I decided today that I wanted to track my calories burned per day on a nice line graph. I did it, and I think I will continue. The total is automatically calculated by the PHP data source. This was made using my Mephisto Plugin for Open Flash Charts.

Today I found a nice ping list for Wordpress. I decided to put it into my copy of the Mephisto Post Pinger plugin. I’m not sure if it works yet, but this post will give it a good test.

You can get the file, or just use this:

ArticlePingObserver::SERVICES = [

  { :url => "http://rpc.pingomatic.com/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rpc.weblogs.com/pingSiteForm", :type => :rest },

  { :url => "http://pingomatic.com/ping/", :type => :weblogs_get, :extras => [ "chk_weblogscom=on&chk_blogs=on&chk_technorati=on&chk_feedburner=on&chk_syndic8=on&chk_newsgator=on&chk_feedster=on&chk_myyahoo=on&chk_pubsubcom=on&chk_blogdigger=on&chk_blogrolling=on&chk_blogstreet=on&chk_moreover=on&chk_weblogalot=on&chk_icerocket=on&chk_newsisfree=on&chk_topicexchange=on" ] },

  { :url => "http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rubycorner.com/ping/xmlrpc/e49ac4608c88606f75486e6da3da34de6527622a", :type => :xmlrpc, :category => 'ruby' },

  { :url => "http://rubylicio.us/ping/xmlrpc", :type => :xmlrpc, :category => 'ruby' },

  { :url => "http://1470.net/api/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://api.feedster.com/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://api.moreover.com/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://api.moreover.com/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://bitacoras.net/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://blogmatcher.com/u.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogoole.com/ping/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogoon.net/ping/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogsnow.com/ping", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://coreblog.org/ping/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.amagle.com/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.bitacoras.com", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.blo.gs/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.feedburner.com", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.myblog.jp", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://ping.weblogs.se/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://topicexchange.com/RPC2", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/", :type => :xmlrpc },

  { :url => "http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/", :type => :xmlrpc },

]

It’s as simple as this:

<macro:flash>/assets/2007/8/13/party.flv</macro:flash>

Or, you can make it complicated:

<macro:flash width="640" height="480">/assets/2007/8/13/party.flv</macro:flash>

Which ends up like this:

Installation

Install it from your mephisto directory:

./script/plugin install -x https://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/code/rails/mephisto/filtered_column_flash_video

Voila! Firebreathing!

Get FireGPG Here NOW!

>> s = Site.find_first
=> #<Site:0xb747e014 @attributes={"current_theme_path"=>"wibbish-mephisto",#...
#...
>> s.host='www.ralree.info'
=> "www.ralree.info"
>> s.save
=> true
>> quit

Next, I did a small model modification:

# app/models/article.rb, in the public section
  def full_external_link
    ["http://", site.host, full_permalink].join("")
  end

And a slight test:

Loading production environment.
>> Article.find_first.full_external_link
=> "http://www.ralree.info/2006/5/21/first-post-what-to-say"

Perfect!

Then, I just modified the view for the email a bit:

# vendor/plugins/mephisto_comment_notification/lib/views/
# comment_notifier/comment_notification.rhtml
A new comment has been posted on your blog for the article '<%= @comment.article.title %>' by <%= @comment.author %> (<%= @comment.author_email %>):
<%= @comment.article.full_external_link %>

The commenter IP address is <%= @comment.author_ip %>.

Here is the comment that was posted:

"<%= @comment.body %>"

This notification was sent using the Mephisto Comment notification plugin by Luke Redpath.

http://opensource.agileevolved.com/svn/root/rails_plugins/mephisto_comment_notification/trunk

Modified awesomely by Erik Gregg (http://www.ralree.info)

And it’s magic! It totally works!

Directory Structure

./lib/article_ping_observer.rb
./lib/mephisto_plugins/post_ping.rb
./lib/config.rb
./README
./init.rb

File Changes

init.rb

# $Id$
require 'mephisto_plugins/post_ping'
ActiveRecord::Base.observers << :article_ping_observer

plugin.rb

module Mephisto
  module Plugins
    class PostPinger < Mephisto::Plugin
      author 'Mark Guzman'
      version '$Rev: 82 $'.gsub( "Rev: ", "" )
      notes "Send Weblogs Pings when articles are published"
      homepage "http://hasno.info/2006/11/11/mephisto-plugins"

      class Schema < ActiveRecord::Migration
        def self.install
        end

        def self.uninstall
        end
      end

    end
  end
end

That’s all I changed. This is my first post since the change, so I’ll see if it works. If not, at least Mephisto doesn’t blow up on startup.

Results

Well,

unable to send xmlrpc weblog ping -> http://www.ralree.info
unable to send xmlrpc weblog ping -> http://www.ralree.info
unable to send xmlrpc weblog ping -> http://www.ralree.info
unable to send xmlrpc weblog ping -> http://www.ralree.info

Seems like a couple might have worked. I’ll keep working on it. But, at least it gets called.

mephisto_tag_cloud
 - init.rb README
 - lib
   - mephisto_plugins
     - tag_cloud.rb

As you can see, the structure is very simple. Here’s my code for init.rb

Liquid::Template.register_filter(MephistoPlugins::TagCloud)

That’s it! No require or anything! Next, I edited lib/mephisto_plugins/tag_cloud.rb:

module MephistoPlugins
  module TagCloud
    def size_tag(tag, largest = 2)
      size = (Tag.find_by_name(tag).taggings(true).length + 18).to_f / 18
      size = largest if size > largest
      "<span style='font-size: #{size}em'><a href='/tags/#{tag}'>#{tag}</a></span>"
    end
  end
end

Holy crap that barely any code at all! So, the moral of the story is that it’s very easy to make the plugins once you figure out what to do.

Add this to your sidebar in your liquid template of choice:

{% for tag in site.tags %}
  {{ tag | size_tag }}
{% endfor %}

And you should have some awesome tag_cloud action. You can specify an upper limit as well:

{{ tag | size_tag: 3 }}

That code allows for up to 4em font size. I don’t recommend this because it’s ludicrous. The default upper limit is 2em, which makes the font size range between 1em and 2em. Suggestions are welcome.

Get it here:

svn co https://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/code/rails/mephisto/mephisto_tag_cloud

Or install it like this:

./script/plugin install https://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/code/rails/mephisto/mephisto_tag_cloud

Works for me – let me know if you have any difficulties.

Update: French one re-appears!

Well, he’s back. It was down a while back. You can see his version here. I like mine better. :P

Update: Better SELECT Statement

Thanks to Todd for pointing out that the tags were applying to not only published articles, but drafts as well, which produced false tag counts. He also pointed out that they were applying to revisions, which was unacceptable. I think I fixed the problems using some straight up SQL:

    def size_tag(tag, largest = 2, smallest = 0.5)
      number = ActiveRecord::Base.count_by_sql(
        ["SELECT COUNT(*) FROM taggings,
            tags, contents WHERE
            tags.name = ? AND taggings.tag_id = tags.id
            AND contents.id = taggings.taggable_id
            AND contents.published_at IS NOT NULL;", tag])
      size = sprintf("%0.2f", number.to_f / 5)
      size = size.to_f > largest ? largest : size.to_f < smallest ? smallest : size

This is simple – I’m just adding some conditions that filter unpublished articles and revisions (which I don’t think actually appear in the contents table anyway). In a test, the linux tag returned 35 results the old way, 34 without the checking of published_id, and 33 as it is above. I think it’s filtering, but Todd will have to confirm this.

svn co http://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/code/ruby/typo/xkcd_sidebar/

Horray! A sidebar is born.

./script/plugin install -x https://modzer0.cs.uaf.edu/repos/hank/code/ruby/graticule_plugin

It’s as simple as that. Then just jam this into your environment and change it accordingly:

GEOCODERS = [
  Graticule.service(:google).new('google_key'),
  Graticule.service(:yahoo).new('yahoo_key'),
  Graticule::GeocoderUsGeocoder.new,
  Graticule::MetaCartaGeocoder.new
]

Then you can just perform looping on GEOCODERS to do your queries on every site.
There’s also some other changes you can do to catch Graticule::AddressError, but I won’t go into those here.