Version 2.3 of WordPress, the blogging software I use to produce this blog (as well as the other blogs on my site), will be released later today. I'll be upgrading these blogs on Monday evening. There have been major pieces of WordPress that have been re-worked, and those are causing some plug-ins to not work correctly. None of my blogs are all that reliant on plug-ins - the “Share This” plug-in is the main one, and it's been verified in 2.3 already.

There's lots more information on the WordPress Development Blog - I won't go into the details here. I'm confident this will be a smooth upgrade. I just wanted to let you know in case some things look strange, I'm on it.

Below is the RPM for xine-ui version 0.99.5. This RPM has been built a little differently. First, it was built on Ubuntu Linux and converted to RPM using alien. Second, I could not quickly figure out how to get the files tagged for the 0.99.5 release, so this build includes changes committed after the official 0.99.5 release. I ran the UI through some paces, and no glaring errors jumped out. Be sure to check out the About the xine RPMs post for more information.

xine-ui - The user interface

To use this, you'll also need xine-lib - as of this release, the most recent release of xine-lib is 1.1.7.

(To save disk space, only the current release and two prior releases will be maintained.)

Below are the library and development RPMs for xine-lib version 1.1.7. These have been built a little differently. First, these have been built on Ubuntu Linux, and converted to RPM using alien. Second, I could not quickly figure out how to get only the files tagged for the 1.1.7 release, so this is actually the in-work 1.1.8 release. I ran these builds through some paces, and nothing glaring came out. Be sure to check out the About the xine RPMs post for more information.

xine-lib - The main xine library
xine-lib-dev - The development xine library (needed if you're building an interface against xine-lib)

You'll also need a user interface - as of this release, the most current release of xine-ui is 0.99.5.

(To save disk space, only the current release and two prior releases will be maintained.)

Just when I get a nice system set up here, lo and behold, Mozilla now has a 64-bit Linux plug-in available. It can be obtained from their FTP site (link for version 0.5). I'll continue to keep the version I have here available, in case this dries up. (UPDATE: It's gone.) But, unless that does, this is probably the last post you'll see here about the 64-bit Lightning plug-in.

At Bit Badger Solutions, we maintain 64-bit builds for two software products - xine and the Lightning plug-in for Thunderbird. These are now shown under “Hosted 64-Bit Software” in the sidebar. You can also view links for each of the categories.

Lightning Plug-In (UPDATE: See this post.)

Category Link • RSS Feed

xine RPMs

Category Link • RSS Feed

Along these lines, there will hopefully be a new xine (1.1.7) coming soon - stay tuned!

Akismet is, by far, the most popular anti-spam plug-in for WordPress. (It comes bundled with the download, so that gets it market share. But, it's also very, very good.) It comes with a counter that can be put into a WordPress theme. It's attractive, but its light blue color may not integrate well into a given theme.

I went digging around in the source code, and found the line that actually pulls the count from the database. Using this parameter, I was able to integrate a spam count into the sidebar that has a look consistent with the rest of the site.

Here's the code that's in use on the theme on this site.

<li id="spamstats">
  <h2><?php _e('Akismet-Eaten Spam:'); ?></h2>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="//akismet.com"><?php
      echo(number_format(get_option("akismet_spam_count"))); ?>
      and counting...</a></li>
  </ul>
</li>

Of course, line 5 is the important one - that's how to get the number, formatted for whatever locale the server is set up for. (On my personal blog, the number is up over 1,400!)