Monthly Archive for January, 2008

Second Pass at Avatar Plugin (MBLA plus)

Published on January 28, 2008 in Wordpress and blog. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

A little while ago Alper Çuğun released an hAvatar plugin, which parses the url left by a comment author, and if it finds an hCard there, looks for an image in the hCard. This is a nice step towards URL-based identifiers rather than email based ones.

However, I also wanted to show avatars for users who use Gravatar or MyBlogLog.

The solution, for me at least (and for now) was to take Jan Olsen‘s excellent MBLA plugin and hack it up a bit. I took out the “Google Preview” functionality, and added in support for the hAvatar plugin. (MBLA already handled Gravatar and MyBlogLog, and had a nice caching system to boot, so it made a nice place to start).

So, if you leave a comment below, it should do the following:

  1. If you leave a url in the url field (doesn’t have to be an OpenID, but it can be), and there is an hCard living at that url, and that hCard has a photo, it should be retrieved.
  2. If you don’t provide a url, or the url you provide doesn’t have an hCard at it, or that hCard doesn’t have an image in it, then your email address will be checked at both MyBlogLog and Gravatar
  3. If you don’t provide a url or an email address, you won’t get an avatar associated to your comments

There’s also caching, thanks to MBLA’s nice framework, currently set to just 1 day, for testing – I will pump it to longer timeframe once I’m convinced it all works.

If you’d like a copy lemme know – once I’ve tested a bit I will publish the code.

Grezzo, Boston’s New Raw Vegan Restaurant

Published on January 24, 2008 in veg'nism. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Via MARC comes an article in the Boston Herald’s Edge section on Grezzo, the new raw vegan restaurant: “Raw Energy: High priestess of ‘living food’ movement brings new eatery to North End”

Grezzo

Grezzo Zucchini Canneloni (photo from Boston Herald article)

From the article:

Depending on the season, Grezzo patrons may enjoy dishes like coconut curried spring rolls, saffron infused butternut squash soup, zucchini cannelloni, wild mushroom ravioli with asparagus cream, cherry pecan crisp with vanilla ice cream and chocolate cake. There also will be a selection of raw beers and organic wines.

I can’t wait. The Grezzo site still says opening 2/1/08. Time for a countdown?

IPCC Chief Links Vegetarianism to Climate Change

Published on January 21, 2008 in blog and veg'nism. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

As previously reported here, last year’s report from the UN International Panel on Climate Change was pretty clear, if subtle, about the idea that livestock production was a major factor in production of greenhouse gasses, and that reducing or eliminating your consumption of such products was one of the best ways you can contribute to positive change for the environment.

Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri

Now, Agence France Presse is reporting (link via Google News)  that the head of that panel is again stressing the connection, and trying to be more explicit:

“This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.”

A vegetarian, the Indian economist made a plea for people around the world to tame their carnivorous impulses.

“Please eat less meat — meat is a very carbon intensive commodity,” he said, adding that consuming large quantities was also bad for one’s health.

Studies have shown that producing one kilo (2.2 pounds) of meat causes the emissions equivalent of 36.4 kilos of carbon dioxide.

In addition, raising and transporting that slab of beef, lamb or pork requires the same amount of energy as lighting a 100-watt bulb for nearly three weeks.

If only he could get that guy next to him to pay a bit more attention to that part of the lecture . . .