Author: James Low

YouTube Feed is a plugin that allows you to embed a youtube video with a blog post, and have it show up as a link url when imported into your Facebook notes.

More info here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/youtube-feed/

Most of the desktop applications I’m working on are based around a crossplatform java template that I’m writing, that basically makes java applications feel as native to the user as possible. It also has a sophisticated Ant build build file that provides automation for a lot of tasks including creating of exe or app files and uploading to google code and sourceforge.

I’ve released the first version of the the template over at google code.

Haha, two ‘work’ posts in a row!

As some of you may know, wordpress 2.6 broke podpress, the great podcasting plugin for wordpress. There were several ‘fixes’ that people found after, but basically all of them involved disabling revisions in the new version of wordpress. I then discovered this forum topic that showed how wordpress called the ‘save_post’ hook in the new revisioning system. The solution I came up with allows you to keep the revisioning system turned on, but still allow podpress to work.

Instructions (Podpress 8.8)
1) Download this file.
2) Rename to podpress_admin_class.php and copy it to your /wp-content/plugins/podpress directory, replacing the existing file.
3) Create a post and check it works

Instructions (Other versions)
The above file might work with other versions of podpress, but it might not. It would be better to edit your own podpress_admin_class.php file to ensure things work.
1) Edit /wp-content/plugins/podpress/podpress_admin_class.php
2) Replace the line function post_edit($post_id) with the following:

function post_edit($post_id) {
if(wp_is_post_revision($post_id) || wp_is_post_autosave($post_id)) {
return $post_id;
} else {

3) Scroll down to just above the function edit_category_form($input) {
4) Insert another } above it to close off the condition statement.

Things that should be noted:

I use wordpress 2.6 on all of the blogs I maintain now. I love it, I love the new file uploads that were introduced in 2.5, and the post revisions from 2.6. I use wordpress on some intranet pages along with allow categries and private files to control access to sensitive information. The new revisions work great because in a world of non-techsavy users, if we need to go back and fix something that someone broke we can, or for writing online documentation, it means you get a complete version history.

Ok, if you subscribe to my blog for personal reasons, this isn’t very relevant to you, but for those of you here for the programming, on a recent project I had some problems getting the BIT field in MySQL to be interpreted as a boolean in PHP. There are a couple of discussions on the net about it here and here, but I couldn’t find any simply stated solutions on the net. So here’s what I ended up doing. You can also download the file here, rename the file .php to use it.


function mysql_bit($bit) {
return ord($bit) == 1;
}


So, for those of you that know me know I think, ALOT, and in the process I come up with lots of ideas. I’m also the type of person that tries to do EVERYTHING and too much. After listening to my Pastor’s (excellent) latest sermon on time, I’ve decided I need to be free of feeling like I have to do so much, and just concentrate on the most important things, if I’m really going to be successful in life.

So here I’m listing a load of the hair-brained business ideas I’ve had. They are now all public, so anybody can feel free to do them if they really think they’re good, and feel free to give a little of the profits if they make a lot :-P

Finance

Control Systems For Market Making
During by time at DB I was involved in a lot of derivatives pricing and risk analysis. One of the ideas I had related to market making. In market making systems use programming logic to determine what price / spread / volume to apply to market making a security. It might be a good idea to model these as a control/feedback system (or even fuzzy logic) as applied in engineering to come up with stable yet fast acting pricing systems.

Fuzzy Option Pricing
There are a few papers published about this, but basically the idea is you model an option’s behaviour using a fuzzy logic system that is intuitive to people who know how options should perform given certain conditions. It might be faster than analytical methods, but maybe less accurate.

Fuzzy Vol Models
Again related to option pricing. While you might still calculate the price of an option using conventional methods, it might be a good way to construct a vol service using a fuzzy logic system. This would allow the construction of a smooth service, with no discontinuities using logic steps rather than adjusting parameters for skew / long vol / etc.

China

Snowboarding
There must be snow in China, and its cheap to construct and employee in China. Would stand to reason that opening a ski resort for snowboarding and skiing might be really good way to attract tourists and make money, especially since within Asia, Korea and Japan are the main places and are both pretty expensive.

Tailored Jeans
There are places in Europe / America that will do tailored jeans for you, any style, custom fit, warn, new, etc. Thought Hong Kong / China would be a great place to do this too, due to the cheap labour and easy custom production that is available in China. Similar to the way HK is a prime destination for tailored suits and shirts at great prices.

TV Aggregator
There’s rise of having a ridiculous number of TV channels in Asia these days. In the US there are sites like Titan TV and Tv Tv in Europe which aggregate TV schedules from all the different networks so you can find out in one place what’s on. They also offer services so that DVRs like Elegato can query and programmatically record all of your favourite series like a Tivo.

Here are a few pointless sites on the internet:

http://www.isitaprilfools.com/

http://www.isitchristmas.com/

http://www.isitaleapyear.com/

http://www.istwitterdown.com/

As most of you know, I’ve wanted an iPhone since forever, but I’m waiting for it to be released “officially” for various reasons; the sdk, upgrades, and 3G.

Hong Kong is one of those places that you can quite easily get them unlocked, but even I was suprised are seeing a listed company giving them out as a promotional campaign: