Didn’t mean to go on blogging hiatus, but I started converting a set of functions that produce the note-and-quote “linkage” table currently showing on this blog-page into a real live WordPress Plug-In, then decided that the simple version was too specific to my own uses for it.
So, I needed to make it widgetable, shortcode-able, template-able, with built-in customization options, tabbed admin page, installation instructions, own home page with further tips and examples, properly condensed and commented code, and so on, and so on – not just for its own sake but for the sake of providing a template for me for future plug-ins with similar characteristics…
…and so the one-day project turned into a multi-week project, and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll need to in order to be able to set a deadline. Goes without saying that I encountered numerous new puzzles along the way, some of which I still haven’t solved, some of them bearing on the difference between “good enough to make work” and “not close to professional quality.”
Seems fitting and probably should have been predictable – for a believer in the Iron Law of Irony ((“The one sure thing is that it will be ironic” – or something…)) – that an application meant to facilitate blogging, in this case by making aggregation/link-sharing an easy “few clicks” operation, would annihilate my blogging. Anyway, is what happened. I expect I’ll be struggling back to the surface of the planet gradually…
