Jerry D. Russell dot Com

It seems like every time I get a good blogging pattern going something comes up that brings it to a screeching halt.  Over the past 21 monhs we’ve had family emergencies, Moves, and of course there’s the little man of the house, who generally breaks my routine three or four times per day.All of these things have done their part at keeping me from posting on all but one of my blogs in anything like a regular fashion.  Some of them were very large scale interruptions (Funeral Services for an uncle in Oklahoma), the last in this chain of events was terribly small.  As in microscopic.

I’ve been suffering the worst head cold I’ve had in years for the past two weeks, and it’s pretty much kept me from anything other than watching some really bad TV.

Does that mean I haven’t had a hundred ideas I would have liked to post here?  No, of course it doesn;t, but if you’ve ever tried to write with a head full of cold medicine, you’ll understand why I haven’t been around.  I read some of the stuff I tried to write.  Even I don’t understand it.

But I’m back, and it’s time to get rolling in the new year.

Stay tuned.

Jerry General Geekiness General, news

Sorry for the lapse in anything interesting to say, folks.  I’ve spent the last week and-a-half dealing with a particularly nasty head cold.  You know the kind I’m talking bout.  The kind that doesn’t really make you sick, but rather leaves your head filled with some sort of mental “fuzz” that makes comprehending the written word an exercise in utter futility. The kind that removes any trace of energy from your being, making the thought of getting up for coffee seem as inviting as a trip to the dentist for multiple root canals.  The kind that makes the idea of writing anything a completely unimaginable task…

Yeah, that kind.

For the first time in quite a few days I’ve been able to browse through my RSS reader to the end, and actually get through my email without having to take a break.  It’s quite refreshing really.

I haven’t forgotten about this little space in the interim though.  I have a stack of articles piled on my desk that are simply chock-full of great information for everyone, and I’ll be going through them over the next day or so and getting everything ready to fly.  I plan to start the year by having at least 10 articles ready to go in the queue at all times, so that these unfortunate gaps in release stop happening.  It annoys the heck out of me, and I’m sure that it’s not doing much for you, either.

Another goal for the new year is to never, ever have a sponsored article as my primary post for the day.  The last thing I put forth will be something of interest to writers, and will be worth the visit, period.  if I can’t manage that and put up information that’s going to either make your life easier, make you think or make you laugh, I won’t put up that paid post at all.  After all, you’re here to read about writing, right?

For now, I’m off to take a quick break. (That cold hasn’t let go of me completely, at least not yet.) then I’m diving in.

I hope the winter hasn’t slammed you all as badly as it’s gotten me.

Jerry Announcements Resolutions, Sickies, writing

Because of some good sleuthing by the ladies over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books, Cassie Edwards is in the middle of a maelstrom. The gals originally posted several passages from Miss Edward’s books that bore a very close resemblance (O.K., can we say a nearly word-for-word resemblance) to descriptions given in several works of non-fiction regarding the customs and practices of native American peoples. This post has gone from a blog issue to a full blown media storm. To say the least, it’s what everyone in the writing world is talking about.

Signet Books, Miss Edwards’ publisher, has released several statements. Though they seemed to be a bit on the wishy-washy side of things at the beginning of this matter, they have now stated that they will review all of Miss Edwards’ works that they represent. I’ll leave you to read their official comments on the news, or at the Smart Bitches site.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the research done. Miss Edwards has definitely taken previous printed material and used it nearly verbatim. While there may be no copyright infringement in the case of some texts which were published in the early 1900’s, there probably is a valid legal case for the use of newer printed materials.

Regardless of the legal aspects, plagiarism is simply not ethical.The original authors were not credited for their work. Instead of using these materials as valid research tools, then finding her own words to put forth her interpretations, Miss Edwards simply did what most failing high school students do. She copied her essay out of the encyclopedia.

I am very interested to see how the publishing world handles this issue and will be following this quite closely. Expect to hear more on the subject over the next few weeks.

Jerry Rants, Tools of the Trade Cassie Edwards, Writing News

This post is long overdue, but the holidays and other projects have kept me busier than I care to admit over the past few weeks.  Now that the new year is firmly upon us, the normal flow of writing can be put back to the fore. I’m stepping back to the plate with new energy and a drive to do more than I’ve done in the past year.

Let’s get ready for a fun ride, shall we?

Jerry Announcements Announcements, Site News

One of the largest shortcomings of the WYSIWYG editor bundled with WordPress is that like may so called “smart” editors, it likes to change your code for you. Visual editors are notorious for this, and have been for years. It seems that the designers of these editors just “know” that what you were trying to do can be done in a different way, and of course, since their way is better, they code it into their editor.

In the case of the TinyMCE editor bundled with WordPress, the designers were pretty sure that you wouldn’t ever want to use a < div > (or layer) tag. In fact, they felt so strongly about it that they coded the default editor behavior to change any entered into a < p >, or paragraph tag. While this might not be an issue in most simple editing cases, it can be a major headache if what you are trying to do requires the use of any of the tags that the visual editor automatically alters.

This problem is seen time and again on the WordPress Codex help forums. For the more hard core in the WordPress camps, the mantra is simply “never, ever use the visual editor”. For them, entering code into the textbox in its raw state is good enough. While this method works, it is not one I’m fond of. Perhaps if it were still 1997 I would agree, but tools like dreamweaver have spoiled me and I don’t really want to go back to editing my code in plain text. (something I will admit to being a complete nerd about when I started in the industry.)

I ran into this problem the other day on another one of my blogs. The only way to align an image in the theme I’m using there is to wrap that image in a < div > tag with a class of captionright, captionleft or captioncenter. Using the editors built in align function simply doesn’t do anything in a heavy CSS design. The stylesheet rules cancel out the code used by the editor for aligning images. (Which isn’t very good code to start with.)

Enter Trustworthy XHTML, a plugin from Leo Jackson. it’s a bit of a challenge to get configured, as you have to set both global options and then options for yourself as a user, but once that’s done, et viola! Enter code to your heart’s content and WordPress graciously leaves it as you entered it in the code editor. While I’ve only juststarted using Leo’s plugin, I can tell you that I already know I don’t want to live without it.

Trustworthy XHTML gives five options for how WordPress will deal with the code you entered, from the Default, which leaves Wordpress alone to do its thing, to Anything goes, a textbox that will allow you to enter absolutely anything. (I don’t recommend the last option unless you really, really know what you’re about.)

There are other plugins out there, and I’ll be getting to those over the course of the next week or so, but for now Leo has a new fan in me, and his plugin is running happily on my food and cooking blog, keeping my images where I want them.

Jerry WordPress, WordPress plugins Blogging, WordPress, WordPress plugins