if ( $options['menuLayout'] == NR_MENU_SINGLE ) {

		add_menu_page('Now Reading', 'Now Reading', 9, 'admin.php?page=add_book', 'now_reading_add');

		add_submenu_page('admin.php?page=add_book', 'Add a Book', 'Add a Book',$nr_level , 'add_book', 'now_reading_add');

		add_submenu_page('admin.php?page=add_book', 'Manage Books', 'Manage Books', $nr_level, 'manage_books', 'nr_manage');

		add_submenu_page('admin.php?page=add_book', 'Options', 'Options', 9, 'nr_options', 'nr_options');

To read like this:

	if ( $options['menuLayout'] == NR_MENU_SINGLE ) {

		add_menu_page('Now Reading', 'Now Reading', 9, 'add_book', 'now_reading_add');

		add_submenu_page('add_book', 'Add a Book', 'Add a Book',$nr_level , 'add_book', 'now_reading_add');
		add_submenu_page('add_book', 'Manage Books', 'Manage Books', $nr_level, 'manage_books', 'nr_manage');
		add_submenu_page('add_book', 'Options', 'Options', 9, 'nr_options', 'nr_options');

Then Now-Reading’s single admin menu worked properly again.

Fixing Now-Reading’s Admin Menu © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Please use the google addons.
Right now google addons is more in sync.

Sometimes I use my personal googlecode just to back stuff up, or sync it between my home computer and the one at work. Anytime I’m ready for you guys to try something out I’ll just stick it in the google addons svn & if it’s broken I’ll just revert it.

Which is a good tip as the thread has links to a wide variety of versions of the plugin scattered throughout its 45 pages.  Unfortunately the tip does not really clear things up in my particular case.  As I stated previously I’m using a copy of the plugin from xbmc-hulu. The developer who made the above comment is recommending people use the version of the plugin from xbmc-addons instead of his personal version at rwparris2-xbmc-plugins but makes no mention of the version at xbmc-hulu which shows that developer’s username as one of the project owners.

Bah.

I suppose I’ll just have to download the xbmc-addons version of the hulu plugin, try it out and compare it to the xbmc-hulu version.  As soon as I’ve had a moment to do so, I’ll post my results.

UPDATE: I’m not seeing any difference between the xbmc-addons & xbmc-hulu versions so far.  However after reading the thread on XBMC Forums, I did go through the trouble of configuring the plugin (under the XBox version -> Videos -> Plugins -> Hulu -> press the white button on your controller).  Setting a default video quality makes using the plugin much nicer (cuts out 2–3 button presses when trying to watch a specific video).  You can enter your Hulu account username/password but there doesn’t appear to be a benefit to doing so yet.

UPDATE2:Per the XBMC Forums, xbmc-hulu has been removed in favor the version available via XBMC SVN Repo Installer and the SVN Repo Installer pulls from xbmc-addons.

UPDATE: Per the XBMC-Hulu plugin release thread, there is no currently working version of the plugin.

XBMC-Hulu Update © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I’ve disabled the most likely culprit and now am writing this post to see if I’m right about which plugin is causing the problem.  Wish me luck.

Side note: Our snowblower stopped working during the last snow-storm.  The engine runs, but the auger stopped turning.  This weekend we got a bunch more snow, so I opened up the snowblower, figured out what the problem was and fixed it.  I fought the snowblower and I won!  :)  Unfortunately while troubleshooting it, I also fought my vice-grips and the vice-grips won (I’ve got the blood blister and cuts to prove it).

UPDATE: My first guess was wrong but I’ve figured out which plugin is causing the problem and deactivated it. For the record, Referrer Detector & LiveJournal Crossposter do not play nice together.

Testing… 1… © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

// Now-Reading Plugin: Get the display name of the book's reader
function mlm_book_reader( $echo=true ) {
	global $book;

	$user_info = get_userdata($book->reader);

	if ( $echo )
		echo $user_info->display_name;
	return $user_info->display_name;

}

This grabs “Display name publicly as” from the user’s profile and displays it on the page. I put the function in the functions.php file of the theme I’m using (so any automatic upgrades of the plugin won’t erase it). Then I put < ?php mlm_book_reader() ?> into my custom single.php template and viola!

Note: this has only been tested on WordPress 2.6.2 with Now-Reading 4.4.3.

Now-Reading Tweaks v2 © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

• I borrowed this book fromlibrary

When they should simply have a line reading “I borrowed this book from my local library”. I had spent much
time fiddling with my templates trying to figure out how the upgrade broke them and today I figured it out. The truth is my template was just fine. The problem is the newer version of Now-Reading was applying a new filter to book-meta¹. That filter is wpautop and it was wrapping my variable in <p> … </p> tags. Those tags screwed up the display and made my variable checks fail. To correct the problem, I went into now-reading/default-filters.php and commented out add_filter('book_meta_val', 'wpautop');. Now my single book pages look like they’re supposed to again. Yeah!

¹ This is a custom field available in the back-end of the plugin and it is where I store the information telling my template if I borrowed the book and from whom I borrowed it.

Now-Reading: Default Filters on Book-Meta © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I looked at the code Rob used and with a little help from the Practical PHP I hacked together my own function based on Rob’s. By default print_reader2 works the exactly the same as print_reader¹ but by feeding it an additional parameter, you get your choice of what to use to display as reader’s name:

• 0: Prints out the user_login aka the username you use to log into WordPress.
• 1: Prints user_nicename, appears to simply be an all lower case version of the user’s nickname².
• 2: Prints display_name, from the “Display name publicly as” field in your WordPress profile.
• 3: Prints first_name, from the “First name” field in your WordPress profile.
• 4: Prints nickname, from the “Nickname” field in your WordPress profile.

function print_reader2( $echo=true, $reader_id = 0, $display = 0 ) {
	global $userdata;

	$username='';

	switch($display) {
		case "1": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->user_nicename; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->user_nicename; }; break;
		case "2": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->display_name; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->display_name; }; break;
		case "3": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->first_name; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->first_name; }; break;
		case "4": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->nickname; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->nickname; }; break;
		default: if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->user_login; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->user_login;};
   }
	if ($echo)
		echo $username;
	return $username;
}

Side note: WordPress 2.5.1 got released today and it includes a security fix, be sure to update your blogs!

¹ At least, I think it does. I’m not a programmer and I only know enough PHP to be dangerous to myself.
² The WordPress Codex does not appear to define what this field is used for or why it exists, so that’s just my guess.

Now-Reading Tweaks © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Other Changes

I also noticed when I upgraded/changed themes last time I forgot to add back in the magic codes to have ads from Google AdSense appear in a couple of places on my site. Those are ads are now back, though I do use another plugin to hide them from regular readers and on current content. Basically, if you are just stopping by (e.g. found me via a search engine) you will see ads. If you’ve been here a few times in the past couple of weeks, then you most likely won’t. Mind you these ads aren’t making me rich¹, but they do help offset the costs of my online addiction webhosting.

New Theme

Yeah, I wasn’t a big fan of the previous theme I was using but it was good enough for a short term solution. The current theme² is better but still needs more tweaks to make it mine. Things are likely to be in a state of flux until further notice around here. Things I still need to do:

• Add one or more random photos to the sidebar or possibly the footer.
• Work up a better header image.
• Style the footer more to my liking.
• Fix the sidebar formatting issues in IE³

¹ I haven’t even had enough clicks on the silly Google AdSense ads to get paid yet
² In case you happen to be curious, it’s a slightly tweaked version of the Shades of Gray style for the Sandbox theme.
³ Odds of this happening are tiny. I only use IE at work and then only rarely. If the slight offsets in the sidebar offends your design sensibilites, get Firefox!

Library Fixed and Other Changes © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I thought it only fair to share my hacks, so enjoy or not as you choose. I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to code these changes, but I am not a programmer so if you use these and don’t like how I changed them… Well, you just have to suffer then. :p Feel free to ask questions but keep in mind:

• I’m not a programmer.
• These plugins aren’t originally mine. I don’t know much about how they work. I only know enough to hack together my changes.
• If my hacked versions don’t work for you, try the originals before asking me for help. The people who made the originals should have a better idea of why things work/don’t work.

CoffeeBear’s Hacked Plugins

• Download PHPInfo 1.1b.
• Download pluginsUsedPlugin 0.1.11b.

WordPress Plugins: PHPInfo and PluginsUsedPlugin © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Under function outputHtmlAds(), I changed the following line of code from:
echo "\n<ul>\n";</ul>

to:
echo "\n<ul class=\"tla_sponsor_link\">\n";</ul>

Also under function returnPostAd($postId), I changed:
return "\n\n<em>".$prefixes[$prefixIndex].":</em> $ad->before_text <a href=\"$ad->url\">$ad->text</a> $ad->after_text";

to:
return "\n\n<div class=\"tla_sponsor_link\"><em>".$prefixes[$prefixIndex].":</em> $ad->before_text <a href=\"$ad->url\">$ad->text</a> $ad->after_text</div>";

Side note: TLA, you guys should change the Our Blog to be called something else as the link doesn’t actually take users to your blog.

¹ I don’t make enough from these ads to get rich mind you. Just enough to cover the costs of running CoffeeBear.net and maybe a cup of good coffee from my local coffee shop.

Text-Link-Ads Updated © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

This short script copied over all my books for me and got everything setup as well as could be expected given the differences in the data. Below is a list of the assumptions I made in writing this script to convert to Now Reading:

• AMM only stores one date, so I used that for all dates on the books I copied over.
• The above script limit itself to books and skips any already in your wp_now_reading table.
• Now Reading has additional fields the title & author. I’m not sure what the “b_nice_author” field is used for, but the “b_nice_title” is used when you go to edit a specific book. The format of the “b_nice_” fields seems to be to replace anything other than a letter or a number with a hyphen and to have all the letters be lower case. I tried to make sure I did the same with my script, however you may need to double-check your data before running this to make sure I didn’t miss a symbol you used.
• I marked all the books I was copying over as “read”.
• AMM only allowed ratings of 1 — 5; while Now Reading allows 1 — 10. So when I copied the ratings over, I doubled them.

NOTE: If you have questions about this script, post them in the comments here. Keep in mind that I’m not providing full fledged support for the script and if you don’t know how to run this without asking, then you probably shouldn’t be messing with it. Also, if you’re really going to try running this script, then for god’s sake backup your database FIRST!

Convert from AMM to Now Reading © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.