Tech tips for the uninformed

1. I launched a new blog on Friday.  Lofty Pursuits, is dedicated to video game reviews and other entertainment news.  Despite the challenge to my cornea (and my better judgement) I picked yet another white text on dark background theme.  Pixeled by samk was one of the first top-rated themes that I demoed and I guess it just spoke to me.  Eventually, for the sake of my eyes, I want something with dark text and a light background.  I also don’t want to spend days hunting for a good theme.  So, here we are, for now.
2. As with my first blog on this apache box, I had problems getting by wordpress permalinks to come out right.  I normally use the %postname% tag for pretty and contextual permalinks.  After initially setting my permalink configuration this way, all I was getting were 404 errors on each post page.  In most cases, this is due to an incorrect permission on the .htaccess file in the home directory of the blog.  This was not true in my case.  It turns out that I needed to change a parameter in my apache virtual host configuration file.  My code originally looked something like this:

   <Directory "/absolute/path/to/wordpress/directory">
       Options FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride None
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>
   

   It turns out that, in order for custom permalinks to work, the directory parameter must read AllowOveride All. This solved my problem and set me on my merry way. I owe Cody Brimhall a round of thanks for writing this up ahead of me.

3. I’ve also been experimenting with the use of external feeds in my blog.  I use Google Reader as my primary filter and I make use of it’s versatile tagging features.  Reader allows you to turn any tag into a public page and/or a public RSS feed. I have several, inlcuding:
   • Shared Development Articles, my recent picks for stories on the latest in programming, software development and internet technology
   • Shared Politics Articles, red states, blue states, etc.
   • Shared Entertainment Articles, my picks from the latest news about video games, film, etc.

   My ultimate goal would be to set up a website with an online magazine format and then fill it with these feeds.  I think I’ll call it scottmeme…we’ll see.  For the mean time, all I’ve got is a simple “what I’m reading” blog roll that runs at the bottom of Lofty Pursuits.  It pulls from my shared entertainment feed, using the get_rss function.

4. While I’m on the subject of Google Reader, their latest feature is feed translation.  Direct from the Reader interface, you can automatically translate a foreign language feed to your language of choice.  Nice!
5. Finally, I was glad to hear that Google recently updated their Search Alerts feature.  In addition to email, you can now receive your alerts via RSS distribution.  I was using Search Alerts to research and follow multiple persons and topics of interest.  The only problem was the clutter in my inbox.  Now, I send all my alerts to their own RSS feed and then catch the feeds in Google Reader.  The Interface in Reader is much better suited for managing a high volume of data.