Monthly Archives: May 2007

My First Impression of Stockholm, Sweden

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I arrived in Stockholm around 7:30 AM today. My flight from Chicago to Stockholm’s Arlanda airport was on SAS. It was my first time on SAS and that had to be one of the least comfortable business class flights I have ever been on. The seats reclined into a more-or-less flat bed but the bed was hard and short considering I am just over 6 feet tall. The service was so-so with attentive flight attendants and decent food. Lufthansa and Singapore Air still top my list of favorite airlines. Lufthansa’s First Class had pajamas, y’all. It’s going to be hard to top that.

Stockholm2007_0001Clearing customs was pretty easy. Not Barcelona customs easy, but quick and painless nonetheless. There were no forms to complete, I had nothing to declare and I carried on my bags. Being the 5th person off the plane, I waited in line less than 10 minutes for my turn with the customs agent. It would have been even shorter if another flight had not landed just before ours. I had already exchanged some greenbacks for Swedish kronor (SKR) while in O’Hare so I headed straight for the taxi line. The current exchange rate is about 6:1 SKR to USD. Sweden is a member of the European Union but, like Denmark and the United Kingdom, it has not replaced its currency with the euro.

By 8AM I was in a taxi heading south toward Stockholm. By 8:25 we had hit rush hour traffic. I expected the expressway to be chock full of Saabs and Volvos. I guess there isn’t too much national loyalty to the domestic brands as there were probably equivalent numbers of Peugeots, Benzes and BMWs. I even saw several Porsche Cayennes and Range Rovers. We eventually made it to the hotel and the 540kr ($90) taxi fare put me in a panic as I only had 600kr. I asked the taxi driver if he accepted Amex and, somewhat offended, he replied, “But, of course!” Cool. Out came the plastico fantastico and a moment later I was entering the wiggity wackest European hotel I have ever seen.

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Amy Winehouse

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I did not know the first thing about Amy Winehouse until I read a post putting her accolades in their proper context on one of my new favorite blogs. I chalk that up to living way up here in the Pacific Northwest.

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I will never understand how a place (Seattle) that gave us Quincy Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Nirvana, among others, continues to be seen as the hinterlands of contemporary music. Listening to KUBE 93 pains me and reminds me why I never listen to the radio. Mercer Island High School (KMIH 104.5) does have some decent urban programming (listen) which I discovered when I was driving the rental.

Back to Ms. Winehouse. I didn’t know. No one told me. I am enamored with her voice and musical styling. Sure the woman is out of her gourd but she can sing. While not new by any stretch, “Back to Black” is a gem for its creativity and energy.

With Corinne Bailey Rae, Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone, the British invasion of musically talented female vocalists is real. I don’t know what they have been feeding their children across the pond but Beyonce & Britney better watch out.

Ultimate Tag Warrior Breaks WordPress Search

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A couple months ago, I followed JS’s excellent instructions for doing some search engine optimization (SEO) on http://lesia.com. If you are a WordPress user or have followed similar instructions, you may have stumbled upon the Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) plug-in that adds further SEO features to WordPress-based blogs. UTW is great for what it does but recent releases of the plug-in contain a pretty nasty bug that remains unfixed. UTW breaks the WordPress built-in blog search feature.

To fix the bug, change line 849 in wp-content/plugins/UltimateTagWarrior/ultimate-tag-warrior-actions.php as follows:

BEFORE

$join .= ” LEFT JOIN $tablepost2tag p2t on $wpdb->posts.ID = p2t.post_id INNER JOIN $tabletags on p2t.tag_id = $tabletags.tag_id “;

 

AFTER

$join .= ” LEFT OUTER JOIN $tablepost2tag p2t on $wpdb->posts.ID = p2t.post_id LEFT OUTER JOIN $tabletags on p2t.tag_id = $tabletags.tag_id “;

I hit this bug today after noticing the search functionality on my blog was broken. Typing ‘barcelona’ in the search box on the left and clicking the button should return at least 4 posts I have written containing Barcelona. Instead, only one post, the one I wrote about Sweden & Italy today, was being returned. I did a couple more searches and saw a pattern. Only posts I have added those fancy tags to (at the bottom) were being returned. Posts I haven’t tagged weren’t being returned even if they contained the search string.

That helped me narrow the bug to something dealing with tagging. I reviewed my database entries to make sure the data was being saved appropriately. I then moved on to the code dealing with searching posts (the ‘posts_where’ filter). UTW is the only WordPress add-on in my configuration that manipulates the built-in search so I figured it was the culprit. I looked through the code to see how its posts_where filter was being performed. Sure enough, my limited Structured Query Language (SQL) knowledge was adequate to see the query mentioned above was written in a way that assumes all posts have been tagged.

I made the 3 SQL keyword changes, uploaded the fix to my server and voila. My blog search works again.

Of course, after doing this troubleshooting myself, a quick Internet search for “Ultimate Tag Warrior breaks search” returned this post as the first result. Of course you have to know the problem is with UTW to perform that search. Further, that post doesn’t explain the bug or how to fix it and the forum post it mentions contains mixed information. So my time was not completely wasted and I figured I would write this to hopefully save other WordPress & UTW users some time.

Sweden and Italy, Work and Play

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For the first time since Spain in November 2006, I am going on a trip that will help me add to the list of countries I have traveled to for work or pleasure.

Flag of Sweden I am flying out first thing tomorrow for Stockholm, Sweden to keynote a conference and to hang out in our Swedish offices to meet my colleagues and get a better understanding of their market. It will be my first trip to Sweden or any of the Nordic countries for that matter. I don’t eat beef so I can’t say I am looking forward to sampling authentic Swedish meatballs, but we did get “smorgasbord” from the Swedes and plättar sounds interesting. Aside from just walking around what is said to be a beautiful city with beautiful waterways, I also plan to get my sip on at the famous Stockholm Ice Bar at the Nordic Sea Hotel. The entire bar, including its furniture, is made of ice and kept at a balmy 23° F.

I will be in Sweden for 4 days before heading to Florence, Italy for a little down time to tour the famous Tuscan city. There are just too many things to see and do in Florence. I will barely scratch the surface during my time there.

After a few days in Florence, I am hopping the train to Milan to keynote a similar conference there. The sites I want to see in Milan are Il Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral) and Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Flag of Italy I then plan to take the train from Milan to Venice to see just how accurate The Venetian in Las Vegas is. I have stayed at The Venetian four times so it’s about time I see the real thing. Arguably, no city is known more for its waterways than Venice. Apparently, the land-lover thing to do is visit Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square) and feed the pigeons. I wonder if they have Wi-Fi on those gondolas. Hmm…

Unfortunately, TB will not be joining me for this latest romp ’round Europe. The trip came about at the last minute and she just couldn’t juggle things around at work to meet me in Italy. I will go scout 3 of the most popular cities in Northern Italy and we will go back some day to see Rome among other parts of Italy. (The Vatican is a sovereign nation so we can get a +1 on the countries list at that time too.)

Youth in Focus

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Youth in Focus (YIF) is a nationally-recognized, Seattle-based youth development program that provides urban teens the opportunity to express themselves and gain new experiences through photography. (learn more)35mm_slr_camera

TB learned about YIF back in February from a close friend who volunteers at a Seattle crisis hotline. Our friend figured my hobby as an amateur photography and my interest in doing volunteer work would make YIF a perfect match. The only qualifications were I had to know how to operate a manual 35mm camera (i.e., go olskool), I had to have basic darkroom skills and I had to be willing to work with a culturally diverse teen (whatever that means).

I submitted an application to become a YIF mentor immediately. At the time, things were crazy busy at work so I mentioned on my application I would not be available until the summer quarter. One of the program coordinators, Sam, called me earlier this month, and after a couple rounds of phone tag we scheduled an interview.

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I planned to catch the bus from work and back since my appointment was at 5:30PM at the YMCA on 24th Ave South. I planned my trip using the Metro King County Trip Planner and vetted the route with my resident transit authority, Bus Chick. She always looks out for me whenever I muster enough courage to explore the wonderfully wild and fulfilling world of bussing it around Seattle. With Bus Chick certified trip plans I was set. But, a couple hours before I needed to leave, one of my teammates kindly offered to drop me off. We were able to take the carpool lane so it was still a little friendlier to the environment.

The interview took about 45 minutes and was painless. Mentors can participate in one of two ways: Darkroom or field work. For the darkroom, I would be expected to assist the student in developing his film and making prints. I have darkroom experience and it was always an awesome feeling to see the pictures I took come to life. The field work option would entail accompanying the student to his shooting assignment and helping him capture his subjects and scenes. I prefer field work. I would choose taking pictures in the rain over developing masterpieces in the darkroom every time. (I will probably regret writing that at some point.)

So as a field operative (of sorts) the major rules and regulations for mentors are:

  1. The student cannot ride in your car…ever.
  2. The student cannot be in your home…ever.
  3. Students are assigned mentors of the same sex.
  4. Mentors must commit to 10-15 hours per 9-week quarter and meet with the student at least 4 times.
  5. Mentors must attend an orientation and training session. (Mine is June 4th.)

Rules 1-3 are the common sense “Have you ever appeared on Dateline’s To Catch a Predator?” or “Have you ever been employed by Neverland Ranch?” candidate repellant stipulations. Sickos be warned: YIF conducts background checks and they took a photocopy of my drivers license. Thankfully, I don’t have any warrants.

I took the bus back home and Bus Chick’s guidance was on point as usual. Serendipitously, Mr. Bus Chick, aka Bus Nerd, was transferring at Montlake on his way home at the same time I was heading back to the eastside. His bus was coming so he stopped long enough to say hey and congratulate me on taking the bus. Coming from Bus Nerd, that made my day.

It is said the best way to really master something is to teach it to someone else. I am really looking forward to helping a local teen explore the world of photography and tap into his creativity while viewing things through the camera’s lens. It should be a lot of fun.