BitterMinion Development

Using Custom Fields To Generate Meta Tag Info In WordPress

HeadMinion — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:38:53 +0000

Ever thought about using a custom field to dynamically generate meta tag information for your WordPress blog? Took me a couple of hours of googling and experimenting before I figured out how to do it, so I figured I’d post the solution.

My first guess was this:

<meta name="description" content="ID, 'CustomFieldName', true); ?>" />

And I was wrong. Turns out you need to use get_the_id() instead of $post->ID.

<meta name="description" content="" />

Blacked-out Chrome Tooltips Resolved! (Sorta!)

HeadMinion — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 07:32:58 +0000

Look familiar?? Ever since something like Chrome 11, there have been complaints of tooltips going black, accompanied by an array of other incredibly annoying problems. Right clicking caused Chrome to lock up, switching between tabs takes up to half a minute, and other such nuisances have been reported.

I can’t promise this will work for everyone, but I have found these problems only arise on my machines if (1) I have application shortcut windows AND/OR pop-up windows open and (2) one or more of those windows are minimized. If you leave application shortcut and pop-up windows in a restored or maximized state (aka “not minimized”), the problem completely disappears. Or, if you do minimize those windows and your tooltips start blacking out, just restore or maximize them all, then re-minimize them. Poof! Problem gone. Finally!

It’s not a fix by any means, but it’s a totally tolerable work-around. Despite my earlier criticisms of Chrome’s application shortcuts, I’ve come to find them indispensable and this problem has really been wearing me thin lately.

Delta Flight Confirmation

HeadMinion — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:44:48 +0000

Yes. Veeeery helpful, Delta.

Facebook ‘Super Cute’ Button

HeadMinion — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:39:23 +0000

Tell that special someone how you feel. :p

Favorite Coding Comics

HeadMinion — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:08:30 +0000

More than once I’ve found a comic about coding that made me LOL, only to forget where the hell I originally found it. So in order to avoid repeatedly having to hunt all over the internet to find my favorite comics, I’m just going to start posting them here as I find them:

Ahhh, that’s better!

HeadMinion — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:44:45 +0000

Handiest. Regular expression. Ever.

BitterMinion’s 1 Year Anniversary Makeover

HeadMinion — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:38:02 +0000

Given that 92% of my web traffic comes from first timers it’s unlikely that you, dear reader, will have noticed, but for the first time since its inception, bmd.com got a major face lift over the past few days. A brand new skin. It wasn’t really planned; it just kinda happened. Browsing around for a new WordPress theme suddenly turned to buying when I finally found one I liked. It was like true love. And much like true love, it had the adverse effect of dropping my IQ more than a few points. Stupid me, thinking I could just install a new theme and have it working pretty well within a few hours. Ha! Even though I didn’t pay much for it ($35), it wasn’t free and I kinda expected it to be bug free. Not the case. So not only did I have my fair share of customization to do, I was left with more debugging than I cared for. Apparently themes are less ready-to-go add on’s than starter kits. Like a chemistry set… with incomplete documentation. Nevertheless, I love the new design.

Anyhoo, after about 5 days of hemming and hawing over design decisions, fixing bugs, and other such fun I officially deem the site worthy of public view. However, it remains a work in progress so you are hereby forewarned: Bugs may be encountered, images may be misaligned, things may appear “missing”. I’m working on it. :)

Extracting Icons From Exe & Dll Files

HeadMinion — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:25:41 +0000

There has been a time or two when I’ve wanted to use an icon from shell32.dll or imageres.dll for my own purposes. But for some reason I was under the impression it was a huge pain in the ass to extract them. Not the case, as it turns out. So I spent a few hours building a little tool for doing just that. Now I can just select the file containing the icon(s) I want, double click the icon image, and poof! it’s saved on my desktop. You can download the ready-to-go executable here. If you want to tweek the code, you can download the entire solution here. The underlying IconExtractor class also allows you to get 16×16 icons and extract icons by index location within its source file. You can get the index location by hovering your mouse over the icon.

Finally!

HeadMinion — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:26:40 +0000

For the first time, QuickShift For Chrome has surpassed 1,000 users!

The Future Of The Future

HeadMinion — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:22:35 +0000

It’s been a while since I found a song I liked so much that I played it on repeat for several hours…

(Too bad the rest of the album kinda sucks.)