World’s Longest Scooter

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Cooper Mini Limo I’m not really sure what prompted these guys to do it. Maybe boredom. Maybe they wanted to climb the mountain because the mountain was there. Or just maybe they saw the Cooper Mini Limo and thought to do the same thing with a scooter. I’m not just impressed with the mechanical abilities viewed in this video. I’m also super impressed that most of it s done while wearing a tie. Obviously this is one of those foreign films. 🙂

The “long” scooter is quite impressive. There is a seat in the front for steering and another one in the back for…riding. If I had the parts I would add another steering section in the rear sort of like the Fire Engine Ladder trucks. Might make it easier to round a normal street corner.

Have a look at the video below or view from the original page on LiveLeak.com

The Austin Scooter Club has a new Website

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Last year as the gas prices were steadily increased to the summer high point of $4.00/gallon, Sondra and I purchased a pair of scooters, so we could run around on the weekends and take some burden off our wallets. I’m self-employed so just needed something simple to run down to the coffee shop and work for the day. Last year we also joined the local Austin Scooter Club. Maybe another victim of the economy of maybe just wanting more control over the actual site, Mary and the gang have transitioned the group over to self-hosted WordPress site. Announcing the brand new Austin Scooter Club baby. It looks really good and I’m ready to help fill it up with links and other scooter information I’ve gathered over the last year. Not happy about using the choice of phpBB forum. Seemed more functional to use Google Groups like other groups.

Also, if you’re a scooter owner and living in the general Austin area don’t forget to register for the First Full of Scooters Rally coming up May 1st.

Too Young for a Teen Tan in Texas

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This afternoon the Texas House passed a measure that would prevent teens under the age of 16.5 years from being able to use public Tanning beds like those found at Dark Tan and other pay for use salons across the state. Also part of the measure is a section to allow 18 and under (that would be anyone between the ages of 16.5 and 18) to use the tanning facilities but both the parent and the minor must sign an advisory that discusses the dangers of tanning. I equate this to the reading the terms and conditions when purchasing or installing online software.

What really pisses me off about this ‘measure’ is the uselessness of it all. This is just another of a long line or changes to the state laws to protect the citizens from themselves. It’s no wonder the national economy is in the shitter these days. Instead of the State and National lawmaker focusing on long-term goals to make out country stronger, they spent their time and good taxpayer money writing up crap like this.

Media tags plugin

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Note: This post remains available to discuss the original 1.0 version of the Media Tags plugin. As of July 15 2009 version 2.0 of the Media Tags plugins has been released. Please refer to the update post http://www.codehooligans.com/2009/07/15/media-tags-20-released/ for information on changes to the use of the plugin.

Working on a client project recently I needed to extract 2 attachments uploaded from a post and display these along with the post title into the sidebar on another page. I’ve done this a few times before and always sad to say a little different. Probably the best solution is to name the ‘special’ attachments using some defined naming convention like image_sidebar_1.jpg, image_sidebar_2.jpg, image_sidebar_x.jpg. This works but can get ugly if you even want the client to follow your instructions on the naming conventions.

I’ve figured out a better way. With my latest plugin you can now add tags to your media attachments. I write ‘media’ because this does not just apply to images. You can tag Word document, PDF documents basically anything you upload via the standard WordPress Media upload tool.

Here are some screenshots:

The media tag input field is displayed directly on the media form.

Usage

So now you can tag you media files. But how do you actually use the tags? How to you actually access attachments that have ‘x’ tag? Excellent question. And your answer is below.


<?php
$media_items = $mediatags->get_media_by_tag('media_tags=sidebar&post_parent=6');
/*
This call will filter the tags for the tag 'sidebar' and the post ID of 6.
The function take three arguments.
media_tags (Required) This is the tag or tags you are filtering on.
media_types (Optional) Lets you also filter by pdf, txt, etc.
post_parent (Optional) The ID of the attachment post. If not provided then the global post ID is assumed.
*/

view raw

codehooligans-wordpress-plugin-media-tags-usage.php

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

As part of the plugin I also wrote a function to be used in your template. To follow the example I started this article with I need to display 2 of the 5 uploaded images in the sidebar. My first step was to upload the images and tag the two special images with ‘sidebar’.

Now I use the function get_media_by_tag(). I pass the tag I want to access, in this case ‘sidebar’ and the ID of the post parent. What is returned is an array of attachment items. This array is similar in fact to the return object when calling the WordPress get_posts which is partly what the function does.

Download the Media-Tags plugin via the WordPress.org plugin repository

Future plans

I’ve already starting thinking of some enhancements for the plugin. Which include a tag management screen and other utility functions. If you have any other needs post them here in the comments.

Automattic looking to open a professional office in Austin

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A post from Andy Skelton that Automattic might be looking to open a professional office here in Austin.

I for one would love to work on an office with other Austin WordPress professional. I’ve made 90% of my living these past 10 months working on WordPress client project and do not intend to stop anytime soon.

A WordPress professional office could be something like the co-working locations that are now springing up in cities all across the nation. This would be somewhat different in that instead of everyone working on a broad range of projects, everyone would be working on WordPress client projects. From a collaboration perspective this could be huge.

I’ve had a chance to roll this around in my head a few time and have started thinking about some of the downside issue for me.

  • Considering the current state of real estate in general, finding a short-term lease location in central Austin might be an issue.
  • what will be the user cost of this venture? Will I be locked into a lease commitment for space in the office?
  • Why would I want to consider this option if I can work for free out of my house already? Meaning I’d need to drive to an office to do basically the same think I can do at home. I do realize the upside is the potential collaboration with Andy and other Austin WordPress professionals. Question is if it’s enough of a consistent gain. Can the same or similar collaboration be gained from the wp-hackers mailing list?
  • What will be the price of gasoline by the time this concept is realized? Considering gas in Austin is now $4.00/gallon what is my added (if any) cost for driving into an office 3-5 days a week?