How cool and fast is the net connected world? Last night I snapped a photo on my iPhone, uploaded it to flickr via MobileFotos app, and today it is part of a story on the Discover Magazine Blog: Last night, I guess I was at Mission Control in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, at a Korean […]
Sept 2006 037 by madaise posted 5 Sep ’06, 8.37pm MDT PST on flickr Peanut butter (2/3 c.) and chocolate chips (1 c.) – headed for the microwave. See Puppy Chow Recipe. Better than mixing peanut butter and chocolate, and much more logical… digital cameras and GPS chips. I’m very keen on what creative things […]
Thanks for the Typhoon by cogdogblog posted 23 Sep ’08, 8.11am MDT PST on flickr Nick Noakes is the optimal host- he has even arranged a typhoon here in Hong Kong for my entertainment, Now perhaps I can say I am big winded. My timing was good to arrive in Hong Kong Monday afternoon, when […]
Where All the Cool Trends Come From by cogdogblog posted 22 Sep ’08, 8.06am MDT PST on flickr They have a store here in Hong Kong! Get yout trends! We have fashion trends, technology trends, economic trends (oops, those are selling badly now). Why waste time doing research? Just hope down to your local Trendyland […]
What a Dumpling by cogdogblog posted 20 Sep ’08, 8.09pm MDT PST on flickr Just one piece of dinner at at JC’s restaurant in Shanghai It’s been a whirlwind week for my first visit to Shanghai (an Asia while I am at it) to participate and speak at the Learning 2.008 Conference at the Shanghai […]
Jeff Watching Jakes film Brian by cogdogblog posted 18 Sep ’08, 8.54pm MDT PST on flickr Learning 2.008 EduBloggerCon (Shanghai) www.edubloggercon.com/Learning+2.008+Edubloggercon Before the opening of the Learning 2.008 conference, a group of conference attendees and other local bloggers met up for breakfast and conversation about out favorite topic. Not only were there pictures and conversation, […]
Curious Beggar by cogdogblog posted 17 Sep ’08, 5.16pm MDT PST on flickr This little guy was curious about the gigapan I had set up to do this shot gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=9189 I gestured to take a picture and he smiled, then he stuck his hand out for change. Now I was stuck, except the only thing […]
Fresh Delivery by cogdogblog posted 16 Sep ’08, 1.06pm MDT PST on flickr Old Town, Shanghai Hello from here, a long way from there. It’s the second morning here in Shanghai, and my mind is already reeling, less so from the travel and wear and tear from the sardine transport of United Airlines Economy class, […]
Headed for China 1.0 by cogdogblog posted 14 Sep ’08, 10.36am MDT PST on flickr Chinatown in San Francisco is always a fun place to "visit" but in a few hours I am headed for the real deal or China 1.0, boarding a plane at SFO that will teleport me directly (well 12 hours directly) […]
Well, “anything” is loosely termed. I run about 6 different MediaWiki sites for the NMC, and I have to remind myself alot that the software is a huge black box (it works super) and I am pretty sure the things I have done tap maybe 8% of what it is capable of doing.
One of the limits is the kind of content you can put in the editing pane. Sure you can add additional tags you want to allow, but even a security lazy bum like me is not interesting in allowing any person to add <script> tags in there. Danger, Danger, MediaWiki Robinson!
So in prepping some new things for the wiki that we have reset for the 2009 NMC Horizon Project— we don’t delete the old stuff or hide them in edits; each year I migrate content to its own namespace, e.g. http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Horizon2007:Main_Page and http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Horizon2008:Main_Page. I’d like to know if I can have different Sidebars for these, but that’s another tinkering.
I was thinking a nice feature would be to add the Google Custom Search Engine I toyed with last year- a CSE is an incredible free tool where you can make your own search site, that rather than searching all 12 trillion Google pages, confines the search to a set of web sites that you pick. That is an amazing tool! Where is yours?
It was easy peasy to put it on the NMC web site, as the page I made is completely custom PHP- it’s not even drupal, just mocked the style of the main site, and to add a drupal block with the form that pushes searches there as a block on the right sidebar at http://horizon.nmc.org/:
But getting that functionality inside MediaWiki? Hmmmm. There is embed code provided with the GoogleCSE, but it is merely (well not so merely) a Javascript tag linked to a remote source file, and you cannot just slap JavaScript into your wiki text.
Then a light bulb went off- I bet it could be done by writing a custom MediaWiki Extension- I had done some mods of an RSS embedding extension almost 2 years ago (and still use it extensively!). You just need to know the syntax and have it spit out web content.
