Author: Krunk

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WordPress Last Updated Time Fix for Atom RSS Feed

I noticed for the longest time that updates to my blog posts wouldn’t propagate over to Bloglines. Digging a bit deeper I noticed that in my atom feed, the <updated> and the <published> timestamps were the same. Looking at the code generating those 2 lines revealed the problem:

<updated><?php the_time('c'); ?></updated>
<published><?php the_time('c'); ?></published>

It used the same code to generate the updated time and the published time. I scratched my head trying to figure out if there was a way to determine the last modified time for a particular post/entry. I didn’t want it to just returned the last modified time for the entire database, which is what the atom feed uses for the feed’s last modified time.

Searching online, I found this bug on WordPress: Atom feed entry updated field should use get_post_modified_time, not get_post_time. Apparently the correct thing to call is:
get_post_modified_time('Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z', true);

Resulting in:

<updated><?php echo get_post_modified_time('Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z', true); ?></updated>
<published><?php the_time('c'); ?></published>

Yep. That fixed my atom feed’s entry last updated time. Obviously I’m not using the latest WordPress version and although updating WordPress isn’t difficult, it’s not easy either. Updates should be fast and simple. One click that does back up, download newest version, install, and prompt me for any extra things I need to configure. If anything goes wrong, roll back to what it was previously.

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A Vision of Students Today

Michael Welsh release 2 new videos:

If you don’t remember who Michael Welsh is, you’ll probably remember his original video: The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version) (previously posted).

I have to say, both are quite interesting and definitely worth a watch.

A Vision of Students Today

a short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

Information R/evolution

This video explores the changes in th… This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

UPDATE: Added High Quality Versions.

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みなみけ / minami-ke

So Skylancer just recommended a new anime to me and it’s AWESOME! The anime is called みなみけ (minami-ke). The anime is just super cute. It reminds me of あずまんが大王 (Azumanga Daioh), but a lot wackier. The story is about 3 sisters, one in elementary school, one in high school, and one which I assume is in college. The story is about everyday life, but don’t let that steer you away. That’s like saying Azumanga Daioh was just about a group of high school girls. The situations are wacky and hilarious, and add to that the cuteness to it. It’s not clear what happened to their parents nor why they live in such a big house, but as long as it keeps me entertained, I’m not complaining. As FuzzyWuzzy says, “wow that’s so sickeningly cute.”

You can check out the OP (opening) on YouTube / Stage6 and the ED (ending) on YouTube / Stage6. Trust me, the OP and ED aren’t enough to warn you how awesome the 1st episode is. I did realize something strange about the YouTube videos which were labeled “High Quality”. I mean they were indeed a lot higher quality than the other YouTube videos which I found and not over compressed like the others. However, it does show a play time of 10 minutes, which in reality is really just 1:30. I wonder how they did it… how they took up 10 minutes worth of space/quality to make a video have higher quality on YouTube.

Speaking of which, the 2nd episode of Clannad was released and boy am I addicted to the ending song: だんご大家族 (Dango Daikazoku). I’ve almost completely memorized it. I’ve sang along at least 2 or 3 dozen times. You know you’re addicted to the song when you’re singing it in the shower. The dangos did appear in the 2nd episode and it turns out to be one of the girl’s favorite things. It used to be popular in “anime” history, but has since died off like Furby and the Power Rangers. I can’t find anything that shows that it was popular in real Japan history. Usually, I don’t really try to learn a Japanese song, due to the fact that they sing a lot faster than I can. I can shout some phrases here and there, but ultimately end up laughing at myself. However, Dango Daikazoku was meant for little kids and sung at really slow pace, so it was quite easy to catch on.

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思い出は億千万 (110 Million Memories)

So I first heard this song in the Piano Medley I posted a week ago. At that time I thought it was just one of the Megaman theme songs. However, recently I watched a random video which actually gave the song lyrics! I was like… lyrics for Megaman theme song!?!?!

Digging further, I found out the song is called 思い出は億千万 (omoide ha okkusenman). It’s sometimes shorten to just 億千万 (okkusenman). The title translates to 110 Million Memories and I’ve been listening to the song over and over again. If you’re interested, you can download the song: okkusenman.mp3 (from Hardcore Mix with ゴム). If you get a weird Japanese Yahoo! page when trying to download the mp3, that just means the allocated bandwidth for that day has been used up, so try again later.

It appears multiple bands have played this as a cover song. It also appears there’s been several iterations of this song posted YouTube, the first being: ロックマン２　おっくせんまん ～　Hardcore Mix with ゴム ～ where they used video taken from the Rockman 2 (Megaman 2) game.

Later on, someone actually animated the song based on the lyrics, which really doesn’t have anything to do with Rockman/Megaman. If anything, it’d be Ultraman since that’s apparently the boy’s childhood hero. You can check out the new animation here: おもいではおっくせんまん(ボーカル有り)

I wanted to find out what the song was about. I got the jist of it, but my Japanese isn’t all the great and I didn’t want to search phrase by phrase. I found the translation here: OKKUSENMAN: MEMORIES ARE BILLIONS, but what was even better was the fact they linked to a video where the video had English subtitles: My Memories are 110 Million Music Video.

After watching the video for probably the 15th time, I’ve began to feel nostalgic. The song is about how when you were a kid, anything was possible, including becoming Ultraman (a children’s TV superhero). You don’t care how others see you, even when you run around acting silly playing Ultraman. As you grow up, you become more and more aware of how you others view you and become restricted in what you do. Friends go off in their own paths and soon you’re doing the same thing day in and day out.

It’s very sad and I miss those childhood days. When I was small, I’d have this imaginary kingdom, where I was the emperor. I was master ninja/swordsman and had millions of people under my command. I would play sword fights with imaginary enemies who were very skilled. Often times, my sword and weapons would be imaginary too, so you’d see a little me running around the house kicking and punching. I’m surprised I didn’t break anything… or did I? Those were the days, very fun. Unfortunately, with imaginary kingdoms, it’s hard to invite friends or siblings to join, as their vision of the imaginary kingdom differs from your own.

But those days are over… sigh…

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5 Free iTunes Songs via Facebook / Ticketmaster Live

First saw this on Digg, then I saw the ad in my news feed.

Get free music from Ticketmaster Live.

Join Ticketmaster Live and choose 5 free songs from iTunes while they last. Come back often for new content and offers.

After you log into Facebook, search for a group called Ticketmaster Live and join it. After joining the group and visiting their page, you’ll see something like this near the top:

facebook - ticketmaster live - free itunes music

According to that panel, my 5 free music credit will expire on November 15, 2007, which gives me a good chunk of time to use it.

You can also immediately leave the group, if you so wish, which I actually did.

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Flickr? F*ckr?

Esca sent me a link to a Flickr image the other day and I noticed something weird with my title bar:

flickr title bar

I was like, are my eyes tricking me? I’m seeing F*ckr… I can only attribute this to the font the Zune theme defaults to for title bars. I couldn’t find out what font it was using. Using Microsoft Word, I did however find a bunch of fonts that would result with the word looking like F*ckr. I wonder if that was intentional. 😉

Flickr? Fuckr?

Cari notes that the l and i seem a little bit too close.

So I was wondering if there any interesting new titles I could find. I ended up with these two:

flickr search

party on flickr

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Cute Aruruu

As promised, I’ve been ripping the cute scenes from Utawarerumono with Aruruu in it. Here’s just a handful from the 1st 10 episodes.

Utawarerumono - Baby MukkuruUtawarerumono - Hungry MukkuruUtawarerumono - Aruruu Saves HakuoroUtawarerumono - Villagers Leave After BattleUtawarerumono - Kamyu Befriends AruruuUtawarerumono - Aruruu Wants To Go To BattleUtawarerumono - Aruruu's Necklace

Isn’t she adorable?

I didn’t bother with the low resolutions, most likely because I was lazy, but 5-15MB videos shouldn’t be too bad for those who visit my site.

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だんご大家族 (Dango Daikazoku)

So I started watching a new anime called Clannad recommended to me by Belldandy. Story feels very similar to Kanon and Air, but I’ve only watched one episode so far. Pretty good.

Clannad’s ED (ending song/animation) was so cute, I almost melted: (high resolution and low resolution respectively)
clannad ed - dango daikazoku clannad ed - dango daikazoku

The song is called だんご大家族 (Dango Daikazoku), which translates to big dango family. Dango is usually translated to dumpling, but it’s not the dumpling you typically think about. When I think of dumplings, I usually think of 餃子 (jiao zi in Chinese or gyoza in Japanese). Dango’s are more like mochi, but not as soft. You can read more about them on Wikipedia. Here’s a picture of what a dango looks like:

hanami dango
(from Wikipedia)

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Computer Annoyances

So I finished watching Lucky Star (anime review to come later) today and one of the last few episodes featured Konata transferring files in Windows XP:

lucky star - konata transferring a file in windows xp

It’s a common problem we see everyday on windows. When we transfer a bulk load of files, the estimated transfer time jumps around like crazy. As Konata notes, “It happens every time… The way it goes up and down makes it useless.” As RayAlome comments, “They might as well just make it a random number generator.”

Apparently it gets worse in Windows Vista, but according to Derek, they’ve fixed the problem already. The patch is currently available: KB938979: An update is available that improves the performance and reliability of Windows Vista and one of issues it resolves is: When you copy or move a large file, the “estimated time remaining” takes a long time to be calculated and displayed. It’s currently not being pushed down as a critical update, but will be pushed down when SP1 becomes available. If you want it earlier, go download it now.

It turns out the patch actually did more than fix the transfer time estimation. It made transfers go faster! Take a look at this benchmark: KB938979 to Fix File Transfer Woes. No, really. Speed tests show that after the patch was applied, transfer time decreased almost 120%!

Another computer annoyance that happened to me today was iTunes froze when it was playing a song and it began to stutter. Usually this is a sign that my system has hung, but I was relieved to find out that my mouse was still able to move and I was able to launch task manager to kill iTunes. Stupid iTunes…