krishna2.com

When I started blogging, the number one thing that bothered me was writing the whole text in a text area in the browser.

What a _PAIN_IN_THE_ASS_. I am devout Vi (Vim) fan (even been called an addict). I move inside Vi only like Beethoven inside the Fifth Symphony. [Sorry Beethoven, I will never ever put you and me in the same sentence again]. So writing long pieces just makes it even more harder – especially if I am writing my own html. No matter what you write, sometimes wordpress would automatically try to escape all new lines and create its own new lines.

After some searching around, found two plugins.

1. Disable wptexturize : This is a plugin to make wordpress not escape certain elements. But this did not fully suit my need.

2. WP Unformatted : Now this did *exactly* what it promised to do. Remove all formatting. So now I can type all I want in Vim, style it in anyway, mix html when needed and then just copy the whole thing to the text area box and voila! it all just works.

More details about this plug in is here.

The only small thing (inconvenience) is that you have to add a var called “sponge” and set it to 1. But then again, one can edit the source file and always set it to 1 – so not really a big deal. Thanks to Alex King for such a cool and extremely useful plug in.

In my humble opinion, this plugin (which is only a few lines) should be part of the main wordpress install and there should be one of those tiny icons (like bold, italic, image, link…) which says “no format”.

Last weekend, I went for a short ride on the Bay Trail in Hayward Regional Shoreline Park.

I started at the Winton Street parking lot and drove south first (very close to 92 – San Mateo Bridge) and then rode some way north. I rode only about 10 miles which you can see at cyclogz.

The road is unpaved. But the ride is very very scenic. It is possible to ride this trail all the way to San Lorenzo and even further North.

Who knew that I would even see Golden Gate Bridge and whales…

And last, the self-portrait.

The Bay View Trail is in Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont, CA (East Bay). You can get very beautiful views of the bay. There are many hiking trails as well.

I went around the Bay View Trails twice with small detours each time. This Trail connects to the Alameda Creek Trail (the connecting path though only 0.5 mile is very steep). There is also a path (Apay Way) to get to Dumbarton Bridge from here – although this path seems to be just as long and as windy and as unpaved as just going all the way on Alameda Creek Trail and the Shoreline Trail.

This Park/Trail has also been written about in detail here and here.

My full ride detail is at Cyclogz.

And lastly, the self portrait:

There is a $5 fee to park but you can avoid the fee if you park outside the Park near Patterson Ranch and Paseo Padre. There is a paved bicycle path that parallels Patterson Ranch into the Park.