A Comedy of Errors

The past week or two presented some challenges in my life. Here are the highlights:

First off, I noticed that for no apparent reason, the text color turned black whenever I switched to a dark theme in WordPress. It’s the same like trying to find a dark object in a dark room. I tried uploading WP’s original php files to my site, I tried deleting and installing those affected themes, I tried disabling all my plug-ins, I even had the audacity to mess with the themes’ CSS files (well just a little, I know next to nothing about CSS)—nothing worked. Did a successful automatic upgrade to WP 2.7.1, still no luck. So I racked my brains trying to recall what was it that I did in the past? Ah yes, I did do a widget for my ebook and inserted it in my blog sidebar. Could that be the cause? Only one way to find out. I took that widget out and presto! I could see the text in my dark themes again! Damn satisfying, if you know what I mean. I would also like to thank my friend in the UK, Lisa Crunkhorn, for tidying up the HTML mess in the widget. I’ve now inserted it back into my sidebar with Lisa’s edits and it works correctly without messing up the text color.

Next, I’m having my usual quiet dinner in the hotel on a Friday night. Enjoying a morsel of garlic bread and the next minute, crack! This occurred inside my mouth, and I knew what it was—one of my back molars had cracked. Ugh, this would mean another trip to the dentist. After that root canal treatment in the not-so-distant past, the last thing I wanted was this. But I knew that I couldn’t afford to ignore this mishap—it would certainly make things worse for my tooth. So off I go to see my dentist, Dr. Lim. Now this man’s a genius. He took one look inside and told me that yes, one of my back lower molars had succumbed to my hard biting. He figured that he could do some bonding work on it, give it a new filling, and would I be more careful in the future? Sure thing, doc. After a 30-minute treatment (quite painless) my tooth was restored—yay! Unfortunately I was $16 USD poorer, but the important thing was that my tooth was saved.

What happens next? I’m getting into my car to send back my boss’ computer after servicing it. I start the car, and nadda. Dead battery, dude. Fortunately, this happened at my apartment, so all I had to do was call up my mechanic and a new battery was sent in a couple of minutes. If this had happened elsewhere, it would have been more inconvenient. And oh—I am now $42 USD poorer.

And finally, the straw to break the camel’s back (yeah, a lot of stuff got broken here)—sluggish Internet, due to damaged undersea cables—again!! UGH!

Well look on the bright side. Mr. Ameer from California bought my ebook Learn to Play the Piano in 12 Lessons—thank you for that bright spark in my week, sir. I hope you enjoy reading my ebook and learning to play the piano!

Till my next post, this is Philip, signing off.

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Bug Hunt

The story so far: yesterday was exasperating, because things remained the same—I couldn’t get my custom widgets (like Feedjit and Alexa) to display in themes other than Tarski. I was so desperate that I foolishly “reinstalled” WordPress 2.7 (I made backups first). No luck, the problem still lingered. Until I came upon this page in the WordPress.com forums (big thank yous to the members who posted there). Turns out that it could have been a bug in the latest release of WordPress.com (I was told it was fixed) and I had the suspicion that it was present in WordPress.org too.

Anyway, this is how I solved it:

  1. I activated the Tarski theme, and went to the widgets page.
  2. I deleted all my custom widgets. I copied the codes to Notepad before deleting them.
  3. Once this was done, the deleted widgets appeared on the left-hand side, with a clickable add link. This meant that I could add them to other themes. I tried it out and it worked. Success at last!

This had me a little perplexed; I’d used Tarski before in WP versions prior to 2.7 without any problems. Or could it have been the latest version of Tarski (2.4) conflicting with WP? Whatever it is, I will be a little more careful whenever I play around with themes; I was fortunate that I was able to solve this problem.

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The strange case of Mr. Tarski

OK, now I’ve figured it out somewhat. The problem with my custom widgets started when I did a manual update of the WordPress Tarski theme to version 2.4. Before doing that, all my custom widgets appeared in my blog. However, after deleting the old Tarski files and then replacing them with the new 2.4, all my custom widgets vanished from my blog. If I use any other theme besides Tarski, they won’t show up at all.

I did check out the Tarski support forums, but couldn’t find much useful advice there. Guess I’ll have to write a new post to the authors about this. It’s strange how only Tarski 2.4 allows my custom widgets to be seen. Or perhaps I could or should revert back to an earlier version of Tarski and see what happens. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions please let me know. Thank you.

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Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

These things are relentless!

Today’s the first day of Chinese New Year. As always, on this important day we have some vermicelli for breakfast (washed down with my favorite java), put on some nice clothes, and go out for some visiting. It’s only to a few places: my mother and mother-in-law’s house, my aunts, and a friend or two. Food is always plentiful, so I’m not worried for my stomach, but I do need to get my 30 laps tomorrow.

Came back after lunch, had an afternoon siesta, and then booted up the computer (what else would you expect a geek to do?). I had a nice feeling inside me, knowing that I’d settled all my client’s computers before the New Year, so everything seemed to be coming up roses. I underestimated those computer bugs (or buggers).

One of the daily routines I do is to check my blog, to make sure that it’s up and running for all the world to see. I click on it in my bookmarks, and it loads. Hey, wait a minute—my custom widgets aren’t showing! The only widgets that appear are the default ones like Pages, Archives, Categories, Blog Roll, and Meta. My MX counters were shot for the past few days; OK, I can live with (or without) that for now, but all my other custom widgets like Feedjit—gone! Poof! Vanished into virtual air.

Logged into my WordPress admin and checked the widgets page. My custom widgets are still listed but they seemed to have put on an aura of invisibility in my blog—the killer bugs strike again! The only course of action I’ll do now is to wait. It doesn’t seem like the error’s on my side. Fingers crossed about that.

On the plus side, and I hate to admit it—my sidebar does look cleaner without all those additional widgets. Is somebody up there trying to tell me something? Coupled with the slick Acid Rain theme from MB Web Design UK, my blog feels like it’s shedded a few pounds or kilos.

Such is life in the computer world. It can be frustrating at times, there are moments when I feel like pulling my hair out, but I can say one thing for sure—there’s never a dull moment. Now excuse me, I have to go and stock up on my ammunition.

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The calm before the storm

As 2008 draws to a close, I am drawn again to this famous passage by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) from A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

In short, 2008 has been a very trying year for me—more downs than ups. But as my tag line says, I can’t, and I won’t sweat the small stuff. Life is such that everyday can’t be a bowl of cherries; disappointments will occur from time to time. The big highlight for me was of course, the launching of my own website, http://philipyeoh.com. This was primarily to promote my first ebook, Learn to Play the Piano in 12 Lessons. April 2008 also saw me venturing into the blogosphere with my own WordPress blog—that’s the one you’re reading now. Maintaining these two sites has kept me occupied, besides my own piano teaching, etc. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” so I’m not going to let my mind (or my hands) remain idle.

Be that as it may, although I can’t wait for 2008 to finish, it is with some trepidation that I await the arrival of 2009. The world outlook doesn’t seem too promising for next year, but we’ll see. Live for the moment, one day at a time. I’ll enjoy the daily blessings that I have, and not lust for more. Again, to quote Charles Dickens:

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year, and may your lives be filled with love, joy, and peace.

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Gone to WordPress 2.7

This morning I decided to impress myself and do the upgrade to WordPress 2.7. Since I’d upgraded to 2.6.5 barely a week or two ago, the upgrading steps were still fresh in my mind. Nevertheless, I decided to do a backup of my WP SQL database in case something went wrong. Did the backup, downloaded WP 2.7, and then started my FTP program. Followed the WordPress detailed upgrade instructions carefully, deactivated all my WP plug-ins, deleted the relevant old files and folders. Copied over the new files via FTP to my site, checked everything, and logged in to my WP dashboard. Voila! WordPress 2.7 is installed and running successfully.

I was fortunate in the sense that one (and only one) existing plug-in didn’t work completely with 2.7. It’s Viper007Bond’s excellent Admin Bar plug-in. I just visited his website and was told that

This plug-in works with WordPress 2.7, but has some minor bugs. It won’t break your blog or anything like that though. Expect an update soon.

See how considerate and thoughtful authors can be? Thank you, Viper.

The new WP 2.7 dashboard does require some getting used to, as now all the menus are in a column on the left (some have expandable drop-down buttons). But I like it though. And the automatic upgrade thingy I mentioned in my previous post is available in Tools > Upgrade. If I click that now, it just informs me that I already have the latest version of WordPress. Very nice.

All in all, I’d give a big two thumbs up to all those hardworking people in WordPress who slaved over this new version. And it wasn’t too long ago that I upgraded to 2.6 (the previous major upgrade). That’s the computer world for you.

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WordPress 2.7 is out

Seems like only a few days ago that I upgraded to WP 2.6.5 (for security fixes). Now that the major upgrade to 2.7 is out, I guess I’d better upgrade to it; the one thing I’m looking forward to in this version is that it has an automatic upgrade feature built in. So upgrading to newer versions in future shouldn’t be so difficult or nerve-wrecking.

I won’t do the upgrade now, maybe in a few day’s time. Just too whacked out to do it at present.

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