Programming

Facebook Integration

Wow, it’s been a while (more on that later). I have found myself with a renewed interest in my own website, go figure, and decided to see what fancy things I could do with it. Other than getting most of it working again as it collected much dust and bugs I wanted to delve into the world of Facebook integration. For you non-programmers out there Facebook has this cool thing called the “Open Graph Protocol” that allows developers and other crazy coders like me to hook into Facebook with a website or mobile app, etc. Turns out this is really quite easy with a site like this. The only thing I really had to do was get an AppID from Facebook, install a plug-in from the WordPress community and viola, “Like” buttons everywhere. The coolest part is that once people (yes you) start using them it will generate recommendations in the side bar based on what people like. Very cool stuff.

For those that are curious I am using the Facebook Like Button and Facebook Comments for WordPress.

Edit (8/26/11): I have since quit using the comments plug-in, it just wasn’t for me. I would still recommend it if that is what you are looking for.

I was thinking today about stuff I’d like to actually blog about, and since this is what I do for a living right now, I thought I would start with something easy. Programming. Yeah, yeah, easy for me, right? Basically, I sit in front of a computer all day and make it do my bidding. Don’t worry, I only use my powers for good (right now anyway, muahahaa!).

The project I am on and have been on for the last several years runs north of half a million lines of code across 23 projects right now and I am one of two people that actively work on it. At this point, you could go over and browse through Dilbert strips (www.dilbert.com) and probably begin to understand about 90% of what I do on a day-to-day basis. Really, I’m not lying about the Dilbert thing. Continue reading “Programming”

What have I done?

Well, in my wild experimenting with this site today I managed to take the whole thing down, cause a problem at the hosting company and I became generally frustrated with my website.

I’m better now. I learned what not to do with my site today. I was experimenting with tons of plug-ins and managed to get the site into a non-functional mode. Luckily I exported my blogs before I really blew up the front-end of the site. Many hours and phone calls later all is well.

It is amazing to me how much of my time a spend now thinking about what I want on my site and my excitement about writing these blogs. There is just something different when it is “my” site vs a page on Facebook or MySpace (you can find me in those too).

Most of all I want my site to reflect me, perhaps I just haven’t had to do deep soul searching in a while. So, here I am soul searching, writing, listening. What have I done? I’ve given myself a much needed outlet. Now, I just need to be careful with it.