iStickyWiki – skinned by yours truly

With Tiger’s dashboard feature. I mentioned in the past how useful it would be for note-taking. And I was right… if only there was a widget that did it right. Apple’s built-in Stickeys widget (not to be confused with the actual Stickeys application) should’ve been called “suckys.” You can’t paste long lines of code because it dynamically adjusts the font size… and it doesn’t scroll. Pasting long code/text that exceeds the limit will not paste at all. And you can’t type anymore either if you’re at the said limit.

Then I stumbled upon Wikity Widget. A cool wiki-style, database-driven, auto-linking note taking widget, and winner of the Apple dashboard widget competition. Simple and extremely effective implementation – perfect for my note-taking preference. But alas, the interface (if you visited the site) looks horrible.

Since I really wanted to use the app, me being turned-off by its aesthetics on all counts didn’t deter me from using it. First thing I did was check the license to make sure I wasn’t breaking any laws, then started hacking the visual aspects of the widget. I think I did enough tedious work to merit dubbing a new name for it. I decided on iStickyWiki to hit multiple birds with one stone. One is to acknowledge Wikity Widget‘s original concept that it is a wiki-type widget. Another is to emphasize that it has been somewhat “merged” with the Stickeys interface. And the “i” is both a tribute to Apple’s naming convention… plus it makes the widget very Filipino when pronounced as ees-TEE-kee-WEE-kee 🙂

Of course for good measure, I hacked the the scripts to insert a “readme” or “ReleaseNotes” entry to give credit where credit is due. Honestly I think I would’ve modified it regardless of the legalities, since everything was done for personal use. But since the license which governs it stated that it could be modified and re-distributed – so I thought I might as well share it with others. Read More

MovableType 3.16

I checked out http://www.movabletype.org and found out that there was update to MovableType 3.x. Naturally, I thought “what the hell, might as well upgrade too.”

Absent-mindedly I set the FTP upload to replace any existing directories… so the plugins directory was obliterated and replaced with a fresh empty one.

My blog is heavily modified with plugins and hacks, it simply will not work without them at this juncture, so I began the quest of looking for every last one of ’em – which was rather difficult since you don’t really remember these things.

So here I am, online again. And this time, I’m listing the plugins I use for later reference (read: in case I try something stupid again)

While I’m at it, might as well include links and explanations.

Read More

The truth may or may not set you free

I received an email of someone admitting being responsible for the things I’ve discussed in my past post. I’d have to admit, the story is a little far-fetched, but as long as I can’t get to talk to the person in person, then we’ll never know now will we?

In the spirit of DECENCY, I will still keep quiet about the evidence we’ve found/gathered, hence nobody has to worry about anything (that means you to, mr/ms. hacker) as far as exposing people. Fair enough?

I need to discuss this however, because quite frankly, I think you take me for an idiot. You actually expect me to believe that story you gave? I’m 25 years old, not 5. I’ll believe it when I see the proof, everything you mentioned fits perfectly as far as any “contrived” story which attempts to come up with one central theme to tie up all the other “loose ends” conveniently. So I reiterate, it’s convenient, but far from believable. You probably had a better chance with a much, much simpler story.

But for the record… I would like to say that regardless if I believe your story or not, I appreciate the fact that you admitted your fault – and I, at the very least, want to believe that you truly will not try disrupting people’s lives again. With respect to that, I’m officially calling it quits. Don’t bother us again… ever – unless you’re prepared for an all out public investigation, and all the consequences it will have on the people you know.

And yes, I forgive you 🙂 I also politely ask you to get on with your life and stay out of mine/ours. You’re still free to post in the other site, as long as it’s constructive. Only a trusted few know which accounts are in question, so you can pretty much continue posting as a regular boardmember.

You could stop reading my post now… but if you’re curious as to why I don’t believe the story, then read on…

Read More

Ecto revisited…

Ecto

My previous post was commented by the Ecto developer himself… and as such, I thought it only be fair to immediately reevaluate the said software… plus of course I was excited as hell to try his suggestions out.

So now, I’m posting via Ecto, I’ve seen the edit mode he was talking about (I couldn’t imagine how I missed that). And upon posting this, I will try his other suggestion of selecting the category while publishing to specify the primary category.

If all goes well, then I guess that’s that… I will now be an official Ecto user. Read More

Ecto-schmecto

I apologize to the Ecto-supporters out there, but quite frankly, that piece of software you love, can be quite intrusive at times.

Since I heard Ecto was the best offline blog-manager out there, of course I had to see what’s up and give it a try. I’ve been using MarsEdit for the longest time and was quite happy with it save for one problem: You could only keep an offline cache of the last 30 posts you’ve made.

I thought “Hey, since Ecto can do Markdown too, then there’s nothing to lose.” – or so I thought.

Read More