Summer of Love: Blades of Steel

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Reverend

Blades of Steel Theme Song

I love Blades of Steel, it still stands as one of the greatest console games of the 1980s, and I’ve been waiting for a DJ to discover and remix all the sound effects into a chart topping hit. I mean this game is full of audio clip classics, like…

“Hit the pass”

Blades of Steel – Hit the Pass

“Face off!”

Blades of Steel – Faceoff

“Fight”

Or just a basic “Ahhhhhh”

Blades of Steel – Knockout

And I have the opening Blades of Steel Anthem playing in this post by default because it is that good. Fact is, Blades of Steel was an all around game, the play was both quick and technically simple, while at the same time challenging. What’s more, it was a hockey game where you could actually fight your opponent, and the fight sequence was awesome, best part of the whole thing was that the loser gets thrown into the penalty box—gives you quite an incentive to win. The penalty shot scenario was both well done, and downright exciting with six areas to aim and shoot the puck. It was only available when you were decked on a break away or when the game was tied after three periods of play. What was even more intense than taking penalty shots, though, was being the goalie trying to defend against the penalty shot.

I got Blades of Steel for NES for Xmas of 1988, and played it regularly for over two years. In fact, in 1990, when I moved to Long Beach California, my brother and I spent a large amount of out time fighting it out on the ice—I was always Chicago for some reason (I think I liked their red and gray uniforms), and he had a weird affection for Vancouver. Needless to say I owned him at the game, he got the nickname penalty box Billy given how often I beat his ass in the fight sequences. What’s crazy about Hockey video games since the late 80s and early 90s is that the big franchises like EA Sports NHL Series got rid of fighting as of 1994. How can you just pretend “the code” doesn’t exist in a video game? Reminds me of this clip from Swingers:

If you haven’t played Blades of Steel, you really should. Here is a link to both an NES emulator (the previous link is for a Mac emulator, but there are emulators for other platforms there as well) and here’s the ROM, enjoy yourself. And if you are too lazy for that, play it online here.

Posted in bava Summer of Love 2010, video games | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Summer of Love: Luke Waltzer

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Reverend

I love Luke Waltzer’s new blog Bloviate. More specifically, I love that Luke Waltzer is finally blogging at a steady clip in his own space. Luke and I came up as instructional technologists at CUNY (long before Boone even knew what a blog was) and in many ways we haven’t stopped working together since. He and Mikhail Gershovich (another cat I wish would start blogging, though his film class makes up for that to some degree) brought blogging to Baruch in a major way, and despite Luke’s healthy skepticism of the whole enterprise, he’s consistently done some of the best work in the field over the last three years.  What’s more, his blog is the best kind of peripatetic writing, ranging anywhere from sports to satire to music to more deeply personal questions about education and his own kids. And when he does blog about edtech, his thoughts are “pitch perfect” to quote Boone—that damn Boone! In short, it’s just good stuff, but to be clear I made him, and he will forever be chasing the bava—not the other way around.

Posted in bava Summer of Love 2010 | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

Weird Visual Editor Issue on WP 3.0, RC 1

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Reverend

Having an odd issue on bavatuesdays that I can’t reproduce on any other sites in my install (namely jimgroom.net. wpmued.org, etc.). I can’t see the buttons in the visual editor, by default my visual editor icons in the Add New Post page are gone until I refresh the page.

I figured it was a plugin, so I deactivated all my plugins—no go. I then figured it was something unique to the sites within the bavatuesdays network (after seeing it worked in other networks), but that was not the case either cause I am not having the same issue on http://movies.. And while it ultimately corrects itself with a refresh of the page, it is rather odd. Anyway, anyone having similar issues, I’d love to hear your fix, if you found one.

Update: What’s more, after I published this post, the visual editor buttons once again disappeared. How bizarre (cue music).

Posted in wp30, wpmu | Tagged , | 23 Comments

Upgrading from WPMu to WP 3.0: Keep your config!

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Reverend

I just updated to the latest version of WordPress 3.0 (release candidate 1) and one of the things I realized while upgrading my own sites is that you should really keep your WPMu wp-config.php file. I figured that I would need to use the updated config file with WP 3.0, but that’s not necessarily the case. You see, the wp-config.php file is still geared towards a single WP install, which makes sense, but it also leaves a ton of the essential defines for a mutli-site system completely out.

So, here is a quick look at my wp-config file, with bold annotations of what you should keep if you are doing the multi-site option:

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');
//Note: the following elements are specific to a WPMu/Multi-Site setup, and there is no sign of them in the config file for 3.0, so be sure to copy them over. But comment out define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'yourmaindomain.com' ); -if you have issues on a multi-site setup because that one was giving me redirect problems on my setup.
/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('VHOST', 'yes');
$base = '/';
//define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'yourmaindomain.com' );
define('PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define('BLOGID_CURRENT_SITE', '1' );
//End Note.
/**#@+
* Authentication Unique Keys and Salts.
define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
* Change these to different unique phrases!
* You can generate these using the {@link https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ WordPress.org secret-key service}
* You can change these at any point in time to invalidate all existing cookies. This will force all users to have to log in again.
*
* @since 2.6.0
/**
* WordPress Database Table prefix.
*
* You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique
* prefix. Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
*/
$table_prefix = 'wp_';
/**
* WordPress Localized Language, defaults to English.
*
* Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the chosen
* language must be installed to wp-content/languages. For example, install
* de.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to 'de' to enable German
* language support.
*/
define ('WPLANG', '');
/**
* For developers: WordPress debugging mode.
*
* Change this to true to enable the display of notices during development.
* It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers use WP_DEBUG
* in their development environments.
*/
define('WP_DEBUG', false);
//Note: sunrise.php is specifically for mapping domains on blogs, and you will need to include this in your wp-config file for multi-site if you want to map domains.
// uncomment this to enable wp-content/sunrise.php support
define( 'SUNRISE', 'on' );
//End Note.
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
/** Absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )

define(‘ABSPATH’, dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/’);
/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . ‘wp-settings.php’);

That’s it, really not too bad, but enough to screw an idiot like me up, so I figured I’d share it out.

Posted in wordpress multi-user, wp30, wpmu | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Summer of Love: Dragonfire

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Reverend

Image of DragonfireHere’s an Atari 2600 game I forgot in my toy post on cartridges, and thinking back on Dragonfire, it was probably one of the better early 2600 games. What’s more, the graphics are an interesting mashup of the Pitfall! character and the Adventure castle aesthetic. Dragonfire was created by Imagic (also known for Demon Attack (a Phoenix knock-off) , and it was actually a pretty challenging game thaat kept you hooked. I could spend hours going from dragon lair to dragon lair stealing treasures, and as the walk-through below suggests, even getting killed by fire balls was pretty fun. You can find the ROM here, and just about anything else you want to know—buly for AtariAge.

Posted in bava Summer of Love 2010, video games | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Summer of Love: IHOP

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Reverend

The International House of Pancakes makes the Summer of Love cut, and not only because the 1969 commercial below may be one of the trippiest you will ever see. After a long Summer’s day at the most beautiful beach’s in the world (which are naturally on Long Island), there was nothing better than stopping at IHOP for some pigs and blankets. The entire family would roll out of the big blue 1978 Suburban for the always welcoming faux-bavarian decor. There was a deep feeling of comfort being wedged between my six brothers and sisters at an IHOP booth—complete with four different kinds of syrup—while our mother drank coffee and smoked gold-packed Marlboro 100s. It’s a scene I often replay in my head, and I can’t help but feel unnaturally safe everytime I do, and there is no mistaking the love for what was—and what will be with my own family.

Posted in bava Summer of Love 2010 | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

bava’s Summer of Love 2010

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Reverend


Image credit: “Summer of Love Gathering of Tribes in San Francisco”

That’s right, it’s time for some extended love on the bava, because as Mikhail Gershovich regularly notes, “There is no love like the bava love.” The project is simple, and gains its impetus from the blog “I love this world,” which sadly has seen better days. Plus, this project gives me an excuse to turn up the love, and as with all projects on the bava it is subject to cancellation of abandonement at any time. So, without further adieu, get ready for the Summer of Love on the bava.

First up, I love Leigh Blackall’s thoughtful and provacative series of posts recently about both “Academic Capitalism” as well as his two post series on Ivan Illich and Etienne Verne’s “Imprisoned in the Global Classroom.” The pull quite from Building you a prison” is particularly powerful and resonant:

Deschooling, which has been adopted by ideology of industry, assists this transfer, just as various fascist regimes today are assisted by self-conscious rationalization. In the same way that deschooling is used to promote education without schools and schools without walls, education satellites and the knowledge industry, teaching machines and multi-media systems, it is used to promote permanent education. Without doubt, deschooling here falls into a most dangerous and well-concealed trap, laid for it by those who wish to utilize it to justify the educational mega-machine of the year 2000.

The educational mega-machine of 2000 that we are all riding right now is a wild image, and the means by which Leigh places what we are all doing in this space under the banner of opening up the educational paradigm so that it might promote a permanent condition of education in some of the more nefarious sense of that word does indeed give me pause. And Leigh’s blogging as of late, and his digging in on Illich’s thought while at the same time refusing to to get frozen in the deep uncertainty and apparently parasitic relationship it puts all of us in with respect to our own ideas. It is a hard space to not only occupy, but to make generative, and his work right now is all that in more. So in short, I’m loving the Blackall!

Posted in bava Summer of Love 2010 | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Under Construction: Some bava theme repair

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Reverend

Update: Now on latest version of K2, comments working once again.
Update: Back to Twenty 10 for now.
Update: And back to K2 for ood now
My old gold theme, a vintage K2 theme version 0.91, seems to have been blocking comments from repeat commentors since the upgrade to WordPress 3.0, beta 2 release. I have to admit I haven’t upgraded K2 since 2005/2006, and looks like I’m finally being forced to do something about it. I’m working on upgrading to a new version of K2, while at the same time exploring building my own theme. But in the meantime I have reverted the bava to the new default WordPress theme Twenty 10. I kind of dig its simplicity and site-like design—which is what attracted me to K2 to begin with—and I’ll be using this theme during the theme construction ahead. Please forgive the bava while it is under construction.

Posted in themes | Tagged , | 12 Comments

WordPress 3.0, you had me at Custom Menus

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Reverend

So while playing around with WordPress 3.0, beta 2 tonight, I tried out the new Custom Menu feature within the Appearance section, and I have to say I’ve been waiting a long time for this kind  of functionality. Finally you not only can have pages in a navigation menu, but also links and categories. What’s more you can control their order drag and drop, not unlike widgets. Very cool. here is what it looks like:

And to give you an idea of how useful this would have been for me last semester while teaching the Digital Storytelling class, I’ll do a quick rundown of the links in the navigation menu of that site, to show you how this new menu feature saves me hacking the theme and installing a plugin to do what can now be done out of the box.

1) Blue Arrow: One of the recurring issues when turning a blog into a website with a static frontpage in WordPress, depending on the theme, was the double Home tab in the navigation menu. You would have the default home link built into the header of the theme, and the new home link for the new homepage you created as the static frontpage. The custom menu feature solves that by allowing you to add a custom home link –bam! Major issues for creating sites and portfolio spaces on UMW Blogs made easy.

2) Green Arrow: In my Digital Storytelling class I had a separate category for all posts that were assignments, announcements, and student posts as a way to separate them out.  However, for each of them to have their own tab on the navigation menu, I had to use a plugin I got from Luke Waltzer called Blog-in-Blog, which basically pulled posts only from a particular category into a page you decided. But, this meant creating a page for each category, and then including the short code from the plugin. Those steps are no longer necessary now, you simply add the category of your choosing to the custom menu in the order you want. DISCO, once again, this is huge.

3) Yellow Arrow: no surprise here, this is a regular old page that had tyrrany over the navigation menu up and until now, unless you were ready and willing to hack the theme or go plugin crazy.

4) Pink Arrow: A custom link to another site. A simple addition, and I can’t tell you how many times over the last year I could have used this, especially when trying to hack in a link to the course MediaWiki site, forum, etc.

All in all, this gets me fired up because finally this allows anyone with no hacking chops to simply create a more dynamic navigation of the site the are creating, whether it be a course blog, portfolio site, straight-up website, etc. This was a long time in coming, as I said, but a subtle change that in many ways profoundly redefines the architectural possibilities of WordPress at UMW for faculty and students alike. Of all the changes thus far, this is by far the one I am must excited about in several versions

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

I’ll Miss You Mu!!

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Reverend

It is kind of weird to write this, but as of today the bava is no longer powered by WordPress Multi-User. I have upgraded this site to WP 3.0 Beta 2. For almost three years now this site has been running on a multi-site WPMu setup that contained not only this blog, but jimgroom.net, wpmued.org (now a deprecated name space:( ), and several other personal sites. The bava WPMu install became my test bed for UMW Blogs over the last three years, and to see it return back to a straight WordPress site (though it’s not really that anymore with 3.0) is kinda bizarre.

I’ve been working with WPMu for more than four years, and I’ve literally written hundreds of posts on this blog about my work at hacking it. And I’ll be the first to admit I am the worst of hacks—don’t know a lick of code—but that being the case, WPMu made me. I can daydream that my b-movie posts or my tour-de-force toy blogging put me on the map, but it was my sophomoric work with WPMu and UMW Blogs that gave me a reason to blog just about everyday for almost four years. It was a good run, and I couldn’t have done it without Donncha—so thank you kindly. And while I know it’s time to move on, I certainly mourn a chapter of this blog that is effectively closing. I’ll still be blogging through the transition of UMW Blogs from WPMu 2.9.2 to WP 3.0, and there is much to talk about and figure out there yet, but with this post a piece of the bava is dying. But, that said, I wouldn’t trade it for the world because, as William Faulkner says, “Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.” Good bye Mu, I’ll miss you!

On a more prosaic note, the upgrade from WPMu 2.9.2 to WP 3.0 Beta 2 went extremely smoothly following this tutorial (just be careful of the wording in Step 1, what he means to say is replace all files and folders except wp-content, leave that be).  Some initial observations:

  • Userthemes is further borked after the upgrade (no surprise there), but it looks like WP 3.0 Beta 2 has theme editing built-in across sites. I may be wrong, but when I deleted the Userthemes plugin, an edit button showed up on various blogs. This could be awesome, but it also means I have to find a way to un-usertheme a lot of blogs that were using Userthemes in UMW Blogs. This will take some looking into.
  • The various mapped WPMu sites I had on by own WPMu install worked without issue. jimgroom.net is a full blown WPMu site within a site (or the correct terminology now would be network within a network?–not sure.) Those worked fine, as did some straightforward mapped domains, which is nice. But, I am still using the mu-plugins folder with various plugins that control these functions.  Need to experiment with how much they bork when I start deleting MU plugins, we’ll see.¹
  • Need to test the Sitewide Tag Pages Plugin that Donncha created, this plugin has been key to the syndication framework on UMW Blogs, but I’m not sure it will be managed for too much longer even if it does still work.  Need to find out if some global posts/tags/terms are being used across sites.  We’ll see.
  • On that note, need to see what FeedWordPress is all about in 3.0, that will prove crucial as well.
  • Need to figure out the whole Child Theme thing, as well as test out a whole series of plugins while cleaning out my mu-plugins folder.

As you can see my list of things is long, and there is much work ahead and I plan on blogging it all. But as of now a big step 1 is done [sniff].

___________

Update:

¹ Turns out mu-plugins will be supported for the foreseeable future reframing the mu-plugins from the association of MultiUser to “Must-Use,” basically making them active across entire installation (which means more than one network). Also, there is another cool feature for keeping WPMu sites like UMW Blogs afloat: “Drop-Ins.” To quote this excellent article on both of these new additions to WP 3.0:

Some core functionality of the WordPress core can be replaced by so called Drop-Ins. Those are PHP files on specific locations that get included if they exist. The inclusion is done for a specific task, for example db.php get’s loaded to replace the default PHP database class. So you can replace it with one that is faster, more stable and secure for example. Drop-Ins exist since various versions, depending on them. The Multi-Site since 3.0 naturally.

This means it should square any sharedb.php issues with UMW Blogs, which is mint. It is also why sunrise.php for the Domain Mapping plugging kept working seamlessly. See the article above for a list of WordPress Drop-Ins.

Additionally, as my turn to terminology in comments might have suggested, I went searching for posts about the new terminology being used in WP 3.0 as the merge of WP and WPMu comes to pass. Here is another good post on the new terminology in WordPress 3.0 for blogs, sites, networks, etc., and here is a nice presentation on it as well. The changing terminology is something I am actually really interested in, and may be the basis of a longer series of thoughts about the importance of terminoloy in watching WordPress develop and grow.

Posted in wordpress multi-user, wpmu | Tagged , , | 18 Comments