I wrote this 6-page guide to posting photos with WordPress (PDF) for a friend who wanted to know the basics of writing posts and uploading photos to his website with WordPress. I wrote it as I was learning it, but I think I got most of it right.

It’s written for Vista PCs using Firefox, but it would likely work with other sets up too. The WordPress version is 2.9.1.

I think the award goes to Sebastien Wilcox’s latest post:

It Has Been Said That Using A Short, Snappy Heading That Is Catchy, Witty And, Dare I Say, Thought Provoking Is The Best Way To Entice People (And By People, I Just Don’t Mean Family And Friends And Co-Workers And The Neighbours And The Neighbours’ Dog And His Puppies Who Are Pretty Damn Cute But That’s Besides The Point, And Not Very Relevant At The Moment) Into Reading Your Entire Posting As Opposed To Just The Heading, And Once The Readers Have Indeed Been “Drawn In” So To Speak, Those Readers Need To Be Rewarded With Something That’s Relatively Amusing And, Fingers Crossed, Mildly Entertaining.

And like a lot of Sebastien’s excellent posts, it has a moral.

Does anyone know how to remove or disable these annoying pop-up “Share” buttons?

I’m using FireFox 3.5.7 with Vista.

A certain Greasemonkey script works on CBC.ca and a few other sites, but not all of them. Does anyone know how I can remove these annoyances from all sites?

From Debunking Christianity, an awesome interview with Christopher Hitchens.

Friel: “If God created you and provides everything for you, does he have rights on your life?”

Hitchens: “No. I don’t accept anyone’s right to own me. I created my children and provide for them, but I don’t own them. Besides, would this mean that the sick and starving for whom God has not provided are not owned by God?”

Friel: “Um… next question…”

OMG I’m SO first in line.

(Note the category for this post above)

I’m taking off for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Jody’s in charge while I’m gone.

See ya.

— Phillip

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is a documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Coppola fired his lead actor after several weeks of shooting, his replacement lead actor had a heart attack half way through the 238-day shoot, hurricanes destroyed his sets, army helicopters were called away in the middle of hugely expensive shots, and he didn’t have an ending. Good times!

From DVD Talk:

In watching Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse again for the first time in a few years, I was struck by the sheer egomaniacal drive that spurred Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola forward — this is a man who, seemingly quite literally, went incrementally insane in the Philippine jungle… The overwhelming ambition and staggering scale of Coppola’s Vietnam-centric riff upon Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” are relics from another time, an era when filmmaking was a creative enterprise, not a corporate one.

I watched the TV show Mad Men over Xmas, the first 3 seasons of it (13 episodes each). Season 1 and 2 on DVD and season 3 from a friend who TiVoed it and made me a copy.

The story revolves around an ad agency in the early 1960s on Madison Avenue in New York. Everybody smokes and drinks all day long. Men are entirely chauvinistic and women have to put up with it. If you happen to have brown skin, then you can count on being an elevator operator, a waiter or a maid. And don’t ever let anyone know you’re gay. Every character seems to have their own story that reflects a certain aspect of the times. The show is renowned for its historical authenticity. Not just the look of the show, but the details of social behaviour, the mentality of the men and the women at that time — it’s all kind of illuminating, like stepping into a time machine.

The first season of the show is solid all the way through. Just to see how people acted back then is fascinating, incredible at times. The show is compelling, dramatic, entertaining — all of it. It’s worth checking out. The 2nd and 3rd season, not so much. The writers ran out of ideas and put too much focus on one character; there are plenty of other compelling characters in the ensemble cast who could have easily been given more attention.

You can skip all of season 2 and most of season 3 and just read the Wikipedia episode synopsis for everything up to episode 10 of season 3. You won’t miss much. Only the last few episodes of season 3 are on par with season 1. Maybe that means season 4 will be better. I’ll wait for the DVDs.