Jimisola.com - keepin’ on

It have bothered me for a while that the RSS icon behind categories didn’t show. I was not sure whether the WordPress category widget, the Freshy theme or both were at fault. I’ve seen that there are some other threads on this issue, such as:

• http://wordpress.org/support/topic/86284
• http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/2-columns/512/freshy-10/

But, none of them seemed to have the complete solution (or did I miss it as usual?).

Jimisola.com has the following settings/usage information:

1. the standard categories widget is being use
2. Freshy Options -> Sidebar menu behaviour: Normal

I looked into the sidebar.php for Freshy and it obviously has the call to the wp_list_cats method has the right options to output RSS links:

wp_list_cats(’sort_column=name&optioncount=1&feed=RSS’);

but this section of the sidebar never seems to be called - at least not with my settings.

So, I figured that the widget was at fault and it was. To have a RSS feed link to show with the RSS feed icon provided by Freshy change the following in the function widget_categories in the wp-content/plugins/widgets/widget.php file:

wp_list_cats("sort_column=name&optioncount=$c&hierarchical=$h");

to

wp_list_cats("sort_column=name&optioncount=$c&hierarchical=$h&feed=RSS&feed_image=" .get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') . "/images/icons/feed-icon-10x10.gif"); ?>

After a week of sickness I was back and tried and did quite good. I had five training sessions during the week of which I ran on four of them.

• Monday: 5×200m P3′
• Tuesday: 6×60m max, first three in lightweight shoes and last three in spike shoes
• Thursday: 300-200-300-200m P4′ SP8′
• Saturday: 5×80+80m P4′, with the last set in spike shoes

Monday’s sessions was good - even though I probably was not fully recovered after being sick - as I averaged a bit under 25 seconds and ran every other race clock-wise. Tuesday was the sessions where I got to run fast(er), more or less all-out. Thursday’s races is a series I haven’t run in a long time. It was a ok session- But, I can run the races a bit faster next week since I know what speed they should be. The speed was increased a notch or two during Saturday’s back-to-back races.

It was a good week to sum it up. Ran four times, slightly faster than previous weeks and 340m in spike shoes. The coming week will - as usual - mess up the training flow since our indoor track is closed due to Christmas. Rest week with three sessions in one week instead the regular six will give my groin some time to recover after this week’s four days of running.

Sadly Gerald Levert left us on November 10th. I was fortunate enough to see him live at Irvine Amphitheatre in September 2002. Believe it or not, but he and his father, Eddie Levert, performed before Luther Vandross and, needless to say. It was one of my best evenings ever and now both Luther Vandross and Gerald Levert have passed away. Many of the “Great Ones” (don’t forget Barry White) are leaving us too early - they had a lot more to contribute with their music.
The news about his death came as a chock to me when I heard it today. Gerald Levert, born July 13th 1966 (same birthday, July 13th, as myself) and has just turned 40. I’ve always liked his voice, felt that there was something special toit and it stood out not matter if it was solo, with Sean Levert, and friend Marc Gordon in the R&B trio LeVert or in LSG - the R&B trio with members Keith Sweat, Johnny Gill, and Gerald Levert.

The LeVert songs that got to me are, of course, the classics Pop Pop Pop (Goes My Mind), Baby I’m Ready, Casanova as well as many of the songs on the Whole Scenario album (Do It Right Here, You Keep Me Comin’, Swing My Way and Keys to My House).

Actually, if I even try to do some sort of “Best of” I would probably miss a few songs. So, I’m not even going to try. Remember how I listened to the first LSG for months and months and how my roomies (on a training camp in South Africa) made fun of me just because of the slow songs (My Body, Door #1, Round & Round etc). I have no problem admitting that I like slow songs, especially not when the singer has a voice like Gerald’s…

Don’t think that I’ve had any music posts yet, so I’m just going to start of with a Christmas song… Enjoy!

Swedish Television, or actually UR (Education Radio - they do television as well) made a documentary (School Emergency documentary: the Aviation School / Skolakuten dokumentär: Flygskolan) on Lund University School of Aviation that was aired for the first time in April. The documentary, which is in Swedish, is for teachers and therefore has a teaching perspective. But, it still displays the school in a way that I believe non-teachers would think is interesting. At least I did, but I am also somewhat biased…

Sadly, I woke up with a sore throat and cold Tuesday morning. Just my regular luck!

What started as - and seem to be - a really good training week instead turned into a week of rest since I haven’t trained - at all - Tuesday to Sunday. The only good thing about it is that I am forced to rest and that means that my groin will get some time off as well. I am very careful with the groin when I get sick since in April the pain came back after I had been sick (sore throat and cold then as well).

Hopefully I be fully recovered tomorrow Monday, but I’m not too sure. Because even though my throat feels better and the cold has passed I, just now, started coughing…

I’ve had some questions about my changes to Jide’s Freshy theme and thought that I should comment on them so that others can use them if they want (in true open-source manner of course ). Bear in mind though that I am NOT a web developer in anyway, so there could be - and probably are - better and more correct ways to write the CSS, but it looks ok in the browsers I’ve tested using BrowerShots.org.

I can’t recall exactly everything that I changed, but I basically changed the following:

• sidebar (used some of the style from Bosco theme)
• sidebar calendar (used some of the style from Contempt theme)
• date output for posts and paged
• separator between posts

Sidebar

Bosco theme, which was the my #1 pick prior to Freshy, had a sidebar that I really liked so I just had to get.

Complete modified CSS: here
Sidebar background GIF: here

Had to explicitly use the id for the different widgets since sidebar widgets don’t use div tag in a standardized way.

#sidebar {
font-size:.9em;
}

#meta,
#categories,
#pages,
#yammyamm-menu,
#recent-posts,
#recent-comments,
#peters-date-countdown,
#calendar,
#scrobbler,
#links {
background: #eee url(images/sideboxbg.gif) top left repeat-x;
padding: 25x;
margin: 5px;
border: 1px solid #ddd;
}

#sidebar ul,
#sidebar ol {
padding:0;
margin: 0px 10px 0 15px;
}

#sidebar form,
#sidebar p {
padding:0;
margin:0 0 1em 0;
}

#sidebar h2 {
padding: 4px;
margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px;
font-size: 0.95em;
font-weight:bold;
/*	text-transform:uppercase; */
color:darkgray;
text-align: left;
}

Sidebar Calendar

Used the calendar style from Contempt. Initially, I had some tricky problems with it not being viewed correctly in IE6 (much larger text, not centered etc). After banging my head with the IE6 issue for quite some time I felt like just dropping the issue - after all I’m Firefox guy Luckily, I got some help in the WordPress IRC channel - thanks!

#calendar { /* IE */
text-align: center;
}

#wp-calendar {
empty-cells: show;
margin: 10px auto 0;
width: 155px;
font-size: 0.9em; /* ie */
text-align: center;
}

#wp-calendar #next a {
padding-right: 10px;
text-align: right;
}

#wp-calendar #prev a {
padding-left: 10px;
text-align: left;
}

#wp-calendar a {
display: block;
font-weight:bold;
color:black;
}

#wp-calendar caption {
text-align: center;
width: 100%;
}

#wp-calendar td {
padding: 3px 0;
text-align: center;
}

#wp-calendar td.pad:hover { /* Doesn't work in IE */
background-color: #fff;

Date Output Format for posts and pages

I did not like the original Freshy date output format for posts and pages since

1. one more or less had to look for it (to the right of each post) and
2. it was hard to read the top-down, different-size and different-style text

So, I changed it to something very basic; simple (”December 12, 2006″) immediately under the blog post. For regular pages I changed so that the page’s last update date is shown (e.g. “Last update: October 9, 2006″). The change included some minor changes to the php code get the basic output that I wanted and some even more minor changes to the CSS. I also seem to recall that Freshy didn’t make use of the “Default date format” WP option (not entirely sure!), but I hard-coded the date format that I wanted. Have a look at the generated html code to see what the slightly changed html looks like (preferably using the great View Source Chart Firefox extension) and let me know if you need the php code as well.

Mylar 1.0 was announced by Mik Kersten earlier today. Mylar is a task-focused UI for Eclipse. Its site has webinars and articles (see Getting Started) for anyone interested in finding out more.
I started using Mylar seriously around version 0.4 and it made me a better developer.

• it helps me to stay focused on my tasks - I don’t divert (as easily) into other non-task activities
• it helps me to be more productive since I don’t have to adjust the the GUI (e.g. Package Explorer) for each task as much. I don’t have to fold/unfold, scroll up/down etc like I used to. The time for task context changes - when going from one task to another - has been reduced radically since I no longer have to reorder my UI (opening/closing files etc) manually. Mylar takes care of that for me now. It basically saves me time and gives me a better overview.

Worth mentioning is also that Mylar has a great community. As a matter of fact, this project is one of the most open and responsive communities I’ve experienced - it has definitely sat an example for others projects to follow.

Mik et al - Keep Up the Good Work!

Monday means races and today we had a rerun of last week’s 6×200m P3′. However, today we caved for the weather. It was a lot colder this Monday than last week’s, it poured down and was very windy. So, we decided to run the races indoors today. I’m quite surprised that we managed to run outdoors until almost the middle of December. Hopefully, we’ll be able to run the 350m races outdoors on Thursday since I prefer the fresh air outdoors.

Anyway, last week I averaged 25.8s and today I averaged 25.9s. Bear in mind that today was indoors and we ran a couple of races clock-wise to even up the wear and tear because of the bends. I must say that it felt very easy to run today. There was one race that was slower than the others (someone else had the front in that race), but I managed to even up the loss with a 24.0s finish. That is the fastest I’ve run in a series of races for quite some time.

My groin and hip flexor have been bothering me off and on since last week, so I’ve been a bit worried and still am. With that in mind it felt even better when I did not feel anything during the races. Just to be safe I’ll rest fully tomorrow and won’t run until Thursday.

The darkness and weather is killing me - I am constantly tired and I feel that all I do is sleep. No South Africa this year, but we’ll go to Gran Canaria for ten days in the beginning of January. Can’t wait to get some sun!

For the last couple of weeks (more like months really when I come to think of it) I’ve been having a trip down Memory Lane. Why is that? I started to “import” my races and interviews that I have on old video cassettes (that is, for VCR) to video files on my computer which I will then burn out on DVDs. I just finished the imports and ended up with more than 68 video clips for a total of 18GB ranging from 1995 to 2002. For some reason I don’t have any material after 2002 - guess I’ll have to check with my parents to see what they have got recorded. They’re the ones that have been recording everything anyway, so many thanks to them!

I’ve been going through all these video cassettes with mixed feelings. Very mixed feelings! Some of the them had clips that represents the best times in my life (so far) while some had a bitter aftertaste. It’s always easy - at least easier - to look back at situations thinking what one should have done instead (”I should have passed that guy before the bend”, “If I’d not run that race I wouldn’t have gotten injured” and so on). Anyway, it was quite interesting to see how my entire adult life is summed up in 18GB. Not literally speaking, but I think you get what I mean.

Another thing that struck me is that so many of the athletes that I’ve come to get to know during these years aren’t around any longer. Many I totally forgot about. Even though you might have seen each other quite often at the circuit (competitions) and championships, training camps etc. This applies to both Swedish athletes and non-Swedish athletes of course. You, at least me, easily forget about people - they just fade away from your memory only to be revived at times like this.

So, all this got me think about it for a while.. 29 years is really no age. Am I the only “old boy” left? No! Of course not. Why does it feel like that at times? I think that one reason is that I was doing quite well at a young age and I was therefore one of the first in my generation to run for our National team, on the circuit etc. I see some similarities with athletes in our Swedish National team today actually. Another reason I believe is that I really done things “my way” trying to get the most out of track (yes, I love to travel and see new places). I’ve meet a lot of athletes in special situations such as training camps (in Irvine/Los Angeles, South Africa etc) and during competitions in Brazil, Caribbeans etc where you get to spend a week or two together.

I’m very curious to hear what former athletes are up to. So if you happen to stumble on this post, please feel free to drop a comment…