The Background

I recently added in a landing page for Twitter and decided to include all of my Twitter accounts on there. A targeted landing page means you can provide the right information to the expected audience – if they’ve found that page via my Twitter profile, then they might also be interested in the other accounts I run.

To make it a little more interesting, I decided to add in the Twitter avatars too. Now, Twitter itself doesn’t make it easy to pull out the live image for an account – there’s no standard URL, as it keeps the filename as whatever it was when the user uploaded it. While I could have cheated and just made copies of each avatar and hosted them here, then whenever an avatar changed, my version here would be out of date.

Up step Twivatar, a single script application whose sole existence (thanks to @rem) is to provide that crucial standard URL for the current avatar of a Twitter account. For the GaryJ Twitter account, we simply use:

<img src="http://twivatar.org/garyj" alt="GaryJ Twitter Avatar" />

Easy.

Displaying The Original

On the rest of the this site, I use Shutter Reloaded, so that when users click on a thumbnail image, the larger ones pops up. For this to work though, we need to make the image into an anchor, with the link pointing at the original large image, add a title to the link (that acts as a caption on the enlarged image), and, depending on your Shutter Reloaded settings, also add a class=”shutterset” so that each of the Twitter avatars could be cycled through without having to close the enlargement each time. For Twivatar, we can just append the word original to our image:

<a href="http://twivatar.org/garyj/original" title="GaryJ" class="shutterset"><img src="http://twivatar.com/garyj" alt="GaryJ Twitter Avatar" /></a>

Now, the problem is that Shutter Reloaded needs a link to the actual image, and digging into the plugin code, I saw that it specifically needed a link with either .jpg, .gif, .png or jpeg as the last 4 characters of the link.
I first tried:

<a href="http://twivatar.org/garyj/original?.jpg" title="GaryJ" class="shutterset"><img src="http://twivatar.com/garyj" alt="GaryJ Twitter Avatar" /></a>

but the plugin code specifically looks for a question mark, and checks the last 4 characters before the querystring starts.

The Solution

The solution, thanks to Twivatar being lenient with the URL it accepts is to add the .jpg bit as a URL fragment instead:

<a href="http://twivatar.org/garyj/original#.jpg" title="GaryJ" class="shutterset"><img src="http://twivatar.com/garyj" alt="GaryJ Twitter Avatar" /></a>

Twivatar, just strips this URL fragment, pulls the image from Twitter, and appends it back on the end, which in this case, does nothing to affect the display of the image itself.

Conclusion

Appending #.jpg (or #.gif, #.png or #jpeg) to the end of the the Twivatar link persuades Shutter Reloaded to work as expected. This technique, although very simple, would also be likely to work in similar situations. You can see a live demo on my landing page for Twitter.

The majority of those who read this don’t know me and never will, I like that anonymity. There’s something about writing something out for the whole world to see that’s very therapeutic. The thought that someone might read this and find the slightest interest, enlightenment or inspiration from it makes me smile.

I’m going to write about accomplishment, progress, recovery. However you deem to express it for me they all boil down to the same basic principle. That principle to me is (if you’ll excuse my French) getting the f**k on with it. I mean, obviously it’s not that simple, so, let’s give some background here.  Wait for it, here comes the big confession:

My name is Andie, I’m 24 years old, and I’m an alcoholic.

This is something I’ve been told many a time that’s very difficult to say. In reality it’s not. It’s a simple matter of sentence structure and semantics. The obvious difference here is saying it and understanding the consequences, because the thing is the moment that I said those words out loud, it became a problem.

Let’s not forget the fact that the first time I said those words I was wearing a green and pink mini-dress, neon green stiletto heels and sitting cross legged on crisply laundered Sunlight sheets in Basingstoke and North Hants Hospital. The previous night I had washed down 40 aspirin with 75cl of vodka, panicked and called an ambulance. Earlier that evening I’d wandered around the streets dressed in only my night dress and aforementioned green stilettos having to be escorted back to my own house by a friendly neighbour. Despite this though, until I said those words the next morning, that behaviour was not out of the ordinary to me. It was just one of those things that everyone does sometimes? Aren’t we all a little crazy? Don’t we all enjoy the odd drink?

The point I have specifically always struggled with is where does the distinction between ‘enjoying a drink’ end and ‘having to drink’ begin.  The National Library of Medicine defines alcoholism as the following:

“A primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. Each of these symptoms may be continuous or periodic.”

Now see, I can completely understand that the distinction lies at the point where control is lost, where there is a preoccupation with drinking, where it plays on your mind all day. Relating this back, I can see that despite my perception of myself that I was in control because:

• I never drank before 6pm
• I never drove while drunk
• I always made it to work and was able to hold down a steady job

and finally, and probably most importantly:

• I believed that no-one knew how much I really drank, that I was capable of fooling people, that I could appear sober when drunk.

…these were actually highly contributing factors showing that I wasn’t in control. OK, so yes, as far as the outside world could see I was fine, I wasn’t a danger to others, I wasn’t about to slam my car into a pedestrian or go stand outside Liquid and pick fights with strangers, I turned up to work every day and worked to the best of my ability through constant hangovers, I did my laundry, cooked my meals, showered regularly, anything I could to convince myself that my consumption of alcohol was ‘normal’ and ‘moderate’.

But I digress. Back to, as I put it “getting the f**k on with it”. It’s a basic principle that I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember. Something I suspect that everyone finds difficult on some level, whether it’s something as simple as getting out of bed or boiling an egg, the slightly more complicated tasks such as doing the ironing or working out how to use the inner join command in SQL, to the baffling concepts of completing a degree, learning  exactly how to use the | character in UNIX or writing a witty and succinct blog post.

Saying those words though, that was the force of action that made me put my principle into action, and over the last ten days of sobriety it’s a principle that I’ve applied to everything.  It may not be the most efficient or productive principle but so far it’s working, some examples below:

• Get out of bed before 10am.
• Get the flat into a state where you can actually keep it tidy.
• Get all those little tasks done that you couldn’t because your were too drunk.
• Get help.

(I’ve omitted the f-word for politeness, feel free to add it in as you read those back to yourself)

The last one of those bullet points is the by far the hardest, and I know full well that at ten days it’s still early in the process. The thing is though, I’m actually doing it. Getting the F**k on with it and getting help. I’m achieving something, progressing and growing and for the first time in years I’m doing something for me. I’m talking to people, being honest and working through things, and if I can do it so can anyone, because you see, I suspect I’m a lot more ‘normal’ than I think I am. So tell me, what’s your confession? And what can you do about it?

References:
MeSH. (2009). National Library of Medicine – Medical Subject Headings. Retrieved June 25, 2009, from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/mesh/2009/MB_cgi?field=uid&term=D000437

Postcard from St Louis

Todd had also suggested that I could send him one in reply. Unfortunately, Basingstoke is a little less touristy than St. Louis and finding a postcard of Amazingstoke took a fair bit of effort. I even had to put a request on Twitter to see if anyone else knew of somewhere that sold suitable postcards. Eventually however, one was found:

Postcard from Basingstoke

I discovered my magazine work had given me a pretty good eye for how a web page should look. It was in the early ‘90s that a friend and I formed a partnership to offer web development.

Our venture didn’t last long. It wasn’t lack of customers; it was the difficulty in supporting them. The web was so new that very few really understood what it might do for a business or an individual.

And like so many things we on the computer, it looks so easy to the uninitiated. I can’t tell you the number of times I heard a client say something like “but I only want you to change a couple of words,” never realizing they were asking me to:

1. Stop whatever else I might be doing.
2. Open my copy of their copy (and maybe an editor)
3. Find the “couple of words” and change them.
4. Read what I’d changed to make sure it made sense, and it often didn’t, which meant I either did more editing or called the client.
5. Checked the page in a couple of browsers
6. Fired up my internet connection (yeah, this is dial up time, back then)
7. Open my FTP program
8. Upload the new file(s)
9. Double check that it had all gone well

Those nine steps often took a couple of hours or more and it was a rare client who was willing to pay for that time.

I dropped my end of the business and went back to writing, something I more or less understand.

But I went back with a better understanding of how to keep track of my time, bill for my time, and, most importantly, give the client an accurate estimate of how many hours I would be putting in. I use the same information when setting flat fees.

I rarely get underpaid these days, and early web design is one of the reasons.

Write well and often,

Anne Wayman writes about writing from her home office in San Diego in the US. Her blog is at www.aboutfreelancewriting.com . She is also a ghostwriter and writing coach. You can view her credits and other information at www.annewayman.com

Instructions

1. Create a new page, and save it with the name “sitemap”.
2. Make sure the Page Template selection is set to “Custom Template”.
3. Open and prepare to edit your custom_functions.php file.
4. Add the following:

   function xhtml_sitemap() {
   if (is_page('sitemap') || is_page('707')) { ?>
   
   <div id="content">
   <div class="post_box top">
   <div class="headline_area">
   	<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
   </div>
   <div class="format_text">
     <h3>All pages:</h3>
   <ul>
   	<?php wp_list_pages('title_li='); ?>
   </ul>
   <h3>All blog posts:</h3>
   <ul>
   	<?php echo posts_by_category(); ?>
   </ul>
   <h3>Monthly archive pages:</h3>
   <ul>
   	<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
   </ul>
   </div>
   </div>
   </div>
   <div id="sidebars">
   <?php thesis_build_sidebars(); ?>
   </div>		
   
   <?php } }
   
   add_action('thesis_hook_custom_template', 'xhtml_sitemap');
   
   function posts_by_category() {
   	global $wpdb, $post;
   	$tp = $wpdb->prefix;
   	$sort_code = 'ORDER BY name ASC, post_date DESC';
   	$the_output = NULL;
   	$last_posts = (array)$wpdb->get_results("SELECT {$tp}terms.name, {$tp}terms.term_id, {$tp}term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id	FROM {$tp}terms, {$tp}term_taxonomy	WHERE {$tp}terms.term_id = {$tp}term_taxonomy.term_id AND {$tp}term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category'");
   	if (empty($last_posts)) {
   	  return NULL;
   	}
   	$the_output .= '';
   	$used_cats = array();
   	$i = 0;
   
   	foreach ($last_posts as $posts) {
   		if (in_array($posts->name, $used_cats)) {
   			unset($last_posts[$i]);
   		} else {
   			$used_cats[] = $posts->name;
   		}
   		$i++;
   	}
   	$last_posts = array_values($last_posts);
   
   	foreach ($last_posts as $posts) {
   	  $the_output .= '<li><a href="' . get_category_link($posts->term_id) . '"><strong>' . apply_filters('list_cats', $posts->name, $posts) . '</strong></a><ul>';
   	  $arcresults = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish' AND ID IN (SELECT object_id FROM {$tp}term_relationships, {$tp}terms WHERE {$tp}term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id =" . $posts->term_taxonomy_id . ") ORDER BY post_date DESC");
   	  foreach ( $arcresults as $arcresult ) {
   	    $the_output .= '<li><a href="' . get_permalink($arcresult->ID) . '">' . apply_filters('the_title', $arcresult->post_title) . '</a></li>';
   	  }
       $the_output .= '</ul></li>';
     }
     return $the_output;
   }
   

Tweaks

My sitemap page has the slug “sitemap” and has an ID of 707. Although you might have created your page with the same slug, you should amend the 707 to the ID of your page. You can find this by hovering over the relevant edit link on the Edit Posts page.

Obviously, remember you may also need to add starting and ending PHP delimiters (<?php and ?>) depending on where you put this in your custom_functions.php file.

You may also need to change the div structure to suit how your overall site layout.

Add a nice bit of JavaScript to collapse the sub unordered lists, and it will improve it’s usability no-end. Search engine bots won’t collapse the lists, and could still traverse all links, while humans would not be confronted with a stupid amount of links.

Result

You can see a demo of what your new sitemap page will look like by checking out mine

It could be something you wanted to know about me, or a question about how to solve a problem you need help with. Go on, make it as diverse as you can. Randomness is good!

People:

Gary

This blog doesn’t receive lots of comments, but that’s fine – it’s not specialising in any niche market, it rarely gets lots of quality traffic (the traffic it used to get from Entrecard couldn’t really be described as good quality), and I don’t know how many friends and family actually read the stuff I post. I’m not trying to earn a living from the adverts here (so poor, I’ve actually removed them again), and any comments I do get are exciting and greatly appreciated.

One plugin I’ve got for WordPress is Alex King’s Twitter Tools and this allows me to automatically send a tweet to my followers whenever a new blog post is made. Combine this with scheduled posts within WordPress itself, and it means you can effectively schedule tweets to appear at a time when you would otherwise be sleeping!

As for the content itself, obviously good well though-out content, perhaps with some degree of going-against-the-grain to provoke a reaction will normally produce content. The only other technique I’ve picked up from others, is to end the content with a question, to provide the reader a hook on which to encourage them to start their comment.

So, with irony duly noted, how do you try to attract more comments?

Within WordPress, I’m able to set the date for publication, but also the time as well. Now rather than random times, I’d been setting the time for 14:00 as I figure that this will be the time that people are either having a late lunch, or have just come back from lunch and have time for a quick snoop on the net before getting back to work. It also works out at about 9am (8am) in New York, and earlier the further west you go, which means that the blog already has new content on it for the that day, when the US wakes up or starts work.

Since writing this post, I’ve tried scheduling serious and worthwhile posts for 09:00 and silly, not-as-important posts for 14:00.

As of writing this post, I just realised I could look to see what times Google Analytics shows as being the visit times (click to enlarge):

Visit Times: Three graphs showing Visits, Page views and Page views/visit, all compared to time of the day when visitors came to this site.

There seems to be a peak for visits at around 11:00, page views at 11:00 and 22:00 while page views/visits peaks at 02:00.

This then leaves me totally confused at what might be the best time might be. Logic would suggest just before 11:00, but the peak isn’t significant enough to make a definite assumption.

So two questions for you:

1. What times to do you schedule post publications for?
2. What would you suggest is the best time for mine?

In trying to keep content fresh, without overloading any readers, I aim for every 2 or 3 days. I’ve read “good practise” articles elsewhere though that suggest you must publish at least one thing every day, while other say even once a week is fine for niche market blogs.

What are your thoughts?

Basingstoke Tweetup article in the Basingstoke Gazette

We all love to twitter

By Ben Ellery
Barack Obama does it. Stephen Fry does it. And now more and more people in Basingstoke are doing it.The latest phenomenon sweeping across the internet is twitter – a free social network tool which people use to post messages online about what they are doing.The craze is said to have tens of millions of users, including celebrities who use “tweets” to keep their followers updated on their activities.Last Thursday, the first Basingstoke “Tweetup” – or twitter meet up – was held at the Red Lion Hotel in London Street.Among the 12 attendees were people with Twitter usernames such as freshplastic, surferbill and sheddriver – some of whom were actually tweeting about the event via the mobile phones and laptops as it was happening.Web developer Gary Jones, 29, organised the event by searching for the top 50 Twitter users in Basingstoke. He then invited them along and made name badges for everyone.Mr Jones, of Pemerton Road, whose username is GaryJ, said “It all started when I noticed there seemed to be quite a few people from Basingstoke on Twitter, so I sent a message saying ‘what do people think of a get together?’.“The response was really good, and it’s a great way to meet new people. I like to keep updated with what people in Basingstoke are doing, not celebrities, because their news is not relevant to me.“With the success of the Tweetup, we hope to make it a monthly event.”People from different walks of life attended the get together, including a salon owner, an environmental journalist and a digital agency managing director. Surferbill – real name Terry Douglas – even had a T-shirt made especially for the event.Among the Twitter fans was Jamie Ogbuigwe of Essex Road – a 26-year-old quality health, safety and environmentalist journalist. Miss Ogbuigwe, whose username is interact4future, said: “I work with words and what I like about twitter is the fact that you only have a small amount of characters to express yourself
“I’ve lived in Basingstoke for a year and have met absolutely no-one. This get-together is a great way of finding some new friends.”Jason Kneen, whose username is jkneen, had the most online followers in the group with 826.The 38-year-old from Shipton Bellinger said: “I’m tweeting about this as we speak. It’s very exciting. Last week I had a meeting with former England rugby captain Will Carling in a coffee shop after meeting with him through Twitter.”The next event is planned for May 14. For more information, visit bsktweetup.info or follow@bsktweetup on Twitter.

You can find the web version of the article on the Basingstoke Gazette website.