Tech, geek and all things neat.

So, my learnins have been halted for a little bit thanks to my lack of studying; however, this is a mild set back thanks to the final exams that are coming up. Ill be force feeding myself some new fancy knowledge of …idk what yet I haven’t read it. Give a man a break. I will be doing a post later on this week on multi-threading and possible networking in Java so stay tuned all you readers…. mom, dad…(who am I kidding even they don’t read this).

I have been spending my time lately with flash and blender. Blender is awesome (with a few flaws, kinda like shepard’s pie, what the fuck is the corn doing in there GET OUT CORN). Blender is a freeware program for 3d modeling. Its not laid out the greatest, with inconsistencies throughout the entire program. Methods that are used to manipulate one object are not always the same methods you would use to manipulate another similar object.

For the most part I found the creating mesh molds and mild manipulation to be about the same as using Maya 5 or 3D Studio Max. Remembering all the short cut key for everything is worst then trying to remember all the macros you created when you were drunk last night playing World of Warcraft. I found myself trying to memorize procedures for things like I was entering in secret codes to get naked pictures of Samus Aran. With key combos that make little sense to me and my short attenti….HmmmmSamus… <.< >.> <.< Oh yeah!

Mind you I am no expert in the art of 3d modeling, to say the least. I have been having a blast playing around with it though. To make cheap looking textures on my cheap looking models is a fairly simple process, once you’ve done it 10-25 times.

Some people and do some really kick ass shit with this

I don’ t think that I’ll ever get the ambition to develop that kind of skill. But I will keep going on playing with this when I’m not learning code, flash, reading, or touching my … eating supper. Anyways fuck that guy heres my work, go ahead tell me I’m awesome

So you might have noticed something new about my site today. Yes, that’s right I enabled Facebook Connect. So todays blog is going to be about:

HOW TO ENABLE FACEBOOK CONNECT!!!!!

It all starts with creating a Facebook application, then connecting that Facebook application to your WordPress site.

I will not be going into detail on how to add WordPress to your site. I’m taking for granted that you already have a blog up and running.

To create a Facebook application you’ll first have to have a Facebook account. If you’re one of the 10 people in the world who dosen’t have one you can click here to create one. Once you have your account set up go to the developers page and click on the “start building for your site” button. That will bring you to a new page were you will enter the title you want for your application and your URL. It good to chose something that corresponds to your blog. Then click “Submit”

From that point you’ll get a page that has some basic information about your site. On the right hand side you’ll have a list of links. From the “Edit Settings” link you’ll get to the “basic” information tab. In this field you’ll notice that most of the information is fairly straight forward. Due pay attention to the Developer Contact Email, this is going to be your email that you used for your facebook.

Click down to Authentication click both boxes and enter your URL of your site  in to both fields. Without filling these fields your users won’t be able to connect to their accounts when they’re on your site.

Down in the Canvas tab enter your site name in the field labeled “Canvas Page URL.” This is the URL that Facebook uses to know were on their server your application is stored.

After that proceed to the connect tab. Now if you only want to create a Facebook application you can leave this field blank; however, we’re here to create Facebook commenting on your site. Therefore enter in your site URL into the “Connect URL”  field. Click the big blue “Save Changes” button at the bottom and we’re done with Facebook. Remember to leave that page Open because we are going to need the API key and the Secret Key later on.

Now, pop over to your WordPress control panel, were we are going to be installing a Facebook Connect plugin created by sociable. If you feel ambitious you can try the beta. I don’t believe in being a hero so I just installed the latest stable version. Once you’ve downloaded the file onto your computer, don’t bother unzipping it. Just navigate to admin->plugins->add new, browse for the .zip file and WordPress automatically installs it into your plugin area.

Now here is the only tricky part. In your File Manager navigate to the folder that contains your currently applied theme. With in there, there will be a header.php file, open it to edit its content.

Comment out the HTML header, which will look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd”>
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>

To comment out add <!– at the beginning and add –> at the end

and add this HTML header right after it on the next line:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">

Now, navigate to admin->Settings->Facebook Connect in options insert your API and Secret key. Enable Comment Auto-Approval and Allow send user comments to Facebook. Now reap the rewards with having Facebook comments on your blog.

Good Job,