they keep my mind busy when things are lighter at work or when i have nothing better to do; very rarely will you ever find me “bored”.

lately my work place has been looking into PHP frameworks for helping us jumpstart projects. i’m generally not a big fan of frameworks since they tend to get in the way after a while. i’ve instead built my own little library of generalized functions that i use on nearly every project a work on and i just add new features as i need them…

anyway, after some r&d at work w/ frameworks, i discovered this small library called flourish that i’m taking a particular liking to. i’ve only toyed with it for a few days but so far i like it. it’s pretty small and generally well documented and takes care of some security issues i’ve been too lazy to care about. i found some parts of it a bit skimpy. i added some support in their templating class for combining css and js and i’m currently working through their database abstraction.

so to play with this library i resurrected one of my abandoned side projects so i have a purpose for using this. maybe i’ll link that side project here when/if i finish. if you’re a nerd, check out the library. so far so good.

and nobody paid me to write this short review.

in addition to cleaner code, the latest release i did this morning reformats and reorganizes the admin config panel. new features have been added on and the options were getting cluttered.

before and after screenshot…

before:

after:

i think this project is nearing the point where i’m pretty satisfied with it. i think the only thing i’d want to see improved is a better feed display. currently it’s just a bulleted list and isn’t all that attractive… that’s why i added the option to hide it from the feeds.

Josh, the other developer has plans to add localization so people in other countries could use their own social networking sites and see the plugin in their own language. personally not a big thing for me since… the plugin’s already in english… and i speak english… but for those of you who care about that stuff… it’s coming.

anyway… this was just an update from the robot-nerd side of life. i’ve been getting a lot of visits from people looking for that stuff lately.

1. i got lasik surgery
2. recovery from the surgery did not go as expected so i was unable to see properly for a few days.
3. for WP development, i did a little work on DamnSexyBookmarks. eventually all my changes were merged with SexyBookmarks. dropped my fork and will continue working w/ Josh in the parent project.
4. went to eye doctor’s a few times.
5. played a lot of violin since i don’t need to see anything to play music.
6. today i’m back on the internets! tho vision is still blurry like saved by the bell dream land.

i think this would be my first time taking a dive into actual wordpress development. in the past i’ve only helped people style their blogs or do css tweaks and random javascripting… all stuff dealing with presentation, but nothing really with function. those of you who actually come to this site (instead of just seeing this in your reader) may have noticed i started using this plugin that looks like this:

it’s a plugin called SexyBookmarks… i know… i didn’t name it. it’s not the first result in a google search. but i thought it to be a pretty well made plugin; designed rather nicely and cleanly and more or less functions like it’s supposed to. when herman had some issues w/ the plugin a few days ago i started looking into it and got in touch w/ the developer, josh jones to propose some fixes. he seems like a really nice guy and even gave me some credit for some of the patches i made that made it in:

i’m still in contact w/ him hoping to get a few more changes in if they get accepted. doing wordpress dev on this plugin has kinda got my feet wet and i wanna work on some plugins of my own so maybe soon this site will have a section of my plugins.

i think the first plugin i work on will be to make a “via” plugin to give credits to artists/blogs herman’s been asking for this functionality for a while. maybe there’s a plugin for it already… i didn’t search. in any case, i figure it should be a pretty easy plugin to start on. after i think i’ll make my own facebook connect plugin because the ones i see out there don’t work out of the box that well and i think there must be an easier way!

wordpress users out there… any plugin you want me to try to create?

i’m looking for ideas. we’ll see how long this run goes or how long this slowness at work lasts.