Arne Brachnold’s Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress is a pretty neat piece of software that’ll build a Google-style XML-Sitemap, and ping Google with it every time you update your blog.
     Good stuff for SEO, good stuff for making sure Google has your site indexed. 

     After setting up a few blogs with the latest, I found a caveat that just annoyed me to death: you’re in the Admin, but when you manually update the sitemap, it comes back with a blank page. Sure, I know how to work around it, but they guys I’m setting this stuff up for get all huffy about it.
     Pretty quick bug to figure out.  There’s even a nice ticket on Trac (Ticket 604) that I’m unable to post this solution to…
     Line 2463 of sitemap.php is:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”list-manipulation.js” mce_src=”list-manipulation.js”></script>

     Of course, that doesn’t exist, but if we change it to:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”../wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php” mce_src=”../wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php”></script>

     …then all is right and good with the world.

     Hopefully, Arne’ll drop this in his next release — and be able to close Ticket 604 on Trac.  😉

[Ed. Note: The text of this article refers to “the latest” WordPress (2.1.x) and version of the plugin for it (3.0xxx).]

     Quite by accident, I ran across a time-lapse video of a Photoshop paing by an “arte fusion” artist named Nico.  Some of you have probably seen this guy before…

     If you can see it fast enough, you might actually learn something about Photoshop.  Some people, of course, will discount Nico’s talent as a computerized trick, so here’s another one of his…

     He’s a talented artist, no doubt, but doing the time-lapse video is particularly brilliant in that it turns the relatively mundane act of painting into an enjoyable act of performance art.  It’s difficult to say what’s better: the artistic creations themselves, or the time-lapse videos of their production?

     For even more, check out his Profile page on YouTube.

     Yesterday, I was called to fix this bug, which caused a SQL error when users would go to the Stats / Leaders page:

Error:

mySQL query error: SELECT m.id, m.name, m.email, m.hide_email, m.location, m.aim_name, m.icq_number,
  f.id as forum_id, f.read_perms, f.name as forum_name, c.state
  FROM ibf_members m, ibf_categories c
  LEFT JOIN ibf_moderators mod ON((m.id=mod.member_id or (mod.is_group=1 and mod.group_id=m.mgroup)))
  LEFT JOIN ibf_forums f ON(f.id=mod.forum_id)
  WHERE c.id=f.category AND c.state != 0

mySQL error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘mod ON((m.id=mod.member_id or (mod.is_group=1 and mod.group_id=m.mgroup)))’ at line 4

     Not too difficult to spot that first LEFT JOIN is broke … Editing the query in ~/sources/misc/stats.php, line 255, and surrounding `mod` with backticks did the job.

     Although, it’d be nice if customers would keep their software versions up-to-date…