Peter's Useful Crap

For those who are partying in downtown Vancouver on December 31 and are taking the SkyTrain home:

• It’s free
• Aim to leave by 2am

Here’s an excerpt from the Translink website. For full details, read its holiday schedule page. Have a happy and safe celebration!

December 31 regular weekday fares until 5 pm, then free service

SkyTrain and SeaBus will extend late-night service by one hour, with the last train and ferry leaving Waterfront Station at 2:20 a.m.

January 1 holiday fares (a one-zone fare is good for travel in all three zones)

Buses, SeaBus and SkyTrain will operate on regular Sunday/holiday schedules.

On its own, this plugin adds a panel to the sidebar of the add and edit post / page screens so that users can add notes for themselves or others and keep track of these notes. Whenever you save a post, you can type a note to be displayed along with the post in the edit view. Note that this plugin requires WordPress 2.8 or higher.

On the dashboard, the is a summary of the most recent notes made by others on relevant posts:

New in version 1.0 and up, there is also a system for general and private notes, displayed on the dashboard.

Here’s an explanation of the workflow for when this plugin is used with Peter’s Collaboration E-mails 1.2 or higher.

First, the Contributor user submits a post for review. Notice the new text area to enter a note to accompany the post.

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The administrator (or whoever else has been configured to receive e-mails about this post) is notified via e-mail that a post is pending review.

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The administrator follows the link in the e-mail to edit the post, along with the submitted note. Suppose in this case that they edit the post but also need the original author to make some changes, so they change the status of the post to “draft” and save the draft. (He/she hits the “Save draft” button, not the “Publish” button).

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The original author then receives a notification via e-mail that their post has been reverted from a pending post to a draft.

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The original author acts accordingly by editing the draft as requested and once again hitting the “Submit for review” button. On the right sidebar, there is a history of all notes on this post:

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After this, the administrator (or whoever else has been configured to receive e-mails about this post) is notified via e-mail that this post is once again waiting for review. They follow the link in the e-mail to edit the post. Supposing that they are happy with the changes, this time they hit the “Publish” button. The original author gets and e-mail notifying them that their post has been published, and they can follow a link in the e-mail to view the live post.

Get the plugin

Download Version 1.6.5 of Peter’s Post Notes [November 18, 2017: Add CSRF protection to note deletions and settings updates. (Thanks Jesse!)]

Version 1.6.4 of Peter’s Post Notes [March 11, 2017: In the Collaboration Notes dashboard, skip notes attached to non-existent posts. (Thanks Alex!)]

Version 1.6.3 of Peter’s Post Notes [November 19, 2016: Bug fixes: do not show private notes in "Latest notes" column; fix capability check when showing "Edit" links. (Thanks Alex!)]

Version 1.6.2 of Peter’s Post Notes [November 6, 2016: Fix query bug for users with no associated posts. (Thanks Alex!) Also remove code warning when displaying an unlimited number of notes.]

Version 1.6.1 of Peter’s Post Notes [February 13, 2016: Improve UX by wrapping checkboxes inside labels. (Thanks Hrohh!)]

Version 1.6.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [February 12, 2016: Support private notes on posts.]

Version 1.5.4 of Peter’s Post Notes [January 6, 2016: Make all strings translatable and put translation files in their own folder. (Thanks Luis González Jaime!)]

Version 1.5.3 of Peter’s Post Notes [May 10, 2014: Bug fix: strip slashes in Latest Note column.]

Version 1.5.2 of Peter’s Post Notes [October 7, 2013: Support PHP 5 static function calls, bumping WordPress requirement to 3.2+.]

Version 1.5.1 of Peter’s Post Notes [July 6, 2013: Tighten up spacing in notes displays.]

Version 1.5.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [January 24, 2013: Allow editing of plugin settings via the WordPress admin interface so that settings persist after upgrades.]

Version 1.4.1 of Peter’s Post Notes [January 10, 2013: Support dates formatted according to locale (Thanks Alexander!)]

Version 1.4.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [January 9, 2013: Added setting $ppn_general_notes_required_capability to control who can post general notes on the dashboard. Made plugin SSL compatible (thanks llch!). Also, minor code cleanup.]

Version 1.3.1 of Peter’s Post Notes [August 13, 2011: Minor code cleanup to remove unnecessary error notices.]

Version 1.3.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [July 3, 2011: Added "Latest note" column to the manage posts view.]

Version 1.2.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [August 2, 2010: Added a couple of settings so that you can grant specific roles and/or capabilities the ability to edit and delete any note. Also added a setting to allow basic HTML in notes.]

Version 1.1.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [April 24, 2010: Added option to move "add note" box for posts to the notes window. Added a couple of settings so that you grant only specific roles and/or capabilities the ability to view all collaboration notes. Added support for custom post types. Also fixed a couple of bugs with line breaks and pagination on general notes.]

Version 1.0.8 of Peter’s Post Notes [April 11, 2010: Fixed bug where line breaks weren't preserved when first adding a note. (Thanks SNURK!)]

Version 1.0.7 of Peter’s Post Notes [April 2, 2010: Added a check in the "save note" function to prevent the same note from being posted twice in a row.]

Version 1.0.6 of Peter’s Post Notes [January 11, 2010: Plugin now removes its database tables when it is uninstalled, instead of when it is deactivated. This prevents the notes from being deleted when upgrading WordPress automatically.]

Version 1.0.5 of Peter’s Post Notes [November 24, 2009: More efficient loading of notes if there are no relevant posts for the current user.]

Version 1.0.4 of Peter’s Post Notes [October 3, 2009: Fixed a bug in date translations. (Thanks Denis!)]

Version 1.0.3 of Peter’s Post Notes [September 19, 2009: Fixed a bug in the query to show other users' posts on the dashboard. (Thanks martijn!) Also added proper code call to support translations. (Thanks dreb!)]

Version 1.0.2 of Peter’s Post Notes [June 27, 2009: Fixed a display compatibility issue within the WordPress post form.]

Version 1.0.1 of Peter’s Post Notes [June 23, 2009: Fixed minor issue where general notes database table wasn't being created on some installs.]

Version 1.0 of Peter’s Post Notes [April 8, 2009: Added general and private notes system on the dashboard. Also, fixed UTF-8 encoding and line breaks in notes.]

Version 0.3 of Peter’s Post Notes [January 17, 2009: Added "Notes" window to pages. Also added an option (in the plugin file itself) for the Dashboard "Notes" window: show either all notes by everybody, notes by everybody on relevant posts / pages, and notes by other people on relevant posts / pages.]

Version 0.2 of Peter’s Post Notes [December 28, 2008: Added ability for users to edit and delete their own notes. Uses Ajax, so JavaScript must be enabled in your browser.]

Version 0.1 of Peter’s Post Notes [December 10, 2008: First version!]

Translations

• fr_FR translation by Denis Rebaud
• pt_BR translation by Murillo Ferrari
• es_ES translation by Karin Sequen
• ja translation by Kazuhiro Terada
• pl_PL translation by Michal Rozmiarek
• nl_NL translation by Rene
• sv_SE translation by Karin Lindholm
• ru_RU translation by Alexander Maltsev
• tr_TR translation by Berkay Unal
• dk_DA translation by Lars Andersen
• de_DE translation by Tobias Karnetzke
• lt_LT translation by Vincent G
• it_IT translation by Ludo
• cs_CZ translation by Michal Kuk
• sk_SK translation by Patrik Žec (PATWIST)
• he_IL translation by Itamar Megged

Installation

First, make sure that you are running WordPress 2.8 or higher. Then, simply unzip the file peters_post_notes.php to your WordPress plugin directory. Then, activate it in the Plugins menu in the WordPress admin section. It should work out of the box.

For the e-mail functionality described above, you must also install Peter’s Collaboration E-mails 1.2 or higher.

Thanks to Chris for the tip

When I first moved into my new place, I noticed that the previous owner had left some empty motor oil bottles in the parking spot. Not knowing any better, I threw them out. Not so good!

Recycling used oil, oil filters, and oil containers is important. As soon as any oil gets into the environment, it can contaminate any water that’s nearby, as well as the soil. It can harm the ecosystem and the animals that live in the vicinity. One drop of used motor oil can contaminate one million drops of clean water!

A collection and recycling program exists in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec for used oil, filters, and containers. It is funded by an environmental handling charge that customers pay on the oil, filters, and containers when they purchase them. You’re paying for this program, so you might as well take advantage of it.

To dispose of used oil in an environmentally responsible manner, simply take it to your local participating collection facility. To find the collection facility closest to your home, visit usedoilrecycling.com. With over 520 participating locations in BC, there is probably an auto shop that collects discarded oil products closer than you think!

Ontario has the Municipal Hazardous or Special Waste (MHSW) program. Visit the MHSW page for more information.

Update: WordPress 2.8 and up allow case-insensitive login usernames by default. Therefore, you only need the plugin described below if you are using a version older than WordPress 2.8.

In WordPress, if your username is “Peter”, you cannot log in with the username “peter” or “PETER” or any variation with different letter cases. Since usernames in WordPress can only be changed by editing the database, this case-sensitive behaviour is potentially problematic, especially if you run a site where registration is open — you are likely to run into complaints from people who think their password needs to be reset when they’re simply using the wrong case for their username.

While case-sensitive passwords represent an important security feature, the extra security from having case-sensitive usernames might not be worth the potential inconvenience.

Luckily, the WordPress function for login authentication can be overridden. I’ve created a plugin that overrides this function with a very small tweak to accept a case-insensitive username. It should work on WordPress versions 2.5 through 2.7.

To install the plugin, simply unzip the file to the WordPress plugins directory and activate it. Then, a registered user with the username “Peter” can log in with “pEtEr” if they want.

Download Peter’s Case Insensitive Login plugin

The battle to ditch the throwaway plastic bag isn’t easy. I keep cloth bags in my car and try to carry a backpack often, but I still find myself in situations where I need to carry several items and I don’t have a cloth bag handy. Sometimes I walk to the grocery store and forget to bring a bag, or sometimes I simply make an unexpected purchase or borrow items from a friend unexpectedly.

Enter the Envirosax bag. I recently found some at the Vancouver Art Gallery gift shop. The concept is simple and I’m sure Envirosax isn’t the only manufacturer: the bag is sturdy (made of polyester) and re-usable, and folds and rolls up into a bound package that fits in your pocket or purse.

The bag weighs less than 2 ounces, making it convenient to stash in strategic locations, so that you are more likely to have it on hand for those unexpected occasions.

The bag holds quite a lot (reportedly over 40 pounds) and is larger than the average grocery store bag. For an idea of the size of the bag when in use, see this image I stole from the Envirosax website. (It seems a bit feminine, but it you’re worried about that, it’s not!)

The bag is a bit pricey at $8.99 + tax at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but I think it’s worth it for its balance of environmental friendliness and convenience.

I don’t know when a shopping bag became a good Christmas gift, but think about it…