Author: Nick Momrik

I'm searching for my first hole-in-one. I enjoy being active and making things. I work for Automattic.

The Movie With 4 Endings

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The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)Last night I finally watched my special extended edition copy of The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King. All 4 hours and 20 minutes of it!

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is one of the greatest DVDs ever released. I noticed a lot of the added scenes and that’s saying a lot since it’s been over a year since I saw the theatrical version. The new scenes really do add to the story, filling in a few gaps. You’re missing out on the full experience of the movie if you don’t take the time to watch this extended edition. I can’t wait to check out some of the special features on the other two discs.


bbPress

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I just installed bbPress to give it a test drive. When I read that it’s supposed to be simple, I guess I was thinking WordPress simple. Think Notepad simple. The forum software is nowhere near being ready for use on a site.

Now, I totally understand that the project just started development 2 weeks ago and is being built from the ground up. I also understand that the version number is 0.01, so I shouldn’t expect much. And to be fair…I didn’t really expect much. I expected a bare bones piece of software to run forums on a site. Well, it’s bare bones alright.

After registering, there isn’t even a way to change your password, so you’re stuck with the generated one. Also, from a developer’s stand point, it would be a PITA to template the system right now. It doesn’t come with a default CSS file.

I’m sure that bbPress will turn out to be a great piece of software one day. Just take a look at how far WordPress has come in a year.

Now my search begins for a simple piece of forum software. I don’t want avatars, file attachments, and all that jazz. I want people to be able to post topics and reply to them. I want something that can be incorporated with the design of a WordPress site. I might be searching for awhile…

Update: I think I found the perfect package with Phorum. It has a very nice templating system. I think I’ll just need to edit the header, footer, and css files to setup the design I want. 😀

Update #2: Phorum is pretty slick. See it in action on the new Poker Chip Tricks Forums.

Matt > Bill

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Matthew Mullenweg is like the Bill Gates of Internet software. But then again, maybe he’s not. All of Matt’s software is Open Source (free to use, free to modify). Oh, and his software works. Did I mention he listens to his users? Or how about the fact that he answers every single one of his email messages? So I take that back…he’s not like Gates at all. He’s more better!

  • Matt is one of the most popular bloggers in the entire universe at Photo Matt.
  • He’s the lead developer for WordPress, the best blogging software available.
  • Dougal Campbell teammed up with Matt to launch Ping-o-Matic, your one stop for letting sites around the web know that you’ve updated your blog.
  • Over the holidays and out of the blue, he started a new piece of forum software from scratch, bbPress.
  • Just today I came across automattic.com, another domain registered to Matt. Not quite sure what he has in store here, but I now know that “Some things are automattic, some things aren’t.”

Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game

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Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet GameMy friend Dave just bought me this book after he’d purchased the original Killer Poker. From what he’s said it really gets into the mind games that you play with yourself in poker. Just what I need lately. I hope it will help me to figure out why I think some of the things I do or act in certain ways. Watch out fish! My poker library is growing quite large lately. I have at least 6 books that I’ve yet to crack the cover on. I guess it’s time for more study and less poker play.


WordPress Plugins: Trackback And Pingback Moderation

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These two plugins basically do the same thing, but I wanted to keep them seperate. When you turn one on, it will automatically place either all NEW trackbacks or all NEW pingbacks (depending on the plugin) into the comment moderation queue. It’s meant as a simple way to keep the spammers from getting these onto your site without you first approving them.

Note: This does not do anything for all of the old trackbacks/pingbacks that have already been added to your site.

More information on the WordPress Plugins page.

Trackback Spam

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Now that I’ve gotten a handle on the comment spam taking over my blogs, I’m getting hit through other means. Trackbacks! I found a few hooks in the WP code that I can plug into, so tonight I plan to whip up a few plugins so that pingbacks and trackbacks can automatically be put into the moderation queue. At least that’s what I hope to accomplish.

I can’t really think of any other way to test on these two items. For comments, I don’t like using the moderation queue, but it doesn’t really matter all that much to me if a trackback or pingback doens’t appear on my blog for a few hours until I can let it go through. Maybe one of the great minds out there will come up with an idea, but this will at least be a temporary solution.