The Call of an Engineer

Since I was not selected for submitting a "New Poem for the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer" I might as well put my entry here...

From the forges of industry,

And the sweat of diligent hands,

Comes the work of engineering,

That it shapes the land.

Yet it is not just the brawn,

But the mind of self-control,

That designs with integrity,

To reach each goal.

For in the service of society,

Our efforts are not our own,

And sacrifice is necessary,

To ensure our labors are sown.

But lest not forget,

The human qualities we bring,

Of the heart and spirit,

That make material sing.

Humility in our pursuits,

Consideration in our ways,

As we build a better world,

For future days.

So together our voices,

In hymn to noble aims,

Of engineering, self-control,

And service with no claims.

Arch and flexget

I am a big fan of Arch Linux and can't say enough about it's flexibility. So I like to support it any way I can. And you can too! Here is a working (at least for now) flexget configuration for adding the latest arch.iso to your transmission queue. I had a working version also for the RSS links, but didn't like how there were no magnet links. So I switched to direct regex parsing of the download page. Also btw i use arch...

	tasks:
	arch_task:
	regexp_parse:
	source: 'https://www.archlinux.org/download/'
	keys:
	title:
	regexps:
	- {regexp: '(?<=title=\"Magnet link\">)[a-zA-Z0-9\.\s]*'}
	url:
	regexps:
	- {regexp: 'magnet:\?xt=urn:btih:[a-zA-Z0-9\&\;\=\-\.\_\:\/]*'}
	accept_all: yes
	transmission:
	host: localhost
	port: 9091
	add_paused: no
	path: '~/downloads/'

view raw config.yml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

WordPress Recent Posts with Include

Have you ever wondered why something doesn't exist even though you think it should and every where you look it looks like people want the same thing?

Well after searching for a while for a decent way to add a recent posts widget to a WordPress page I came across a great script that was a modification of the existing WordPress Recent Posts widget that added exclusion functionality so you could remove certain categories. I thought that this would be exactly what I wanted except for the fact that if you had multiple categories for a particular post it did not have the logic implemented to keep categories that also had an exclusion associated with it.

Example:
----------------------------
Post    ---    Categories
----------------------------
foo            news,events
bar            events

The new widget with the exclusion category of events will exclude both posts. Giving precedence. If this functionality is something that you are looking for then you can find the original script and instructions here.

So with a slight modification you can reverse the logic on this to make it an inclusion category. In doing so you can then make a custom category called "include" where you can manage your new front page widget to only include posts with that category tag.

Of course you can always download one of the many over blown and bloated plugins that will also do this and a myriad of other things, but I would rather have the single purpose solution.

	/**
	* Recent_Posts widget w/ category include class
	* This allows specific Category ID to be included in the Sidebar Recent Posts list
	*
	*/
	class WP_Widget_Recent_Posts_Include extends WP_Widget {
	function __construct() {
	$widget_ops = array('classname' => 'widget_recent_entries', 'description' => __( "The most recent posts on your site") );
	parent::__construct('recent-posts', __('Recent Posts with Include'), $widget_ops);
	$this->alt_option_name = 'widget_recent_entries';
	add_action( 'save_post', array(&$this, 'flush_widget_cache') );
	add_action( 'deleted_post', array(&$this, 'flush_widget_cache') );
	add_action( 'switch_theme', array(&$this, 'flush_widget_cache') );
	}
	function widget($args, $instance) {
	$cache = wp_cache_get('widget_recent_posts', 'widget');
	if ( !is_array($cache) )
	$cache = array();
	if ( ! isset( $args['widget_id'] ) )
	$args['widget_id'] = $this->id;
	if ( isset( $cache[ $args['widget_id'] ] ) ) {
	echo $cache[ $args['widget_id'] ];
	return;
	}
	ob_start();
	extract($args);
	$title = apply_filters('widget_title', empty($instance['title']) ? __('Recent Posts') : $instance['title'], $instance, $this->id_base);
	if ( empty( $instance['number'] ) || ! $number = absint( $instance['number'] ) )
	$number = 10;
	$include = empty( $instance['include'] ) ? '' : $instance['include'];
	$r = new WP_Query(array('posts_per_page' => $number, 'no_found_rows' => true, 'post_status' => 'publish', 'ignore_sticky_posts' => true, 'category__in' => explode(',', $include) ));
	if ($r->have_posts()) :
	?>
	<?php //echo print_r(explode(',', $include)); ?>
	<?php echo $before_widget; ?>
	<?php if ( $title ) echo $before_title . $title . $after_title; ?>
	<ul>
	<?php while ($r->have_posts()) : $r->the_post(); ?>
	<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php echo esc_attr(get_the_title() ? get_the_title() : get_the_ID()); ?>"><?php if ( get_the_title() ) the_title(); else the_ID(); ?></a></li>
	<?php endwhile; ?>
	</ul>
	<?php echo $after_widget; ?>
	<?php
	// Reset the global $the_post as this query will have stomped on it
	wp_reset_postdata();
	endif;
	$cache[$args['widget_id']] = ob_get_flush();
	wp_cache_set('widget_recent_posts', $cache, 'widget');
	}
	function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ) {
	$instance = $old_instance;
	$instance['title'] = strip_tags($new_instance['title']);
	$instance['number'] = (int) $new_instance['number'];
	$instance['include'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['include'] );
	$this->flush_widget_cache();
	$alloptions = wp_cache_get( 'alloptions', 'options' );
	if ( isset($alloptions['widget_recent_entries']) )
	delete_option('widget_recent_entries');
	return $instance;
	}
	function flush_widget_cache() {
	wp_cache_delete('widget_recent_posts', 'widget');
	}
	function form( $instance ) {
	$title = isset($instance['title']) ? esc_attr($instance['title']) : '';
	$number = isset($instance['number']) ? absint($instance['number']) : 5;
	$include = esc_attr( $instance['include'] );
	?>
	<p><label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>"><?php _e('Title:'); ?></label>
	<input class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('title'); ?>" type="text" value="<?php echo $title; ?>" /></p>
	<p><label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('number'); ?>"><?php _e('Number of posts to show:'); ?></label>
	<input id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('number'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('number'); ?>" type="text" value="<?php echo $number; ?>" size="3" /></p>
	<p>
	<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('include'); ?>"><?php _e( 'Include Category:' ); ?></label> <input type="text" value="<?php echo $include; ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('include'); ?>" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('include'); ?>" class="widefat" />
	<br />
	<small><?php _e( 'Category ID' ); ?></small>
	</p>
	<?php
	}
	}
	function WP_Widget_Recent_Posts_Include_init() {
	unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Recent_Posts');
	register_widget('WP_Widget_Recent_Posts_Include');
	}
	add_action('widgets_init', 'WP_Widget_Recent_Posts_Include_init');
	?>

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