Self portrait, Kim and I, outside Churrascos in Sugar Land

Annette, Mac, Kathy and William. Aunt Mac made the red velvet cake and let us keep a good quarter of it.

Grandpa Steve and William, who is three months.

See more photos in the Picasa album, Annette Kovar’s Birthday 2012. There’s a video, too.

The Tabasco peppers are the really tiny orange and red ones.

I removed about 12 Tabasco pepper plants from the beds today. I’m just never going to get around to making my own sauce. And the damn things are too hot to eat otherwise. I’m really looking forward to filling those beds with something I can eat, or something that looks better than a bunch of half frost-bitten Tabasco pepper plants. And I wrote this song today, if you can call it that.

Why not?

This post uses a palette “Fiscal Excitement” created by Gamehen Graphics.

I think the third season sucked. My theory, despite the evidence, is that it was intentional. Suicide by bad plot lines and character arcs; also, way too many damn guest stars. It’s as if Jonathan Ames wanted to go out on his own terms, or, drive his own damn nails in the series’ coffin.

I mean, really: Sperm bank fire? Elder love? Locavore restaurateur rivalry? Alcoholic relapses involving plushies? Incest?

All, too much, I say.

It was great a run. I loved seeing Ted Danson, Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis, Oliver Platt and John Hodgman perform in an off-beat comedy based in Brooklyn.

And even though its final season sucked — I knew the show was cancelled before I started the third season — I would have kept watching the damn thing because at its worst, it was still better than the predictable drivel that passes as comedy elsewhere on the tube.

But on New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July, the commuter lots become a place for the community to come together and — burn ban or not — litter the ground with thousands of firecracker casings and other remnants of an apparent good time.

Anarchy?

By the looks of it, this sort of thing is tolerated in this unincorporated portion of Fort Bend County. The location of the lots mean the celebrants’ explosions can be seen from the highway and throughout the surrounding area.

As seen on New Year's Day.

Here comes the new year. Hope yours is joyful.

So, I took the photo, imported it into Sketchbook Mobile for Android, and boom!: I had something to do while I waited for the Mazda to get an oil change and a new motor mount this morning. Uh. I guess that’s what was causing the rattling noise that shook the whole dashboard and sometimes caused the CD player to skip. Who knew? I hate cars.

Yes, we all got presents!

Also, see Early Christmas 2011.

B O Y ! ! !

Kim readied this shirt to wear to work in an attempt to not have to talk to everyone and their annoying questions.

You know how when, before you know, people are all up in you business like,

“So, what do you want it to be …”

And then you’re all like …

“I don’t care, man – as long as it’s healthy … “

And it wouldn’t be that bad to have these words come out of your own mouth if you didn’t have to keep repeating them. I mean, everyone asks this question. You can not escape the stereotypical questions that people ask when you are anticipating a birth of a child; the only thing you can do is limit the number of people you tell by only posting about it online where surely no one will go and read about it.

Oh, you have a website? That’s nice … hey, you should friend me on Facebook.

I’m lucky; I’m not showing. If these types of conversations start, they’re typically my fault.

Our baby boy, Dec. 20, 2011

Anyway, back to how they always ask that question and how you’re always supposed to pretend that you don’t have a preference so as to not offend anyone who may have a differing preference or to let on that you may be disappointed if it turns out your baby is not the sex you were hoping it would be.

Well, here, today, on this very blog, I will summon up the courage to say, I did have a preference, and I’m glad that it is a boy.

Because, with a boy, I can …

• Go fishing (and by fishing, I mean visit aquariums and pet stores to stock our own)
• Take apart electronics and try to put them back together again
• Work out in the garden
• Ride bikes and play sports
• Grill meat and otherwise make messes in kitchen areas
• Find new and exciting ways to irritate mom

Our baby boy, Dec. 20, 2011

I’m also pretty sure that if it turned out to be a girl that I would have written this blog the exact same way, except I would have just replaced the word “boy” with the word “girl.”

Readers who use Google Reader to read WordPress powered website RSS feeds on their small-screen mobile devices don’t get the full picture if the WordPress site in question uses the caption short code functionality, because the resulting inline CSS code that displays does not instruct the feed reader to scale the image down to fit the screen.

See, i.e.:

In this image, a giant photo in a post is poorly displayed in Google Reader as a result of the default settings of WordPress 3.3 (and previous versions that include the Caption feature). As displayed on my Android-powered Nexus S from Google, running the latest version of Google Reader, Version 1.1.1.

The solution:

I created a new WordPress plugin called RSS Responsive Caption to adjust the inline CSS styles that get attached to images with captions to make them more “responsive.”

Really, all that was needed was the following CSS code to specify that the maximum width of an image should be 100% (of the screen size). That’s responsive web design, in a nutshell.

max-width: 100% !important;
height: auto;

Creating a plugin to accomplish this was not necessary. In fact, anyone can do this without downloading the plugin, simply (heh) by altering lines 745-746 in the wp-includes/media.php file, from:

return ‘<div ‘ . $id . ‘class=”wp-caption ‘ . esc_attr($align) . ‘” style=”width: ‘ . (10 + (int) $width) . ‘px”>’
. do_shortcode( $content ) . ‘<p>’ . $caption . ‘</p></div>’;

to:

return ‘<div ‘ . $id . ‘class=”wp-caption ‘ . esc_attr($align) . ‘” style=”max-width: 100% !important; height: auto; width: ‘ . (10 + (int) $width) . ‘px”>’
. do_shortcode( $content ) . ‘<p>’ . $caption . ‘</p></div>’;

But! If I did it that way, then every time WordPress would release a new version of its frickin-awesome open source software package, I would have to manually go into the media.php file and change that line of code to keep my RSS feeds displaying properly in Google Reader.

Instead, I prefer the instant update method of installing the latest version of WordPress. I click the button, it does its thing and in a few moments of anticipatory suspense, I have the latest version of WordPress in all its glory, and I can troubleshoot it because my own specific modifications are separate.

That’s also why I typically choose to create child themes on top of existing themes – if the theme is ever updated by the theme author, I won’t have to manually sort out what was changed vs. how I reconfigured it, unless the theme author specifically chose to alter something I wanted to alter.

The plugin makes the viewing experience in Google Reader much better.

See, i.e.:

The photo as displayed in the RSS feed when the plugin is activated.

Download my first-ever WordPress plugin here:

RSS Responsive Caption

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rss-responsive-caption

Credit:

This plugin would not have been possible if the WordPress core team didn’t create a way to “allow a plugin to replace the content that would otherwise be returned” via the caption shortcode function (see: wp-includes/media.php, line 711), or, if they didn’t further explain the add_filter function in the codex, even going so far as suggesting the following plugin:

add_filter('img_caption_shortcode', 'my_img_caption_shortcode_filter',10,3);

/**
 * Filter to replace the  shortcode text with HTML5 compliant code
 *
 * @return text HTML content describing embedded figure
 **/
function my_img_caption_shortcode_filter($val, $attr, $content = null)
{
	extract(shortcode_atts(array(
		'id'	=> '',
		'align'	=> '',
		'width'	=> '',
		'caption' => ''
	), $attr));

	if ( 1 > (int) $width || empty($caption) )
		return $val;

	$capid = '';
	if ( $id ) {
		$id = esc_attr($id);
		$capid = 'id="figcaption_'. $id . '" ';
		$id = 'id="' . $id . '" aria-labelledby="figcaption_' . $id . '" ';
	}

	return '<figure ' . $id . 'class="wp-caption ' . esc_attr($align) . '" style="width: '
	. (10 + (int) $width) . 'px">' . do_shortcode( $content ) . '<figcaption ' . $capid
	. 'class="wp-caption-text">' . $caption . '</figcaption></figure>';
}

Basically, I took the plugin above and altered it to fit my needs, after an exhaustive search to determine that someone else hadn’t already done what I wanted to do.

I got the idea for this plugin by looking at the HTML source code of the posts WordPress generates for images with captions and images without, then Googling until I discovered what made what worked.

Articles and forum posts that I came across in the exploratory process include, but are likely not limited to:

• Auto resizing images to fit max width? original forum post by caffeinedreamer
• Should I edit media.php? original forum post by avalera

Want to further alter the way captions are handled in WordPress? This plugin looks very interesting:

• Links in Captions, by katzwebdesign

About RSS Responsive Caption
from the documentation section of the plugin:

This plugin allows publishers to better control the width of photos that use the WordPress caption shortcode feature, when that content is displayed in RSS feed readers like Google Reader, as displayed on small-screen mobile devices.

This plugin accomplishes the same thing that adjusting the “function img_caption_shortcode” code in includes/media.php would, but allows the user to automatically update WordPress without worrying about losing these changes.

It is the author’s hope that in future releases of WordPress (post 3.3), this plugin will prove unnecessary if (hard-working, responsive-minded) WordPress core developers decide to include the fix in newer versions of the awesome great open source software we have all come to love.

(Hint, hint)

Download my first-ever WordPress plugin here:

RSS Responsive Caption

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rss-responsive-caption

See more photos:
Polar Express Train 2011

At Target, I found this Cookie Monster toy. It talks, and munches cookies. If only I were five again! It was also about $40, which I think is a little excessive, but so was Cookie Monster.

Update: Dec. 27. Ok, it wasn’t $40. It was $25. But still. It’s available from Target.com.

See more photos here:
Thanksgiving 2011

Kim and I are expecting our first child! We’re really excited and we can’t keep the news to ourselves any longer! This is big — we’re even using exclamation points, people!

Update Dec. 23, 2011

See photos from Kim’s second ultrasound appointment from October 26.

Bastrop

Burger

Let's go to the capitol building!

See more photos from my Austin trip.

Fried oreos and twinkie on a stick!

They had a new, smaller ferris wheel this year.

Kim entered some cookies this year and they won a blue ribbon. Her prize: One dollar.

See more photos from our trip to the Fort Bend County Fair 2011.

Blog post title inspired by R.E.M. song of the same name. Speaking of R.E.M., the decided to call it a day on Sept. 21, when I had this conversation on Facebook.

This happens every day on the fence above the birdbath. Photo taken Sept. 27.

Maybe this medium is for more than reporting lunch.

Corina shows off her missing teeth

Left over flowers from Virginia's baby shower last week

Ten years ago, I never thought the Sept. 11 tragedy could have happened.

But the attacks changed everything.

Justice is the violent and merciless killing of Osama Bin Laden this year.

My thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims of the last ten years.

Since then, we’ve been a great team, as she would say, and I’ve never been happier.

So in my continuing effort to embarrass her, here’s some more photos.

Aug. 19, 2011 - my last day at UH

Aug. 9, 2011 - At Brennan's for her birthday

These photos were taken Aug. 10, 2011.

The Z Bar on Crabb River

“But I’m good at being uncomfortable, so I can’t stop changing all the time.” —Fiona Apple

Photos taken May 11, 2011.

If it didn’t set, it couldn’t rise.