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Walking through the local Staples store today, I mesmerized about the current state of computer technology. I happened to run into an HP Mediacenter PC, a Windows PC heavily focussed on digital media (as you may tell from that picture).

Here’s something I don’t get. In which part of the house is that PC supposed to be installed? The living room? The bed room? Should it be on its own desk? I’m asking this because I find that remote control (that comes with it) confusing. I associate a remote control with my TV. And why play DVD’s on a laptop or computer at home if you can do the same on a player and a big screen TV on a comfortable couch. What’s the point?

A couple of minor changes to the ‘Related Links’ portions that appear in the individual posts. There’s no need to show the ‘Related Links’ portion when there are no external links. This is what the code looks like right now (in the file single.php):


<div id="sidebar">
<?php $stage = get_post_meta($id, '*YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAME*', TRUE);
if (!empty($stage)) { ?>
<ul><li>
<h2>LinkThroughs</h2>
<ul>
<?php $arrays = explode("\n", $stage);
foreach ($arrays as $value) {
echo '<li class="postmetadata alt">' . $value . '</li>'; } ?>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="postmetadata alt">The
author of this site is not responsible for
the content of external internet sites </p>
<?php } ?>
</div>


Make sure to name your custom field name and to change it in the code above. Also note that I use the newline character as the divider and that the $id is a global variable too! That text area box in the post.php is a bit small. Another part: I added a new ‘div’ box (class of sidebar) to the single.php file, because my template can handle that extra box. If you do not use a Kubrick-like theme, play around with floating boxes (careful: IE may not really like it, while Firefox and Opera will take those).

Next up, actually integrate this into a plugin or in the post.php page itself.

Is it Spring, yet? It looks like it is. Once again the snow is melting around the house making the ground as soggy as it can be. More interesting is the fact that my tiny maple-tree-turned-into-bonsai seems to be doing fine.

Last year, I found a little (2 or 3 year old) maple tree stem stuck in a piece of concrete: I carefully repotted it in a small bowl using a combination of soil and rocks. When Fall arrived I faced one dilemma: put it outside or leave it inside. I ended up leaving it inside, however, I found the perfect spot to have it lose its leafs: our porch happens to be the coldest place in the house. It actually lost its leafs, a wee bit later than the trees outside.

With the heat slowly returning, and the porch heating up faster than the rest of the house, I expect the tree to open its buds soon too. Time to do some repotting.

Just finished watching the movie ‘Dogville’ and thought it was brilliant. First of all, not knowing anything about the movie, I was first surprised seeing everything play out on a stage, where houses were marked out with white lines.

Secondly, the storyline was amazing and food for thought after the movie ended. With almost 3 hours on the dot (177 minutes according to IMDB), it’s a long but fascinating experiment.

We did have our load of snow eventually over night and managed to clean (most of) it up this morning and noon. After so many storms it gets boring to make pictures of that white fluffy wet stuff. Right?

Last night, we watch two movies: ‘The Recruit’ (Al Pacino and Colin Farrell) and ‘The Grudge’. We had been seeing a couple of trailers of the last movie and was surprised to see that Sam Raimi (yes, that one) was on the producers list. Hence the choice to pick up that one. It’s a thinking-man horror movie, Japan-style. I noticed that, despite her image, Sarah Geller is smarter than the impression she leaves behind, after seeing the extra features section. Which is good.

Later this night, Dogville.