I decided, after some “experiences” to add a blog post about adding a link to the WordPress RSS feed of your site.

I may be missing something, or may not have come across the right plug-in or something else, however, I was unable to add RSS to my site. Either I got my feeds full with garbage and (I think) advertising from the plug-in author, or the simple little itsy-bitsy tiny RSS feed plug-in managed to make all my “Edit” buttons and links unreachable in edit mode (like when you wish to change the Publish date or the post slug).

Now there is a built in WordPress RSS feed widget, however it imports some one else’s RSS feeds while I want to have a link on my page that exports my RSS feeds. And, no, using the built in plug-in on your own site does not seem to make anything else than a list of links to your posts.

Either someone forgot to explain RSS feeds to the WordPress coders or, as I said before, I may not understand it.

Anyhow, I finally did it myself instead.

This is how I did it:

1. Add a Text Widget to your theme’s widget area
2. Put some HTML into the Widget
3. Check out WordPress’s RSS Codex page

1. Add a Text Widget to your theme’s widget area

You do this via “Appearance > Widgets” from the admin menu in WordPress.

The exact name of the widget is simply “Text”. It comes built-in with WordPress.

I used the text “RSS Feeds” as Title.

2. Put some HTML in the Widget

Here are two variants, one for the twenty eleven theme and one for the twenty twelve. The only difference is that the twenty eleven looks better as a list. This text goes into the larger text field of the widget.

Twenty eleven:

<ul>
<li><a href="http://YOURSITENAME/feed/"
  target="_blank">Posts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://YOURSITENAME/comments/feed/"
  target="_blank">Comments</a></li>
</ul>

Twenty twelve:

<a href="http://YOURSITENAME/feed/" target="_blank">Posts</a>
<br/>
<a href="http://YOURSITENAME/comments/feed/"
  target="_blank">Comments</a>

Replace YOURSITENAME with the name of your site (e.g. http://www.example.com).

The ”target=”_blank”” section of the “a href”-link ensures that the link is opened in a new window.

3. Check out the WordPress RSS Feed Codex page

http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Feeds

The codex page contains some more links, for instance to posts in categories and tags.

It may also be good to check that page to see that the links used here are still correct.

If you want to try other links simply replace the URL in the href=”URL“ part of the a-tags above.

The Linux watch command is a nifty little tool that can be used when you want to keep the result of a command under constant watch.

Here’s a sample for watching the /proc/mdstat file.

watch -n1 cat /proc/mdstat

The “-n1“-switch tells watch to refresh every “1” second (“-n2” would consequently mean, “refresh every 2 seconds” and so on).

The “cat /proc/mdstat” is the command to keep an eye on. “/proc/mdstat” is a process file that displays the state of md-raid drives in the system.

Press “ctrl-C” to stop the running command.

This is an example of “watching” the free memory:

watch -n1 free -m

If you add the “-d” switch, watch will mark differences between the runs.

watch -d -n1 free -m

And with the “-d=cumulative” switch the differences will be marked cumulatively between runs:

watch -d=cumulative -n1 free -m

You may also watch for directory changes:

watch -d ls -l

If you do not specify a watch interval (using “-n“) the default is set to 2 seconds.

For more info, see the manual pages for the watch command.

For watching files see the related “tail” command.

In IT-support jargon the expression “PEBCAK” (meaning “Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard”) is used to blame the user of the system for any computer-related problems they are experiencing while using said system – since they are located “between the chair and the keyboard” in most usual situations…

PEBCAK can be found long before the program reaches the end-user

I had a fun thought about the expression PEBCAK. Given my many years in IT development, I have observed two things:

1. Few programmers write their programs without sitting on a chair in front of a keyboard…
2. PEBCAK is just as likely to start way before the software reaches the end-user.

If you think the Project Cartoon is a gross exaggeration (you are probably an ordinary, unsuspecting computer user, and a victim :P…) I have to inform you, it’s not… The sad truth is that programmers have never been in control of systems, and even the most stable and dependable systems have flaws.

Even NASA has PEBCAK

Did you know that up until 2007 the space shuttles never flew missions over the new year… why? Because their computer systems, programmed in the 70ies, had no stable support for year changes…

Searching to find my source on the above statement only produces two Slashdot articles with links to, now non-existing, articles on CNN and Reuters. (Although I just came across this fact a couple of months ago, so either the conspiracy is recent, or my Googling skills are decreasing…) Anyway, here’s the Slashdot links:

• NASA Avoids “Happy New Year” On Shuttle
• Computer Date Glitch May Limit Next Shuttle Launch
• And the forum post “NASA Computers? Happy New Year – NOT!!!” goes into it in some detail. It, in turn, quotes an article in “Florida Today” from Nov 7, 2006, titled “Glitch may force NASA to launch shuttle early; Dec. 6 slotted for Discovery”

I’m not going to search for pacemaker system errors or similar, but I can guess the mitigating circumstances are that you’re not in space when the problem occurs and might actually get into the hospital in time…

If you like to read more about programmer initiated system errors (and errors initiated by IT projects) you should check out The Daily WTF.