ear-fung.us I’m a programmer. I’m also pro-grammar.

Nike+ iPod Wordpress Widget v1.4.4

Nike updated their API the other day and it broke the plugin. I've updated the plugin and also started hosting it at Wordpress.

Head on over to the Wordpress plugin page or just go to your plugins page in the admin to upgrade.

A word of warning about upgrading: the folder name of the plugin has changed and you'll have to do a few extra steps this time in order to get it working properly.

1. After installing the plugin in its new directory: nike-ipod you need to check the permissions of the cache directory.
2. In the plugin options page, make sure you update the path of your cache directory and submit the changes.

Your plugin should be working properly now at version 1.4.4.

Leave a comment on this post if you're having issues or need assistance.

I Got Me Some Golf Clubs!

I can remember playing golf with my dad when I was younger at our campground facility in upstate NY. It was a crappy, unkempt, campground, 9-hole course. The course wasn't great, but my dad and I had a great time hitting the balls around.

Since then I've played a few times and always enjoy myself. I'm no Tiger Woods, but I can swing at least 50 over par .

So at thanksgiving I went snooping around my parents' basement and found the old set of clubs. I was extatic! These aren't just any old golf clubs... I'm a lefty. So not only do the clubs have sentimental value, they also make It so I don't have to rent clubs every time I golf. Lots of times people can borrow clubs from friends, but I dont' have any lefty-golf-playing-friends.

Tonight I cleaned them and oiled up the leather on the bag. Little did I know that there had once been a squirrel or chipmunk or something living in the bottom of the bag, because I found a bunch of nut shells and fuzzy squirrel-bedding material stuff in the bottom of the main compartment of the bag. I guess they hadn't been used in a while, huh?

I'm now the proud owner of a vintage set of lefty golf clubs: 1W, 3W, 3, 5, 7, 9, and a putter.

Happy Halloween – I’m not very original

My costume isn't really very original, but it's a costume nonetheless.

How To: Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks

How To: Separate WordPress Comments and Trackbacks

With all the WordPress themes available to WordPress users, it always surprises me how these incredible theme authors don’t take a few extra seconds to separate their theme’s trackbacks from the comments. It doesn't look very professional and it can make it extremely difficult to follow a conversation in the comments.

It's literally 3 steps.

Read the tutorial.

Last.fm and My Listening Habits

I think the disconnect between the music I think that I really like and what I actually listen to is interesting.

There's this great service called Last.fm that grabs what I'm listening to (via iTunes and a little helper application that I can't live without). It's how I populate that neat little bar at the bottom of my website in near real-time about what I'm listening to.

Every song that I listen to is recorded in Last.fm's database (yes, you can delete your account or even delete all you listening history, so privacy isn't an issue for me). From their website I can track my listening history and data usually doesn't lie. (Data doesn't lie, interpretations do, however)

Interesting tidbits about me:

I listen to a lot of music — 12,476 song plays since 9 Nov 2007 — which works out to be about 38.2 songs per day or 53.3 songs per work day. Last.fm has these all aggregated for me and provides me neat little statistics about my listening habits so much so that I didn't even know how much I really liked a few bands that I listen to on a regular basis.

It's amazing what data mining and aggregation can do. It reminds me of a recent article in Wired about how the future of scientific discovery is going to be in data mining instead of theorizing.

I don't think any scientific discovery is going to come from my musical listening statistics, but hey, you never know.

Bought a Treadmill Today

I love Craigslist. It's one of the best places to find stuff.

I've been looking for a treadmill for a few weeks off and on... doing research and looking at new and used models. Nothing on craigslist ever caught my eye till today. Turns out a family was moving to a condo in Mississippi and couldn't bring it with them. They said, "anything else you see in the house is for sale so speak up!"

Our friends, Joyce and Inor, came over with their pickup to help us move it to our house since our Durango died a while back and we are now a 2-car family instead of one car, one SUV family. At least our average MPG is over 25 now that we have two cars. But it's impossible to haul around things like a treadmill anymore.

Getting back to the topic at hand, we purchased a used Proform 795 SL. It's a really nice machine, a lot better quality that one we could have gotten at Walmart or Sears for a few hundred dollars more.

It's got:

• A 2.5 HP motor
• EKG2 pulse sensor
• 18-in. x 50-in. running surface
• 1.5%-10% power incline
• 0-10 mph speed

I'm planning on getting on it every night possible for at least 30 minutes. Even if I have to go to bed 30 minutes later, I'm GOING to do it. You can keep tack of my progress on the sidebar of my blog from my Nike+ Wordpress plugin.

Oh, and I'm canceling my $45/month gym membership tomorrow.