Random Thoughts by Chuck

Now that you can upload hi-def videos to youtube…well, you have been able to for a while, I’ve just never used it,  there’s some querystring parameters to let you have the hi-quality version play by default.   Seems youtube always plays the lo-quality one by default unless your user account has the option to pick it.  Mine doesn’t. Long story short, try this code generator, it works like a charm.

Embed Code for High Quality YouTube Videos

I dug through a bunch of archived DVD’s and found some of my original design work going back to 2001. I left out the ugly stuff, but have a peek!

Here’s an update of how to show empty categories using the default Category widget in Wordpress 2.7.  My previous post was for pre-2.7 Wordpress sites, this update is still simple; actually it’s easier since Wordpress switched to using an array for the category arguments. continue reading…

Great article on RWW with a few tools to find more people on Twitter.  The best one out of the bunch IMO is Twubble.  It goes through the list of the people you are following and suggests other people you might want to follow.

Another cool way to find more people on Twitter is to use search.twitter.com and create an RSS feed from search results to find people who are interested in the same things you are.  We’re using this at work by having some RSS feeds of various keyword searches related to our industry and we aggregate these results with technorati searches and other RSS feeds through Yahoo Pipes.

5 Ways to Find More Friends on Twitter – ReadWriteWeb

This is a hack, but a simple one.  Surprisingly enough, Wordpress 2.3 doesn’t have an option in the default category widget to show empty categories.  Personally I prefer to only show categories that have posts, but here’s a really simple way to do it.

If you are not using widgets, use this to call the list category function with the proper parameters in sidebar.php or whatever file you’re using to display the categories:

$args = “hide_empty=0″;
wp_list_cats($args);

If you are using widgets, it’s just as easy,  open /includes/widgets.php and search for “$cat_args” (should be around line 627 or so).  Change this line:

$cat_args = “orderby=name&show_count={$c}&hierarchical={$h}”;

to

$cat_args = “hide_empty=0&orderby=name&show_count={$c}&hierarchical={$h}”;

I’m sure there is a simple way to change the properties of the default category widget to  allow you to set that parameter through the widget UI, but this works great and doesn’t cause any problem using widgets.

No, it’s not a cover, but killer none-the-less.  I am counting down the minutes to this release…

MySpace.com – EXTREME – BOSTON, Massachusetts – Rock – www.myspace.com/extreme

Warning: If you are a religious person, this video will offend you. Now that THAT is done with, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! The clip about evolution at the end is simply brilliant.

Family Guy: Jesus | Cartoons & Comics | Funny Videos, Pictures and Jokes at JibJab

Funny shit, any Chris Rock fan will love this!

YouTube – Chris Rock – How not to get your ass kicked by the police!

Ball girl pulls a Jackie Chan and makes an UNREAL catch at a Triple A game.

Ball Girl Makes Incredible Catch Video

So the Volt is due in 2010, I’d actually consider buying one. It’ll go up to 64 KM on electric power alone and recharge overnight by plugging it in. That means pretty much zero gas costs for lots of commuters. Perhaps my opinion will change when the new Camaro comes out or the CTS-coupe!

Lutz: Volt will cost $40,000, first-gen will lose money – Autoblog