So the friendly folks @ Yahoo! just sent an email wanting me to try out the new Yahoo! maps. My advice to them is to get back to work and let me know when you’ve got something that can rival Google Maps or Google Earth. Until then, don’t waste my time or clutter up my inbox.

My best friend and roommate’s youngest sister died late Monday night in a car accident. Stephanie Boyd was 18 years old. To make matters worse, the youngest brother, Travis, was in the car too. He suffered severe head injuries and is in the hospital now.

Read the Huntsville Times article about Stephanie.

Please have the Boyd family in your thoughts.

Update:
Travis is doing much better! He’s out of the Intensive Care Unit and is making great progress already. Doctors expect him to make a full recovery within about a year’s time.

The memorial service for Stephanie was a beautiful celebration. It’s amazing how much she accomplished and how many lives she affected in her short time here on earth. She truly lived a wonderful life. Read Stephanie’s obituary.

My girlfriend, Katie, was travelling to Indianapolis this past weekend for her sister’s bachelorette party. Thinking all airlines are about the same these days, she went with the cheapest and chose to fly US Airways.

On Friday night, I took her to the Birmingham International Airport. First she had to fly to Charlotte, NC, then catch a connecting flight to Indy with about an hour layover in between. After checking in, we were told that the flight was running about 20 minutes late. No biggy because of the layover.

I hung out with her for a few, then she went to her concourse and I left to go get ready for Whild Peach at The Barking Kudu. I got back to the house and was into my third beer when my cellphone rang. It was 45 minutes after the plane was supposed to take off, and it still wasn’t there.

Katie said she was in some line with the other passengers waiting to speak with someone about the situation. The problem was that there was only one US Airways representative to talk to. After waiting behind 4 or 5 other angry passengers, the plane had finally arrived and the rep suggested that Katie still try to make her connecting flight. However, the idiot didn’t realize (or didn’t care) that if things went absolutely perfect there would only be a 5 minute window to catch the second leg in Charlotte.

So Katie decided to stay and catch another flight Saturday morning at 8:00 am. This was already an inconvenience since her and her sister had an appointment to see the wedding dress and do other wedding crap at 11:00 the next morning - which was when the flight would be arriving in Indianapolis.

Luckily, she’d only packed a carry-on bag (A light-packing girl!?! Crazy, I know.), so I went back out to the airport and picked her up. Now I’m pissed (not at Katie, at the airline) because I knew it was gonna be a late night and now I had to go back to the airport at 7:00 the next morning. Needless to say, we had fun Friday night, and made it to the airport on Saturday.

I was back asleep when Katie called me at about 10:30 am. She was in Charlotte. Still. She’d gotten on her flight to Indy and taken off when the pilot suddenly circled the plan back around and landed stating there was some “minor computer failure.” I don’t know about you but when a pilot lands a plane immediately after lifting off and says there’s a minor computer problem, I’m flipping out.

To make a long story short not quite as long, Katie waited a good two more hours before they finally brought in a new plane. She made it to Indianapolis about 3pm and had a great time that night. Did she go completely ape-shit on all the US Airways employees? No. She’s generally not that type and claims she was “out of her element” since she was dealing with it by herself. I would not have been able to hold back. In fact, it really pissed me off and it didn’t even happen to me!

Anyways, at least the trip back was pain-free.

I finally got me a fancy “pro” account over @ Flickr and uploaded some of my more tame pictures. I’ll be motivated to take more pictures now that I’ll have something to do with them.

Anyways, why don’t you go check ‘em out.

Want some of your links to open in a new window and still have your Wordpress site validate? I did too. But of course, if you use the target attribute in your (X)HTML, you’ll have to forgo that nifty validate link that everyone is so damn proud of.

A little rel, a hint of Javascript, and the Notorious D.O.M.

Basically, I’ve tweaked the functions (or ‘template tags’) wp_get_links and get_links to add rel=”external” to each returned link. The javascript finds all those links and adds target=”_blank” to them. That’s it. No ugly javascript: window.open, onclick events or anything else to prevent your links from being bookmarked, saved, or even followed when javascript is turned off.

Once installed, just change your template tags and you’re ready to go! For example, I wanted my ‘Elsewhere’ links on the sidebar to open in a new window. In my template I added:

<?php wp_get_links_ext(2); ?>

Sounds good. Give it to me.

1. Get the file. wpExternalLinks 0.1
2. Place in your plugins directory on your webserver.
3. Activate in your manager.
4. Edit template tags.
5. Add rel=”external” to any links in your site, and they’ll be opened in a new window.

For those of you who just want the javascript:

function externalLinks() {
     if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return;
	var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
	for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) {
		anchor = anchors[i];			
		var rel = anchor.rel;			
		if (anchor.getAttribute('href') && rel.substring(0,8) == 'external' )
			anchor.target = '_blank';			
	 	}			
	}
window.onload = externalLinks;

So what’s the difference between adding the target in the HTML itself and adding it with javascript? The difference is that the target attribute has been phased out of the (X)HTML standards, but not out of the DOM standards. Simple as that. (X)HTML is responsible for what’s in the browser; not with how the browser should open a link. On the other hand, client-side scripting (viz. Javascript) is perfectly suited to control how the browser behaves.