New Plugin: Speak Pirate

Argh mateys! Shiver me timbers! Sometimes it feels good to step out of your normal coding routine and do something a little different.

Yesterday, @arod2634 posted this tweet:

One of the APIs listed was a pirate translation api that would take English and turn it into the equivalent as a pirate would say it. What better way to put it to use then make a WordPress plugin out of it: Speak Pirate.

This new plugin be hot off yonder press and working hard to convert ye plain text into pirate jargon. Simply use ye new shortcode [speak_pirate] around ye text you want translated and it shall be done.

[speak_pirate]Text to translate goes here[/speak_pirate]

Enjoy, ye land lubbers!

Hungry For More Information?

Here is the commented code:

WordPress St. Louis Developers Meetup Notes

Tonight marks the first night of a meetup in St. Louis for WordPress developers! I know, exciting times right? Tonight’s meeting was more of a planning meeting for the future of the group.

When and where will we meet in the future?

It was suggested that we meet at 6:30 instead of 6 pm. We are going to post another poll for the group to figure out the optimal week for the meetup. Apparently the STL Ruby group meets on the 2nd & 4th Monday of the month. And the regular WordPress meetup group meets the 3rd Wednesday of the month. I think the consensus is to stay with Mondays, just figure out the best week for it. The location will stay as Integrity Corporation for the time being.

Suggested Topics for Group Discussion/Presentation

  • Theme review
  • Code review
  • Enterprise deployment and setup
  • How to create a plugin from scratch
  • Security best practices
  • Speed optimization for WordPress
  • Discuss your development environment (how do you make your WordPress magic happen)
    • What tools do we use? (IDE and other useful tools)
    • Testing environment (PHPUnit, etc)
  • Actions and filters
  • Rewrite Endpoints
  • Using WordPress as a service (REST, XML-RPC)
  • Advanced Custom Fields
  • Database/table management best practices
  • Exploring the WordPress database (talk about the tables and how they tie together)

Other Stuff

We also talked about working on plugins/themes together as a group. And we talked about creating an organization on GitHub to host the code. I’m really excited to see what we come up with as a group! Please leave comments below for anything that I left off, or other topics to discuss.

Getting Nostalgic

It would be great to go back to Philmont one of these days. It’s amazing how while you are there experiencing the great adventure, you just want the hike part to be over. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to spend 10 days on the trail at Philmont!

Google Docs for Android

I’ve recently purchased an Asus Eee Pad Transformer as a means to replace my laptop. One of the biggest features I use on my laptop is Google Docs. I love it for meetings around the office, keeping track of different things at home, etc. But editing documents on a tablet is terrible! It says there is “edit” mode, which allows you to type. That’s great if I’m writing a novel…not going to happen. Most of the time, I’m making a list of some sort; which isn’t available in “edit” mode. In fact, no rich-text editing options exist in “edit” mode.

I would love for this to become available, as I’m a huge fan of Google Docs.

EDIT: I have found a work-around. If you install FireFox on your tablet, you should be able to edit the documents.

iPhone 3G Dropping Calls

Dear AT&T,

Enough is enough. You know there is a problem with the iPhone 3G dropping calls. Please fix it. I finally went through and did as the forums suggested, and disabled 3G. I shouldn’t have to do that though. I’ve been growing tired of your company and my family will probably be switching to Verizon once our contract is up.

Your loyal customer since 2001,

Eric