. This is the easy part, and there are lots of instructions for how to do this, so I won’t go through them. You’ll also need a MySQL database, but again I won’t go into that since there are lots of resources already available that explain how to do this.

Let’s suppose we’re installing two blogs on domain1.com and domain2.com (lame I know, but give me a break). These should be pointing at the same server (your domain registrar can help you with this). If you navigate to your WordPress install, you’ll be asked to go through the installation process. Let’s start with domain1.com. Enter all your database information, but specify a custom table prefix (like “domain1_”) which will be unique to that domain. Once the installation is complete (make sure you save your password!) you need to delete the wp-config.php file.

Now if you navigate with your other domain, you’ll be asked to install WordPress again. This time, use a different table prefix (like “domain2_”). This will give you two different sets of WordPress tables in your database. The only problem is that you can’t access both of them. We’ll remedy this next.

Go into your wp-config.php file and find the line that looks something like this.

$table_prefix = 'domain2_';

We need this variable to be different, depending on what domain is being used to access your blog. Using the PHP $_SERVER super global, we can do this quite easily.

Here’s the new code you’d want to use.

if ( 'domain1.com' == $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] )  {
$table_prefix = 'domain1_';
} else {
$table_prefix = 'domain2_';
}

So now your server will display two different blogs, depending on what domain is used to access your site. Again, the advantage here is that you only use the space of one set of WordPress files, and you only have to do one update when a new version is released.

Mike talked about some other cool things you can do with this, and talked about how you can address issues with plugins like Google SiteMaps. He promised to post his slides, so if you’d like to learn more you should check out his blog.

New Features

• Filtered Comment Count – Look at the settings page to see how many comments have been filtered
• Customizable Filter Message – Specify a custom message to be displayed if a comment is too short. Use %type% and %length% for a dynamic message

Fixes

• Email Notification – Notification emails are no longer sent out for filtered comments
• Filtering Trackbacks – Trackbacks are no longer filtered. Only comments are required to meet the minimum length requirement

Again, here’s the download link

Here’s a simple example of the “old” and “new” ways of retrieving options from the database:

old:

$option = get_option( 'Option Name' );
if( false === $option ) {
$option = 'My real option value.';
}

new:

$option = get_option('option_name', 'default');

As you can see, this simplifies option retrieval and makes your code just a little easier to read.

EDIT: Thanks Nick Ohrn for pointing out a bug in the first code snippet. I’ve updated it so nobody is confused.

It automatically spams or deletes comments that are too short.

You can view more information about the plugin and download it here.

You can learn more about CSS Naked day here.

If you like my blog design, I’d love your vote! You can see the a list of the designs that were submitted, and vote on your favorite here.

As with just about anything in WordPress, you can use Actions and Filters to customize the way WordPress RSS Feeds. I chose to filter the query because it already has built in category filtering functionality. First I hooked into the query filter.

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'filterRSSQuery');

Then I created a function called ‘filterRSSQuery’ which does just what the name suggests.

function filterRSSQuery($query) {
	if ( $query->is_feed ) {
		$query->set('category_name', 'News');
	}
	return $query;
}

The code is pretty straight foreward, but here’s a breakdown. First we test to see if the query is for a feed (we don’t want to do this filtering anywhere else). Then we set the ‘category_name’ argument to ‘News’ (you would change this to whatever category you want to show up). Finally, you return the modified query object.

Overall, this is pretty simple, but extremely powerful.

I’ve decided to enter the contest in the Retro&Vintage category. Why did I decide to enter? My design certainly isn’t the most beautiful out there, so I’m not “expecting” to win, but this might give me a chance to get some constructive critisism about design choices I’ve made. Besides, it can’t hurt, and there’s a prize

Do you have a WordPress blog that you’ve designed? Enter it in the contest.

Good Luck!

The website actually went through several designs before I settled on the one it currently has (I might release the other themes at some point. We’ll see). I eventually created a design that I really liked, and that’s basically what’s there today.

The work I’ve been doing on the site is one of the reasons I’ve been so quiet this past month (My course load also increased, but that’s another story). When the quarter ended, I had enough time to get all the kinks worked out of the web site, so now it’s open for business. Hopefully I’ll be getting enough business to continue to be short on time, but I still plan to post more in the months to come.

Many people fight the spam bots by obfuscating their emails (for example “joe [at] example [dot] com” or “joe@REMOVETHISexample.com”). This does an OK job, but it’s also a royal pain for the visitor, who has to type in, or fix your email address if they want to send you an email. The ultimate spam fighting question arises: “How do you keep bots out while letting real users in”. GMail’s plus-addressing feature and jQuery might be able to bring us one step closer to an answer.

If you use Google’s email services (GMail or Google Apps), you have a powerful email feature available. Plus-addressing means that bill@gmail.com, bill+something@gmail.com and bill+anything@gmail.com all point to the same email address. When deciding what address to deliver the message to, Google drops everything after the plus sign. you can then actually use filters to move items to folders inside your mailbox (for example, you could use example+bank@gmail.com for your banking). Doing this also makes it just a little harder (though not impossible) for bots to get your real email address.

By default, you probably don’t want to display a “plus address” on a contact page, jQuery comes to our rescue here, allowing us to remove the “plus” part for users with JavaScript support. The following script looks for all email links and removes the “plus” portion from the href and the inner text.

jQuery(document).ready(function(){
	jQuery('a[href^=mailto:]').each(removeSpamProtection);
});

function removeSpamProtection(index, element){
	var link = jQuery(element);
	link.attr('href', link.attr('href').replace(/\+[a-zA-Z]*/, ''))
		.text(link.text().replace(/\+[a-zA-Z]*/, ''));
}

Now all visitors with JavaScript support will see something like <a href=”mailto:example@example.com”>example@example.com</a> while visitors without JavaScript support will see <a href=”mailto:example+spamblock@example.com”>example+spamblock@rose-hulman.edu</a>. Normal visitors will see your real email address while bots and visitors without JavaScript will see something else. The bots will (hopefully) be confused by the plus sign. If not, they will be sending an email to an address that you can easily filter into a “maybe spam” folder.

So there you have it. A very short piece of JavaScript (thanks to the wonders of jQuery) that you can include in your WordPress theme or install as a separate plugin.

What do you do to protect your email online? Do you have another method that works better? If so, please share it in the comments!

Normally you’d call wp_page_menu to get a list of Pages, as well as a link to the home page (providing the home page is not set to a static Page). This function was added in WordPress 2.7, so if you use it in a theme and someone with an older version of WordPress installs that theme, they will get an error. One solution is to check that the function exists before using it, but this gets a bit messy, especially if you use several functions that are new. What do you do when WordPress 23.6 is released? Everyone will most likely have a version of WordPress that supports wp_page_menu, so the check will no longer be necessary. If you are using several functions, you’ll have to go back and fix them in several places throughout the template. This isn’t optimal.

What I’m proposing instead is defining some default action if a given function doesn’t exist. These special definitions can be placed either directly in functions.php, or can be separated into a file specifically intended for them (new_functions.php for example). That way when they’re no longer needed they can easily be removed.

Anyway, I think it’s pretty cool.

Thankfully you can provide a much simpler solution for people who don’t want to edit your templates. With this solution, users can edit the 404 page contents just like it were any other page. Here’s how it works.

To use the WYSIWYG editor, the user actually needs to add a page. Of course they don’t want “404″ showing up everywhere they list their pages, so they need to set the Visibility to “Private”. This will remove it from all page listings. The permalink also needs to be specified explicitly. Using “404″ makes sense to me, and is what I use.

Now in the 404 template we want to check whether a 404 page is defined and if it is, display it. Otherwise we should have some default content to display. Here’s a template 404 file which lays out the general idea. Some tweaking might be required to fit the rest of your theme.

< ?php get_header(); ?>
	<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
	<?php query_posts('pagename=404' ); ?>
	<?php if (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
		<div class="post" id="post-<?php echo $id; ?>">
			<h2 class="post-title">< ?php echo $post->post_title; ?></h2>
			<div class="entry">
				< ?php the_content(); ?>
			</div>
		</div>
	< ?php else : ?>
		<!-- your default 404 content -->
	< ?php endif; ?>
		<!-- search form, or anything else you always want to show at the bottom -->
	</div>
< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>
< ?php get_footer(); ?>

Notice line 3 where we query for the post with page name “404″.

In line 4 we check to see if the “404″ page actually exists and if it does, we load its information with the_post().

In line 6 we use $post-the_title instead of simply the_title(). This is because WordPress adds “Private: ” to the beginning of the title of private pages when you call the_title().

The rest is pretty straight forward. Place any default content (what you want to show if there is no 404 page defined) inside the else and then anything you want to always display (whether the user has created a ‘404′ page or not) after the endif.

That’s it! If you distribute a theme with this feature, just let people know what you’ve done so they can utilize it.

Private Pages can solve to a wide variety of problems. I hope to post more ways to use them soon. For now if you have any other ideas about how they might be used, or a suggestion for improving this example please add it to the comments

Associative arrays are one of my favorite PHP features. They’re simple to use and easy to understand. Sometimes though, being able to reference the values of associative arrays with variables can be more convenient. Today I’m going to share a simple way to convert an associative array to variables.

OK, if you’re not sure what we’re trying to accomplish here, take a look at the following example.

$list = array( 'var1' => 'value1', 'var2' => 'value2' );

To reference the elements in the array, you’ll have to use the array key like this.

echo $list['var1']; //prints 'value1'
echo $list['var2']; //prints 'value2'

What we’d like to do instead is reference the values using variable names like this.

echo $var1; //print 'value1'
echo $var2; //print 'value2'

This is possible through what the PHP Manual calls ‘variable variables’. The idea is that the value of one variable is used as the name of another variable. Here’s an example.

$hello = 'world';
$$hello = 'howdy';
echo $world; //prints 'howdy'

Here, the value of $hello is analyzed and used as the name of the variable to which 'howdy' is assigned.

Now it’s not a big step to expand this to an associative array. Consider the following code.

$list = array( 'var1' => 'value1', 'var2' => 'value2' );
foreach ( $list as $key => $value ) { $$key = $value; }
echo $var1; //prints 'value1'
echo $var2; //prints 'value2'

So we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. I must caution you, though, about a couple of things which might trip you up.

First, make sure the keys are valid variable names. If you don’t you’ll run into problems when you execute the script.

Second, be very careful when using this with user input. For example, the following code is insecure.

// login.php
// checks the username and password in the GET request
$realuser = 'me';
$realpass = 'secret';
foreach ( $_GET as $key => $value ) { $$key = $value; }
if ( $user == $realuser && $pass == $realpass ) {
 echo 'login correct';
} else {
 echo 'login incorrect';
}

There are several problems here. First, we don’t know that $user and $pass have been initialized. We should check this before using them. Second (and more importantly) a cleverly generated request could let a user log in without a correct username/password. For example:

login.php?user=me&pass=wrong&realpass=wrong

When the script runs through the list of variables, it will assign a new value of wrong to $realpass. Because $realpass and $pass have the same value (as do $user and $realuser), the page will allow them to log in.

Here is a way to keep things a little safer by prefixing all the $_GET[] values.

// login.php
// checks the username and password in GET request
$realuser = 'me';
$realpass = 'secret';
foreach ( $_GET as $key => $value ) { ${'get_'; . $key} = $value; }
if ( isset( $get_user ) && isset( $get_pass )
    && $get_user == $realuser && $get_pass == $realpass ) {
 echo 'login correct';
} else {
 echo 'login incorrect';
}

Now the $_GET[] values are prefixed with get_ so they can’t interfere with other variables in the script. Additionally isset is used to ensure that the values of the variables has actually been set.

To use something like this, you’d still need to check for invalid variable names, but I won’t go into that for this example.

I use WAMP Server together with NetBeans (which supports PHP quite nicely as of version 6.5) to develop PHP applications on my local machine. This works well because I can do debugging (thanks to xdebug) and can readily view and edit files. I usually don’t like to place projects in the c:\wamp\www  folder, preferring instead to place them in more logical places in my personal directory.

The easiest way to facilitate this is to create Apache aliases to these different locations (for example, my IRPA work goes under http://localhost/irpa). WAMP Server provides an interface for creating new aliases by clicking on the tray icon and selecting Apache -> Alias directories -> Add an alias. A new command prompt window opens where you can enter the alias information.

Creating an alias like this, you’ll probably notice that in order for the URL to work, you have to have a trailing slash at the end (e.g. http://localhost/irpa/ will work while http://localhost/irpa won’t). This can be a bit of a pain, but there is fortunately a quick fix. Click on the WAMP Server tray icon again and select Apache -> Alias directories -> [alias url] -> Edit alias. This will open the alias file in Notepad. Remove the trailing slash from the relative URL.

For Example

Alias /irpa/ "c:/path/to/irpa/"

Would become

Alias /irpa "c:/path/to/irpa/"

Save the file and close Notepad. WAMP Server should restart automatically (if not, you can restart it manually from the tray icon). Once it has restarted, you’re alias should now work with or without the trailing slash. Why WAMP Server doesn’t do this automatically, I’m not sure, but at least there’s a simple fix.

Not surprisingly almost every large holiday sees a spike around the date it occurs. Here are some of the ones I looked at (letters indicate related news articles. You can look on Google Trends to see what they are).

Christmas Search Trends

Easter Search Trends

New Years Trends

 As I said, this really isn’t all that surprising. There are a couple of interesting things to see here, like the fact that searches for Christmas have gone down over the years (decreased interest or fewer people who don’t know what Christmas is?). The really interesting stuff to me is where these searches originated.

Christmas Search Distribution

Easter Search Distribution

New Years Search Distribution

Lets take a look at this. Christmas has an approximately equal share between the UK, US, and Ireland (?!). Australia is fifth in the list. If you look at Easter and New Years though, Australia is ahead by quite a bit (and both times followed by New Zealand). This makes me wonder, is Christmas not as popular down under, or do not as many people do research about it as other holidays?

Now in keeping with the general topic of this site of late, I’ll show another trend… WordPress

WordPress Search Trends

WordPress Search Distribution

 First it’s cool to see that WordPress continues to grow in popularity. Second, I’m surprised to see that the first 6 countries here aren’t really in “The West”. Again I wonder whether these search statistics also reflect usage. If so, that says something interesting about WordPress’ demographic (kinda cool that it’s really spreading internationally). Of course I also wonder if splog activity has anything to do with these statistics.

So what do you think? Any of this surprise you?

See anything interesting here that I missed or find an interesting Google Trend you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments and I might add it here.

College Acceptance

Because I was home schooled and was graduating a year early from high school, I was unsure whether I would be accepted at Rose-Hulman. Thankfully I was. This was a great blessing for the following reasons (not an exhaustive list):

1. As a child of a Rose professor, I get free tuition (this of course is the biggest blessing).
2. Going to Rose meant I could live at home. I’m an independent person, but being able to live at home has really been great because I’ve been able to save quite a bit of money not having to pay rent.
3. Rose is one of the best undergraduate engineering schools in the US. An education from Rose gives students a jump start upon graduation.

I feel that God has really brought all of this about through (just) enough intelligence to learn, parents who gave me a stellar education, and many other blessings to numerous to count.

Job Opportunities

Toward the beginning of this year I had the opportunity to help IRPA as they transferred their static website to a WordPress based CMS. Beyond introducing me to WordPress, my work with IRPA gave me a connection which has proved pivotal to to several other work opportunities that have presented themselves to me during the past year.

About the time I began working for IRPA, I also applied at Rose-Hulman Ventures for a summer internship. My connection with Dr. Williams (executive director of IRPA) helped me gain a position in the RosEval project (a project sponsored by IRPA/Rose-Hulman). Exceeding my hopes for a summer position, I was able to begin working for Ventures well before the end of the spring term. Working for Ventures, I was introduced to a multitude of things. I learned a lot about C#/.NET and Microsoft SQL. I learned a bit about general database design practices, project management practices, how to interact with clients, organizing meetings… Like I said, a multitude of things. I also was able to participate in the Leadership Academy hosted by Rose-Hulman while working at Ventures. This was an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot, got to know some people, and strengthened my confidence.

Now, RosEval is a plugin for ANGEL, a learning management system developed by ANGEL Learning (it is also the learning management system of choice at Rose-Hulman). While developing RosEval, I was able to get a look at some of the inner workings of ANGEL. Well, the summer ended and my Freshman year began. A few weeks in, I attended the Career Fair that Rose hosts each term. I only had about 30 minutes to talk to companies, but as I was walking past the booths, I noticed that ANGEL Learning had a booth up. The thought crossed my mind “Hey, I have development experience with ANGEL, I wonder if I could get an internship with them.” As I thought about it though, I decided that they probably wouldn’t be interested in a Freshman, so I moved on. After walking around for a little while and not finding anything terribly interesting, I decided to go ahead and talk to the ANGEL people. “What’s the worst they can do, turn me away?” I thought. I had a nice chat with Tim Tomlinson, gave him my resume and told him about my work with RosEval. He told me my work experience seemed promising and said they might bring me out to Indy for an interview within the next view weeks. Dumbfounded, I walked away, thinking “Wow, OK. Um, Yeah. Didn’t expect that”. Logic kicked in and I though, “Maybe he was just being nice.” As it turns out though, he was serious. I got a call from ANGEL a couple weeks later offering to bring me to Indy for an interview. I went to the interview, still wondering whether they would even be interested in a Freshman. The interview went well, and I was offered an internship for next summer (EDIT: Which I accepted! Thanks, Nick, for pointing out that I’d missed this detail). I’m not sure I would have been offered a position if I hadn’t worked on RosEval last summer. Again, everything seemed to “fall into place”.

OK, that section was a little longer than I was planning, but I think it’s really cool what God has done to provide me with work opportunities.

Beginning School

As I mentioned before, I was accepted at Rose and begin my freshmen year this fall. I’ve gotten to know many new people, learned a ton of new things, and had several opportunities to share my faith. The community at Rose is really an amazing thing and I’m blessed to be part of it.

Starting This Blog

While there are no miraculous stories associated with this site, I think it has been a great experience for me. I’ve created about 50 posts since the beginning of the school year and had 350 unique visitors (and counting). While these numbers certainly aren’t impressive, it’s encouraging that people are reading what I have to say (and that some of them are even coming back). I’ve gradually been increasing the rate at which I post and I hope to be able to write even more frequently in 2009. The theme I created for this blog has gone through several iterations and I’m pretty pleased with the way that it turned out, but I think I might do a total redesign for 2009 (If you like this theme though, let me know and I might keep it). I’ve gone from a WordPress novice to someone who, while not exactly a “professional”, is at least competent enough to get things done and to help friends who are involved in the blogging world.

In Conclusion

I can say without a doubt that this has been one of the best years of my life. It’s been amazing to see what God has done and I’m excited to see what he has in store for 2009.

Happy New Year!

I went about creating these empty index files on my site, but soon discovered that there are hosts of folders that could use them (think about the date structure in /wp-content/uploads ). Then I remembered another tool. .htaccess. Add this line of code to your .htaccess file to keep file in any directory from being listed (this works on any site who’s server supports .htaccess by the way, not just WordPress blogs).

IndexIgnore *

Really simple, I know, but I thought I’d share it all the same.

Check out the info and download it here.

If you have comments or suggestions, by all means let me know (either by email or by commenting here)!

In my work for IRPA one of the concerns we’ve had is the ability of visitors to navigate the site. Because WordPress isn’t really a CMS out of the box, navigation is sometimes difficult to facilitate on sites with deep “trees”. One of the solutions I looked at was Bread Crumbs because they can give users a quick look at their location in the site structure. Over the break (which I’m still enjoying) I’ve been able to finish implementing breadcrumbs on the IRPA Site.

I almost think something like this should be in core, but again, WordPress isn’t a CMS, so maybe it wouldn’t be useful for most people.

One of the things that took me the longest was figuring out how to handle different site settings. A site who’s home page displays latest posts needs a slightly different navigation list than a site which has a static home page. Even sites with static pages can have different structures depending on what page is the “home” page. Anyway, Here’s the code if you want to add it to your template. Simply paste the code into your functions.php file and add a call to get_breadcrumbs() where you want the breadcrumb list in your template. It outputs the breadcrumbs as list items. You’ll need to put the ul around them yourself in the template.

function get_breadcrumbs(){
	global $post;

	$separator = '  > '; // what to place between the pages

	if ( is_page() ){
		// bread crumb structure only logical on pages
		$trail = array($post); // initially $trail only contains the current page
		$parent = $post; // initially set to current post
		$show_on_front = get_option( 'show_on_front'); // does the front page display the latest posts or a static page
		$page_on_front = get_option( 'page_on_front' ); // if it shows a page, what page
		// while the current page isn't the home page and it has a parent
		while ( $parent->post_parent && !($parent->ID == $page_on_front && 'page') == $show_on_front ){
			$parent = get_post( $parent->post_parent ); // get the current page's parent
			array_unshift( $trail, $parent ); // add the parent object to beginning of array
		}
		if ( 'posts' == $show_on_front ) // if the front page shows latest posts, simply display a home link
			echo "<li class='breadcrumb-item' id='breadcrumb-0'><a href='" . get_bloginfo('home') . "'>Home</a></li>\n"; // home page link
		else{ // if the front page displays a static page, display a link to it
			$home_page = get_post( $page_on_front ); // get the front page object
			echo "<li class='breadcrumb-item' id='breadcrumb-{$home_page->ID}'><a href='" . get_bloginfo('home') . "'>$home_page->post_title</a></li>\n"; // home page link
			if($trail[0]->ID == $page_on_front) // if the home page is an ancestor of this page
				array_shift( $trail ); // remove the home page from the $trail because we've already printed it
		}
		foreach ( $trail as $page){
			// print the link to the current page in the foreach
			echo "<li class='breadcrumb-item' id='breadcrumb-{$page->ID}' >$separator<a href='" . get_page_link( $page->ID ) . "'>{$page->post_title}</a></li>\n";
		}
	}else{
		// if what we're looking at isn't a page, simply display a home link
		echo "<li class='breadcrumb-item' id='breadcrumb-0'><a href='" . get_bloginfo('home') . "'>Home</a></li>\n"; // home page link
	}
}

If you have any corrections or suggestions for this (rather long) bit of code, please add your comment bellow. I love feedback!

By the way, the code highlighting is done with a plugin I found here.

By the way, I’m currently listening to the Bitwire Holiday Marathon. If you’d like to listen to Jeff Chandler talk about non-WordPress related topics you should check it out.

http://holidaymarathon.com/

By the way, I found out about the new function here. If you’d like to learn about other new features WordPress 2.7 (or how to use wp_page_menu) you should definitely check it out.

WordPress gives users two tools for structuring pages. One is page parent, which allows you to create a tree structure with your pages, much like a folder system on a computer. I’ll touch on this a little later.

The other tool provided by WordPress is the ability to specify “Page Order”. What does this mean? Well, take my site for example. I have several pages that are listed at the top of every page. Their order can be decided by several things. Page ID is one option (though not really useful, since the ID is meaningless to anyone but WordPress itself). Another option is Alphabetical ordering based on title. This can be useful, but it still doesn’t give the kind of control that most would probably like. The final option is “Page Order”. This is based on a numeric value that can be set while editing a page. As WordPress says, this is a bit janky, because you have to go into every page and set some numeric value for its order. This is where My Page Order comes in.

Description

When activated, My Page Order adds an admin page in the “Pages” category called “My Page Order”. Clicking on it gives you a list of the pages you have on your site. You can drag the page names to order them just like WordPress Widgets. If you have a tree structure, you can select a page to order its child pages.

Likes

I love the ease with which you can order pages using this plugin. It’s a great tool to install for users who would feel uncomfortable using the default numbered ordering system.

Dislikes

The way this plugin handles the tree structure of pages feels a little awkward to me. Being able to view the whole structure at the same time would be incredibly useful, and being able to drag pages between parents would be immensely helpful.

I’ve still not decided whether this is a feature, or a bug, but unpublished pages are listed along with published pages. On one hand, this is good, because it means you can decide where a page will show up before you publish it. On the other hand, it can lead to a little confusion and clutter if many unpublished pages exist. Being able to hide unpublished pages would be a great improvement.

Overall Review

This plugin is really one of my favorite tools. Its function is so simple, yet it is integral to using WordPress as a content management system.

Plugin page on WordPress.org

Author’s plugin page (a bit outdated).

Check out the Release Announcement.

Download Page

EDIT: Oh yes, and here’s the dev blog announcement and the direct download link.

The first thing I had to do was find a theme that would change my interface to look like Ubuntu’s “Human” theme. I found a great (though slightly old) post that listed some of the options available. I patched the windows dll and (rather nervously) restarted Windows. After trying a few others, I finally settled on the first one on the list. (Its interesting to note that the Cursor files didn’t seem to install automatically, but doing so manually wasn’t that hard)

Next I went ahead and set the default Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Wallpaper as my background to add to the Ubuntu atmosphere.

One of the things I love the most about Ubuntu is its Virtual desktops. After looking around, I found VirtuaWin, an open source virtual desktop manager for Windows. I tried it for a while, but while I loved its feature set, one thing I missed was the cool “Rotating Cube” effect that Compiz Fusion gives you in Ubuntu. I did a little more digging and came across Yod’m3D. As it turns out, this project is now DeskSpace, and is no longer free. Fortunately for me, an older version of Yad’m3D is still available for download. I installed it, and am now working in full Ubuntu-like glory.

Here are some screenshots:

“Development” Desktop

“Browser” Desktop

“Graphics” Desktop

Cube Transition Effect

If I decide to keep this configuration, I’ll probably purchase the latest version of DeskSpace so I can enjoy the advanced feature set, but for now the free version is plenty of fun to play with.

The first thing I want to test is ad revenue in general. Can a low traffic site like mine even make anything from text ads. If so, how much. I suspect that the answer to this question will be “Yes, but very little”, but we’ll see.
Second, I’m curious about visitor response. These days I get about 6 or 7 new visitors a week and I have about 5 or 6 people who read my blog frequently. Those numbers certainly aren’t very impressive, but they’ll do for the experiment. What I’d like to see is whether there’s a change in how long new visitors stay on my site, and if the number of people who actually return will be different.

I’m going to run this experiment for 3 months, and then at the end of that time I’ll do a report on the results. Whether I keep the ads will depend on the results of the experiment.
Now its up to you to give me my first bit of feedback. Did you even notice the ad module before reading this post? If so, did it affect your opinion of this site in any way? If you’re a new visitor, will the ad have an affect on whether you return?

By the way, I’m writing this post with “QuickPress“, one of the many new features in WordPress 2.7.

[EDIT] It turns out this project is a lot older than I thought (as in over a decade older!). I assumed it was a lot younger because the twitter feed only goes back a couple of months. You can find out more about the project here.

Of course, this is 6 months away, but I’m already looking at some of the housing options available. There’s a nice housing community called Deercross that’s only a couple miles from where I’ll be working. Their website certainly paints a pleasant picture, and their pricing seems pretty reasonable). As the time draws closer, I’ll start looking more actively and I’ll probably be visiting the places I find online. Overall, this should be an interesting adventure.

http://rubiqube.com/8-common-sense-tips-for-writing-clean-wordpress-blog-posts/

Though some of it was kind of obvious to me, the other parts were really helpful. I’m planning to begin some more intensive training of IRPA staff once the stable version of WordPress 2.7 is released, and I get the feeling this article will find its way into the training.

• I have a project due tomorrow, as well as an exam,
• I have a lab writup due Wednesday,
• I have a project I’m trying to finish by Thursday, and
• I have an interview with ANGEL Learning on Friday.

Hmm, maybe I’ll be busier this week than I thought.

Oh well, I guess that’s just part of being a student at Rose.

“… And even though we view the conservative lifestyle as an unusual way of life, we’ll still let Republicans marry each other.”

A quote from the Rose Thorn expressing the author’s opinion that the election outcome is good for everyone.

What I see (in the whole article, but especially in that sentence) is a complete moral turnaround from the values America held such a short time ago. Not only are those who believe homosexuality is wrong mocked, but the very heterosexual lifestyle is deemed as strange and unusual. We’re the one’s who need to be tolerated.

If that doesn’t scare you, I doubt anything ever will.

As for me, seeing the moral changes the past decade has brought about, I tremble to think what the next decade might bring.

My excitement and optimism ends here.

Our country seems on the verge of economic collapse, reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 20’s. Stocks are at all time lows, jobs are disappearing like rubber balls at a magic show, and foreclosures and bankruptcies seem imminent. Into this picture steps a man who promises hope and change. We don’t have to settle for the status quo. We can affect our future, and we can do it together. Our nation, looking for a savior in our time of trouble turns to this voice of hope and promise. We want change, and we feel that we’ve found the person who can bring it to us.

What concerns me about this change is both the what and how. I’m not opposed to change. I feel that change can be good on many levels, but I’m choosy about my change. One place I enjoy seeing change is in software. I often install beta versions of software before the stable releases are made because I’m excited to see what changes have been implemented (I’m writing this post from Google Chrome for example). If, on the other hand, I install the beta version of a program and I find that some part of it majorly degrades my experience, I’m very quick to go back to what I was using before. Again, I’m not opposed to change, but I don’t like change just for the sake of it.

Let’s analyze some of the ‘whats‘ and ‘hows‘ shall we?

What: New health care plans including expanded eligibility for Medicaid and Government funded insurance.

How: This new plan is estimated to cost the federal government approximately 1.17 trillion dollars. Federal health care costs will raise to around 2.7 trillion dollars a year by 2010. This cost will ultimately fall to those of the working age (about 60% of the population). We’ll assume that other plans have created jobs for everyone and that there is no unemployment, so everyone who can work is working. With about 60% of the population, or 180 million people paying for the cost of federally funded health care, each person will be paying just under 15 thousand dollars a year. Now the plan suggests that these costs will actually be paid by large companies, but ultimately, this will simply mean smaller pay checks for employees… or that companies will have to cut back on jobs and unemployment will be created. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine whether this cost is worth the “benefit” of government funded health care.

What: More research, innovation, and jobs.

How: The government will support company and university research to create new technologies and innovations, creating jobs and increasing the standard of living for American families. Another part of this plan promises publicly available broadband access in every community across the nation. While this will give rise to technology innovations and hopefully to an increased number of jobs, it will ultimately cost us more than if these services were provided by a private investor. The reason for this is that the administration assigned to these projects by the government usually has little to no experience in the fields they are investigating. They are administrators, not scientists or engineers. Because of this, it’s harder for them to determine the feasibility of a project proposal or innovation idea. Private investors, on the other hand, seem to have more people who are experienced in the science and engineering industries, so they are better able to determine whether a project will succeed or fail. Only investing in projects that are likely to succeed cuts back on costs and delivers cheaper products to the customer. Lower production costs will also allow employers to hire more workers, increasing employment.

What: Civil rights reform.

How: “Overturn court rulings that curtail women’s and minority’s rights to challenge pay discrimination”. Pass a “Fair Pay Act” ensuring women receive equal pay for equal work. (I feel that these are great and I applaud equal opportunity employment for women and minorities). Pass an “Employment Non-Discrimination Act” that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. This will effectively tie the hands of employers, making them choose a homosexual over a heterosexual employee for fear of being accused of discrimination.

Conclusion

These are just three of the changes promised by our next president. He has many other changes he plans to make during his 4 years in office. I’ve just highlighted a few that I feel are particularly alarming.

Now to the real purpose of this (rather long) post. How do I as a Christian respond to the results of this presidential election? I could throw my hands up in the air and complain about how unfair the world is, but that is not what God expects from me. Here are some thoughts that put things in perspective for me. I think the may also be helpful for Christians who feel that our next president will be the savior for our nation.

First, my biblical duty is not really to elect my nation’s leaders, but to pray for them.

“As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you.“

I Samuel 12:23 (NIV)

Second, regardless of who our nation’s leader is, it is my biblical duty to submit to them, because they were given their authority by God.

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.“

Romans 13:1 (NIV)

Third, because our nation’s leaders are really elected by God, they are under his control. They cannot do anything He doesn’t allow.

“The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD;
       he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.”

Proverbs 21:1 (NIV)

Finally:

I welcome thoughts and criticisms of anyone, whether you agree with me, or have a totally opposing view. Feel free to comment, please just be courteous to me and anyone else who comments. Thanks for reading!

While it eliminates the need for an extra HTTP request, it also means that the CSS style sheet will have to be larger for both IE and other browsers. Still, that’s probably faster than two HTTP requests.

paulhammond.org: Conditional classnames.

I took everything that had been running when the script loaded and placed it in a function. Then added an action to run before the header was loaded (get_header). This way the function is executed after the template information has been loaded (so WordPress knows what page has been requested) but before header.php is included. Since what I was trying to do was to add a JavaScript file to the include Queue, I could have probably attached this to wp_print_scripts, but in my case it didn’t really make much of a difference.

Anyway, the most important thing I learned here was that in order to use conditional tags in a plug-in, you have to use an action hook to wait until enough information has been loaded.

Hope this is helpful to someone else!

Eric Martin » WordPress Pumpkin.

Check it Out!

Perhaps if I display a humble affect I can talk the school into making this a major. Couldn’t be much harder than Civil Engineering right?

I’ve also gotten to try out my new technical drawing pens. Unfortunately, I’ve not done anything worth mentioning with them yet. Mostly just scribbles and a couple sketches. Drawing with pens is really a tricky art. I’ve got a lot to learn about the techniques required to produce worthwhile drawings with them. It’s really quite different than graphite!

A couple other things that came in the mail are my wireless router (which hopefully extend the wireless accessibility to my room) and my 1TB hard drive. I have yet to get either of these set up properly, but I’ll hopefully have a chance by the time break is over (man that time is coming fast!).

Anyway, here are the sketches I did with the graphics tablet.

Again, I hope to eventually produce something more worthwhile, but this is what we’ve got so far

Waste of Water

Eiffel Tower Sand-Sculpture

The Pause That Refreshes

He’s also done art in other media, but I personally think his chalk paintings are the best.

Other bits of excitement… my parents are getting me a graphics tablet from WOOT for my birthday, and I’m waiting on a 1 TB external hard drive which should arive in the next couple days. I also just purchased a set of Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph Technical Pens which I can’t wait to try out. It should be an exciting 4 days

Freshman spend the week before homecoming constructing the bonfire out of about 5,000 railroad ties. It reaches 20-30 feet into the air and is crowned by an outhouse donated by someone in Terre Haute. Adding to the excitement, the sophamores attempt throughout the week to tear down the bonfire. 8:00 pm until 8:00 am is “open season”, but they have to get past the freshman who are guarding the bonfire with their lives (well, at least with nerf guns and maple syrup).

After the pep rally on Friday, everyone heads over to the bonfire to watch a fireworks display (which is amazing) and then the moment everyone has been waiting for… the lighting of the bonfire.

The fencing club decided to have some fun (it’s unfortunately hard to see here, but they’re fencing with fire brands).

Finally, “shiny guy” cooked us some marshmallows in the blaze.

EDIT: Turns out “shiny guy” is Daniel Sing, a grad student.

Watch him on YouTube

I question the sanity of putting a bunch of engineers and scientists near so much fire, but the event ended safely and everyone had a good time (nobody did anything too stupid).

Now I can’t wait until next year… when I get to give the new freshman a hard time!

He discussed some of the challenges of the web, and shared some of his thoughts on how the web will change in the future. It was an excellent time, with lots if interesting anecdotes and an informative question and answer time.

Here’s a picture if the lecture. Unfortunately, my phone doesn’t take very good pictures if the subject is more than a few yards away, so this one didn’t turn out very well. One of these days I’m actually going to purchase a real camera!

The first year, the guy who started it all wrote out Pi. He began in the Quad, went around the lake behind the Chapel, and finally went off the dock (if you’re not familiar with campus, that’s a LOT of numbers!). Last year, he did e. This year he wrote out Phi to 10,811 digits. I joined in the fun and wrote out root 2 to 2,226 digits.

Its An Anderson – Calendar.

Another big claim they made is that our country was founded on the principles of freedom from God and freedom from religion. Funny, but I always thought it was Freedom OF Religion! They ask the reader to help them “shore up Jefferson’s battered ‘wall of seperation between church and state’ “. I wonder if they’ve actually read Jefferson’s letter. I wonder what he would have thought of the lengths people have gone to twist his words to mean the very opposite of what he was trying to do.

The last thing I want to point out (I could go on for quite a while) is that they bash faith based services in the community. They claim these are destructive to our culture and should be “legally challenged”. I wonder which part of the faith based prisons (for example) they have issues with. Is it the reduced violence and trouble-making, or maybe the reduction in tax payer costs. Whichever part they’re against, I’m certainly glad they’re working so hard to make this country a better place to live.

Note: I feel it would be giving too much credit to the foundation that funded this ad if I put a link to their site on this post, but on the other hand, it would also be wrong not to let you see the other side of the argument. If you’d like to see what they have to say, search “The Freedom From Religion Foundation” on Google (or Yahoo, or whatever) and their site will be the first to come up.

Paul Stubbs : Turn off the Language Bar.

Anyway, I’m sort of geeky when it comes to pencils (and a lot of other things) but at least it keeps me off the streets!

I purchased books yesterday for about $660. Fortunately most of them will be good for a couple classes, so next term I’ll probably only have to spend about $100 or so.

I’m taking Differential Equations 1, Discrete and Combinatorial Algebra 1 (kinda cool, my dad was one of the technical editors for the textbook), Physics 1, and Intro to Logic Design. I’ve also got college and life skills, but it won’t take nearly as much of my time as the other courses.

I plan to put up my class/work schedule for anyone who cares. It might go on my Rose-Hulman page though, we’ll see.

When I first booted, it took only about 2 minutes (even with the first time configuration and everything). Now it boots even faster. Here are some changes since the previous model.

• Improved “Dashboard”Rather than the clunky buttons to control the wireless adapter and the sound, the new computers have light sensors (way cool!) so you just place your finger on them to change things (and the volume control is a light sensing slider (again, way cool!).
• Added portsThere are now 4 USB ports rather than just 3. Though not often an issue, I have had occasion to wish I had more than three ports. Now it won’t be as much of an issue.
  This model also includes an HDMI port, which could be useful for connecting to a (super) bug screen.
  It’s interesting to note that this model doesn’t include the serial port, but I no longer have the only device I ever used this with, so that’s not a problem.
• Different speaker locationWhile I’m not sure whether to call this a feature or a problem, the speaker is now on the front of the machine, rather than beside the keyboard. I’m not sure the sound will be as good because of this, but it allows for a larger keyboard and it’s also less likely to get clogged with grime.

Overall, the computing power is truly amazing. I’m now ready for classes to begin.

I also met with my freshman adviser today and finished registering for classes. I’ve got mostly morning classes, with ECE130 in the after noon. Hopefully this will let me do homework and my work at Ventures in the afternoon and then work for Noble Romans and IRPA in the evening. With 17 credit hours of classes (if you count college and life skills ) and 30+ hours of work a week, this promises to be a busy term.

Freshman orientation began yesterday. So far the activities have been enjoyable.

Probably the most fun thing we’ve done is play bingo with the squares being things one of the other 400 people has done (or can do). The squares had things like “Been to at least three continents” and “can juggle”.

The most informative activity so far has been the CSI session. The Vigo County Coroner talked about the differences between the CSI TV shows and what really happens at a forensics lab.  The talk was quite interesting and enjoyable (though not for the faint of heart. He had many graphic images and gory stories to share).

I’ve also been able to meet lots of people, which has been fun.

Check out this amazing rendition of “The Flight of the Bumblebee“.

You can read more about this in the Rose-Hulman news article.

I hope to get a chance to do some more work on it soon, but with my many commitments, it’s really hard to find time to even post, much less develop the theme.

I’m having my wisdom teeth removed this coming Friday, so maybe if I’m feeling up to it, I can do some more work on the site while I’m recovering (no promises though )

The basics of this trick are as follows.

First we need our HTML to work off of.
[html]
<a href=”#” class=”rollover”>
Javayahtzee Icon
<img src=”http://www.itsananderson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/av-1199.png”>
</a>
[/html]
Of course, if this were a real world situation, the link would most likely point to a real place (like the user profile or something), but for now we’ll leave it at this.

Now for the CSS. First we’ll make the link color gray. There’s no real reason for this besides the fact that I want to do so.
[css]
a.rollover{
color: #777;
}
[/css]
we want to hide the image unless the link is being hovered over.
[css]
a.rollover:link img{
display: none;
}
[/css]
and finally we show it (and set its position to absolute) if the link cursor is moved over the mouse.
[css]
a.rollover:hover img{
display: block;
position: absolute;
left: 10px;
top: 1ex;
border: 0;
}
[/css]
we have effectively made the image visible again, made its position absolute (we explicitly place it), given the coordinates of its top left corner, and set it’s border to 0.

the complete html code follows.
[html]
<html>
<head>
<style type=”text/css”>
a:link{
color: #777;
}
a.rollover img{
display: none;
}
a.rollover:hover img{
display: block;
position: absolute;
top: 1ex;
left: 10px;
border: 0;
}
</style>
<title>Fancy Rollovers</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<a href=”#” class=”rollover”>
Javayahtzee Icon
<img src=”http://www.itsananderson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/av-1199.png”>
</a>
</p>
</body>
</html>
[/html]
I hope this article is helpful to someone!
-Will Anderson

I would recommend this video to anyone. I think it’s especially good for believers who think we are living in “blind” faith.

Several questions I have been asked by agnostics and atheists were answered in this fascinating movie. The director showed the links between Darwinism, Nazi beliefs, and Planned Parenthood. Without a doubt, it is the best show I’ve seen in a long time. As my pastor said, “It lacks a chase scene, ill clad women and the staple, obligatory profanity.” He went on to explain that every believer should see this, because it is a “wake up call” to those of us who are now sitting back and doing nothing. We need to stand up for what we believe in and be willing to do the research necessary to defend what we stand for.