Author Archives: samlesher

2011 Raleigh Revenio 3.0 Headset

My Peterson’s Tobacco Pipe Restoration

I picked up an old Peterson 314 System Standard tobacco pipe that was in really bad condition. I performed the following restorations:

- sanded, polished, and waxed the briar
- polished the silver ring
- restored the stem
- reamed and repaired the tobacco chamber with ash/honey.

Below are before/after pictures of the project:

Before:
Before - Image 1
Before - Image 2
Before - Image 3
Before - Image 4

After:
After - Image 1
After - Image 2
After - Image 3
After - Image 4

Road bike conversion from curly bars to flat bars

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I decided to convert my road bike from a racing curly bar to a flat bar. I normally ride mountain bikes, so I’ve grown accustomed to riding with a flat bar. I also feel like I have better control over braking with a flat bar, and prefer the more upright riding style.

My road bike was originally equipped with a 10 speed Ultegra rear derailleur and an Ultegra triple front derailleur (52/39/30t).

To do the conversion, I had to purchase the following:
- Flat handlebar
- Flatbar shifters
- Brake Levers
- Grips
- I had to purchase a derailleur that was compatible with the flatbar shifters. I couldn’t find the triple version of this derailleur anywhere (FD-R773), so I had to order it from a company in England.

Here are the parts I purchased to do the conversion:

Ritchey Pro Rizer OS Bar — $31.49
Shimano 2010 STI 10-Speed Rapidfire FlatBar Bicycle Shifter Set – SL-R770 — $139.97
Shimano Front Derailleur for Flat Bar Shifters – FD-R773, triple 10-speed 28.6 and 31.8 mm 52T — $60.75
Forté Team Brake Levers — $11.69
Ergon GP1 SE Grips — $19.79
Brake/Shifter cables and housings — $30.00

Total: $293.69

Notes:
I cut an inch off of each side of the handlebars using a plumbing tubing cutter.

The Forte brake levers work perfectly with the Ultegra brakes that my bike is equipped with.

If you haven’t tried these Ergon handlebar grips, I highly recommend them. They are incredibly comfortable.

Robert Donovan’s posts that he put up regarding his conversion were very helpful to me:
http://www.robertsdonovan.com/?p=98
http://www.robertsdonovan.com/?p=500

Here are some photos of the finished product.

Before (stock photo):

After:

Repair the clock in a 2005 Toyota Corolla

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This video shows how I repaired the clock in my 2005 Toyota Corolla. These instructions should work for a 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, or 2008 Corolla. There is a common problem with the clock in the Toyota Corolla that causes it to stop working intermittently and then eventually not work at all. The problem is caused by the solder on some of the joints on the circuit board. The fix is to touch up those joints with a soldering iron. This video contains instructions for removing the clock, fixing the solder joints, and reinstalling the clock.

Fix broken WordPress RSS in GoDaddy Free Hosting Accounts

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GoDaddy offers free ad-supported web hosting for any domain you register through them. The hosting is the same as their pay Linux Shared Hosting plans, except that they inject a banner advertisement into the top of every page.

I was able to manually install WordPress onto one of my sites that uses this free hosting, however I found that the WordPress RSS feed was broken. When you go to the default address for a WordPress RSS feed (http://www.domain.com/feed), the page is addressed by a web browser with a mime type of ‘text/html’, even though it is actually an XML document. This results in the GoDaddy ad banner being injected into the XML document, thus invalidating the XML and breaking the RSS feed. Validators will give error messages like:

XML parsing error: :3:0: xml declaration not at start of external entity
Blank line before XML declaration
XML parsing error: <unknown>:199:7: not well-formed (invalid token)

I came up with a workaround that fixes this, here is a summary:
1. Install a plugin that changes the RSS feed paths
2. Write a script to download and cleanup the broken RSS XML files
3. Set up a cron job to update RSS twice an hour

1. Install a plugin that changes the RSS feed paths
Download and install the Feed Locations plugin. Once you enable it, you can access the settings for it in Admin by clicking Tools > Feed Locations. In the configuration screen, I set my feed locations for each feed type to these values:

RSS .92:  http://www.domain.com/rss/rss.xml
RDF (aka RSS 1.0):  http://www.domain.com/rss/rdf.xml
RSS 2.0:  http://www.domain.com/rss/feed.xml
Atom 0.3:  http://www.domain.com/rss/atom.xml
Comments RSS feed:  http://www.domain.com/rss/comments.xml

2. Write a script to download and cleanup the broken RSS XML files
Here is the script file I use to do the rss downloading and code cleanup. I call it ‘rssfeed.sh’. Modify BLOGADDRESS and FEEDPATH to the correct values for your hosting account:

#!/bin/sh
BLOGADDRESS=http://www.domain.com
FEEDPATH=/home/content/d/o/m/domain/html/rss

# NOTHING BELOW THIS LINE SHOULD NEED MODIFIED
# --------------------------------------------
FEEDFILE=${FEEDPATH}/feed.xml
RSSFILE=${FEEDPATH}/rss.xml
RDFFILE=${FEEDPATH}/rdf.xml
ATOMFILE=${FEEDPATH}/atom.xml
COMMENTSFILE=${FEEDPATH}/comments.xml
UBUNTUFILE=${FEEDPATH}/ubuntu.xml


# Remove existing FEEDFILE if it exists
if [ -f ${FEEDFILE} ];
then
   rm ${FEEDFILE}
fi
# Download broken FEEDFILE
wget -q ${BLOGADDRESS}/feed/ -O ${FEEDFILE}
# Remove blank line from beginning of file that breaks FEEDFILE
tail -n +2 ${FEEDFILE} > ${FEEDFILE}1
# Remove GoDaddy code injection from end of file that break FEEDFILE
head -n -2 ${FEEDFILE}1 > ${FEEDFILE}2
# Delete temp file
rm ${FEEDFILE}1
# Update feed url to use new feed.xml address
sed 's/\/feed\/\" rel=\"self\" type=\"application\/rss+xml\" \/>/\/rss\/feed.xml\" rel=\"self\" type=\"application\/rss+xml\" \/>/' ${FEEDFILE}2 >${FEEDFILE}
# Delete temp file
rm ${FEEDFILE}2


# Remove existing RSSFILE if it exists
if [ -f ${RSSFILE} ];
then
   rm ${RSSFILE}
fi
# Download broken RSSFILE
wget -q ${BLOGADDRESS}/feed/rss/ -O ${RSSFILE}
# Remove blank line from beginning of file that breaks RSSFILE
tail -n +2 ${RSSFILE} > ${RSSFILE}1
# Remove GoDaddy code injection from end of file that break RSSFILE
head -n -2 ${RSSFILE}1 > ${RSSFILE}
# Delete temp file
rm ${RSSFILE}1


# Remove existing RDFFILE if it exists
if [ -f ${RDFFILE} ];
then
   rm ${RDFFILE}
fi
# Download broken RDFFILE
wget -q ${BLOGADDRESS}/feed/rdf/ -O ${RDFFILE}
# Remove blank line from beginning of file that breaks RDFFILE
tail -n +2 ${RDFFILE} > ${RDFFILE}1
# Remove GoDaddy code injection from end of file that break RDFFILE
head -n -2 ${RDFFILE}1 > ${RDFFILE}
# Delete temp file
rm ${RDFFILE}1


# Remove existing ATOMFILE if it exists
if [ -f ${ATOMFILE} ];
then
   rm ${ATOMFILE}
fi
# Download broken ATOMFILE
wget -q ${BLOGADDRESS}/feed/atom/ -O ${ATOMFILE}
# Remove blank line from beginning of file that breaks ATOMFILE
tail -n +2 ${ATOMFILE} > ${ATOMFILE}1
# Remove GoDaddy code injection from end of file that break ATOMFILE
head -n -2 ${ATOMFILE}1 > ${ATOMFILE}2
# Delete temp file
rm ${ATOMFILE}1
# Update feed url to use new feed.xml address
sed 's/\/feed\/atom\/" \/>/\/rss\/atom.xml" \/>/' ${ATOMFILE}2 >${ATOMFILE}
# Delete temp file
rm ${ATOMFILE}2


# Remove existing COMMENTSFILE if it exists
if [ -f ${COMMENTSFILE} ];
then
   rm ${COMMENTSFILE}
fi
# Download broken COMMENTSFILE
wget -q ${BLOGADDRESS}/comments/feed/ -O ${COMMENTSFILE}
## Remove blank line from beginning of file that breaks COMMENTSFILE
tail -n +2 ${COMMENTSFILE} > ${COMMENTSFILE}1
# Remove GoDaddy code injection from end of file that break COMMENTSFILE
head -n -2 ${COMMENTSFILE}1 > ${COMMENTSFILE}2
# Delete temp file
rm ${COMMENTSFILE}1
# Update feed url to use new comments.xml address
sed 's/\/comments\/feed\/\" rel=\"self\" type=\"application\/rss+xml\" \/>/\/rss\/comments.xml\" rel=\"self\" type=\"application\/rss+xml\" \/>/' ${COMMENTSFILE}2 >${COMMENTSFILE}
# Delete temp file
rm ${COMMENTSFILE}2

In your webspace, create a directory called ‘scripts’ and a directory called ‘rss’. Once you’ve created ‘rssfeed.sh’, upload it to the ‘scripts’ directory. Make the file executable – you can do this with your FTP client by setting the permissions to 755, or you can do this in the file manager that GoDaddy provides.

3. Set up a cron job to update RSS twice an hour
Log into your GoDaddy hosting control panel:
http://www.godaddy.com
Click Hosting > My Hosting Accounts > Manage Accounts

Click Content > Cron Manager > Create Cron Job

Cron Job Title: Update Feed
Command: Browse to the /scripts/rssfeed.sh file that you created
Frequency: Hourly
Minute: x:00
Click Custom.
Checkmark “Run twice an hour”
Click Save.

Note – my cron job didn’t start working as scheduled right away, it took some time for the job to go into effect and start processing for me.

Once you complete all these steps you should have working RSS that updates every 30 minutes. Your main RSS feed address (RSS 2.0) will be http://www.domain.com/feed/feed.xml. You can test it by clicking the RSS icon that shows up in your Firefox address bar when you visit your blog.

Note – These instructions assume that the address for your blog is the root of your domain (http://www.domain.com/). Replace all instances of ‘domain.com’ with your actual web address. If you blog resides in a different directory, such as http://www.domain.com/blog/, you should adjust all paths accordingly (http://www.domain.com/blog/feed/feed.xml for example).

WordPress plugin to display Twitter status via Ping.fm

15 Replies

I have just finished writing my first WordPress plugin – a widget to display a status update via Ping.fm:

Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap. You can use AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, WAP, iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS or E-mail to let Ping.fm relay your message to a multitude of social networking sites. This plugin lets you use Ping.fm to add your status to your WordPress Blog’s sidebar via Ping.fm’s “Custom URL” integration.

== Installation ==

* Extract archive
* Upload entire ‘pingfm_status’ directory to ‘wordpress/wp-content/plugins’
— do not remove files from directory, upload the directory with all files in it
* At http://ping.fm create a Custom URL to update the following address:

http://url_to_your_wordpress_installation/wp-content/plugins/pingfm_status/pingfm_post.php

* Enable the plugin in your WordPress admin section
* Add pingfm widget to your sidebar, set the Title

== Notes ==

If you notice that the timezone is incorrect on the timestamps that appear in your updates,
you can change it in ‘/wp-content/plugins/pingfm_status/pingfm_post.php’. I have included
some notes in that file.

Here is a link to the plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Collin, 6 years old, popping wheelies on his bicycle

Sam Lesher