Shared from Twitter:

Does that tagline “Coming Soon” feel like a threat to you too?

Edit: WordPress pushed through an update today — April 26, 2016 — that fixed the issue described below.

I’m posting this in case it’s helpful to anyone out there who runs into the same problem I did.

My online bookstore is based on the WordPress theme “Twenty Eleven,” modified with a custom child theme. After updating to theme version 2.4, the child stylesheet was loading only on the front page. None of the styles from the child theme were being parsed on single posts or on pages. Also, the styles directly included in the header were not being parsed.

After much poking around, I finally narrowed down the issue. The child stylesheet was failing to load when the body tag included the class “singular”. I looked at the parent stylesheet, but could not find any obvious error that would cause this to happen. In the end, I simply eliminated the class from the body tag. So far I have not noticed any negative effect on the website–YMMV.

To eliminate the class, I included the code shown below in the custom function file in the child theme. The function is from the WordPress Codex. This is a hack, and it’s meant only for a very specific situation. Use at your own risk:


// Removes a class from the body_class array
add_filter( 'body_class', 'remove_class' );
function remove_class( $classes ) {
// search the array for the class to remove
$unset_key = array_search('singular', $classes);
if ( false !== $unset_key ) {
// unsets the class if the key exists
unset( $classes[$unset_key] );
}

// return the $classes array
return $classes;
}


In my wanderings around the Internet I came upon the video archive of Future of war : First Annual Conference. The event was held February 24 – 25, 2015, in Washington DC. I’ve watched just a few videos so far, but they’ve been fascinating. The two I want to mention are…

How Will the Digital Biology Revolution Transform Conflict?
This is a discussion of synthetic, or digital, biology, along with implications and how some of the extreme downsides might be mitigated.

How Will the Wars of the 21st Century be Fought?
This covers a lot of ground, some of the most interesting parts having to do with nationalism as opposed to neomedievalism — when loyalties are divided among nations, regions, corporations, cultures, and religion.

There are several more I want to listen to. The entire conference schedule, along with all the videos, can be found here at NewAmerica.org

Okay, so, I haven’t posted here in a month(!)

It’s been busy here, but mostly with:
(1) writing…I am 79,000 words into a very rough draft of a new novel. I’m aiming for 100K to start, but it will be longer before it’s done.
(2) working out — that is, up until last week. Since then, writing has pretty much taken over. (The gym being closed hasn’t helped.)

At any rate, with all the writing — and not enough working out — I’ve started thinking that I’m spending too much time sitting down. Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of talk about using a stand-up desk. I’ve never felt inclined to go out and buy a new desk, but I did want to try the stand-up thing. So in good Hawaii fashion (we have to be adaptable here, on islands out in the middle of the world’s biggest ocean) I devised my own stand-up desk. And it’s one that easily converts to sit-down. And here it is:
(more…)

Pocket, is an add-on to Google’s Chrome browser, and it’s the most useful bit of software I’ve run across in a while.

I haven’t been in the habit of reading fiction online. Sitting at my desktop Mac to read a story just isn’t comfortable for me. Sitting with my full-size laptop at a desk doesn’t work either. So I used to get out my Netbook, settle down in a recliner or in bed, and read from that — but that was awkward too. So I contemplated joining the tablet generation. When my son-in-law showed me his Nexus 7 with Pocket, I immediately ordered my own.

What does Pocket do? If you’re logged into Google Chrome, then any interesting article or story you see on the web can be saved in your Pocket. Doesn’t matter what device you’re using: phone, desktop, laptop, tablet… (*Ahem*, yes I have all of those. Technology is not simplifying my life.)

Later, when you have time to read, you can open up the article or story whether you’re online and off. But here’s the killer feature: you’re not reading the web page — you’re reading the article as if it’s been laid out as a book page. You can see one of my recent posts, displayed in Pocket, in the image below.

This is so awesome! Though I have to wonder if it’s legal? from a copyright perspective? Also, if Pocket becomes very common, I have to wonder if website ad revenue will take a serious hit, because people are no longer reading on the website. Of course, many already read via RSS feeds, which skip the website ads.

At any rate, from a reader’s perspective, this is a wonderful development. Just in the few days I’ve had Pocket (and a tablet), I suspect I’ve read more online fiction than I have in the past year.

Check it out here.

I’m just going to leave this here. Let me know what you think about it. The raptors in a war zone are probably not going to last long…

And here’s the source article over at Wired: Army Scores a Super-Stealthy Drone That Looks Like a Bird

Not exactly stealthy, but terrifying when you pause to imagine where this is going: meet Wildcat, a four-legged untethered robot by Boston Dynamics, being developed under DARPA’s M3 program.