The Noble Lie

The new version of Wordpress (2.9) introduced some pretty handy video embedding features, which I'm very excited to see. However, as this has been mainly a video sharing site, I have needed this functionality for a long time and haven't waited for the Wordpress team to provide it for me.

Long ago, in the early days of this site, I wrote a small Wordpress plugin that would let me write a small tag (called a Shortcode) that would be replaced in my post by the actual code to embed a video or audio file on the page. The plugin I wrote oh so long ago is conflicting with the new video embedding features built into Wordpress.

The downside of this is that I have about 400 or so posts which I have to go through and convert all links to video files to the new, official format. Then I can finally retire my dopey little Wordpress plugin.

Expect the videos in older posts to come back slowly. I can't think of an automated way to handle these, so I will be fixing them by hand.

I've spread myself a bit thin here as of late, so I have been taking some time off from the blog to refocus and plan my next moves.

I'm also taking the time to remember how fortunate I have been in life so far, and all of the reasons I have to make valuable use of this lifetime.

Keep me bookmarked.

For news updates, video clips, and statistics pertaining to the Israeli siege in Gaza, please bookmark gazabodycount.com.

Unless something along the scale of a 9/11 happens, which sadly could be possible, I will not be talking much more about the Gaza siege in this blog. This site will be spending more time on its original themes - lies, truth, and perception. The Gaza Body Count box in my sidebar will remain for the time being, but may eventually disappear from this site.

Thanks to Akismet, I never have to deal with spam comments, but I have noticed a HUGE increase in the number of incoming spam comments.

Any other bloggers experiencing the same?

UPDATE - While I thought it was going down, each day for the last three days I have been hit progressively harder. Thank god for Akismet.

I am happy to announce new video support features. First, you can share videos in the comments, just paste the URL into your comment and the site will automagically replace it with the video. Currently supports Google Video, Youtube, and LiveLeak.

The site should now also support LiveLeak video postings. The following is a test, but it's yet another issue to keep you up at night, especially now since the troops are back home patrolling on behalf of the biggest gang in town. I'm more worried about what these boys could do while still in uniform than I am about when they go home.

FBI: Gangs Make Military Unsafe

[embed liveleak_id="eac_1178897502

I have been fleshing out the sidebar part of my blog.

I have added my YouTube favorites feed, which includes most of the videos I post here, along with a bunch of stuff I don't post here.

I have also started a "Gaza Body Count" which will be displayed prominently near the top of my sidebar at least until this assault is over. The soft, re-branded term for "body count" nowadays is "casualty figures," which explains why I found it so difficult to search for numbers at first. Counts will come from online news sources and will be updated as frequently as I can discover them. If you are as passionate about this issue as I am, please help me keep this count current by commenting or mailing leads to admin at noblelie dot com.

For the first time since I started this site, I am interested in actively growing and publicizing it. I don't ask for donations, but if something I write or post hits home, please help spread the word by submitting it to your blogs, tweets, public bookmarks, and social networking sites. To make this easier, I have added icons to the most popular services at the bottom of each post. If there is a service you use which is missing from these icons, please let me know and I will add it if possible.

My latest interest is law blogs, particularly those run by defense lawyers. Here's a sample of the yummy blogs I've been snacking on lately. They are going up on my Blogroll soon, as well.

Some lawyer's blogs are little more than glorified self-advertisements. I found a good read or two on all of the following:

• A Public Defender
• Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer
• Defending People
• DUI Blog
• Overlawyered
• Social Services for Feral Children
• Waco Criminal Law Blog

I started reading and adoring these blogs when I stumbled over this story on the Waco Criminal Law Blog about a show called Kopbuster, hearing about some outrageous cannabis busts in a town in Texas, and then renting a house in that town and setting up some grow lights (above Christmas trees). In less than a day, the police raided the place, only to meet their attorney. They never released the affidavit for the warrant, but I'm sure it would have been very entertaining. This just tickles me because usually it's the police entrapping the public instead of the other way around.

Lately I have been posting a lot of short, self-explanatory videos. While I will continue to post clips I find very important here, I have set up a basic YouTube channel so I can go crazy posting clips and not clutter up my site.

In the process of setting up this channel with the clips I have posted on this site, I was surprised to see how many of the videos on my site have been pulled or disappeared because of "terms of use violations" and "user has removed this video."

Check me out on YouTube and enjoy this amusing shoe-news montage. I wish Keith would talk about the horrible injuries Muntader al-Zaidi suffered under custody.

I ran through all my posts and very quickly tagged them, so that I could bring back a couple of features.

• The tag cloud has returned, to make it easy to browse by person or topic
• Viewing one post at a time gives you a "related posts" feature for those who like to bounce around the site

I do not enjoy tagging posts and I still plan to put a lot of work into fleshing out the tags on the existing posts. I am always open to input on this one. Tagging is useful for so many reasons but it is a pain in my ignoble ass.

It's that time, WordPress users. WordPress 2.7 is out and it is a big upgrade. Take your time and backup all your files and your database before attempting this one, as it is a major upgrade. It went smoothly for me but there were a few potential gotchas. Be sure to read the instructions carefully, and after updating the files, run the following script:

• http://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php

The Noble Lie is now a WordPress 2.7 blog.