I finally found what I was looking for at Google Reader itself, via their add a clip feature (you can find this link by clicking on in the left side navigation area). When you use google reader they give you everything you could ask for, title, color scheme, number of shared items to post and whether or not to post item sources. You can find google reader stylized for my site, in my sidebar (as of this writing).

All of this is wonderful except for one minor thing, google provides no assistance at all when it comes to the option of no color scheme. That means no xhtml source to examine or css source. You could get around that with firefox’s view selection source feature, however if you don’t have firefox this provides no help at all.

It is with that in mind that I am writing this post, below is sample xhtml source code, that I will explain after the code is posted.


<div id="readerpublishermodule0" class="reader-publisher-module">
<h3>robert’s shared items</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<a class="i" title="Happy Birthday, iMac" href="#">Happy Birthday, iMac</a>
<div class="s">
from <a href="#">The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<a class="i" title="Happy Birthday, iMac" href="#">Happy Birthday, iMac</a>
<div class="s">
from <a href="#">The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<a class="i" title="Happy Birthday, iMac" href="#">Happy Birthday, iMac</a>
<div class="s">
from <a href="#">The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<a class="i" title="Happy Birthday, iMac" href="#">Happy Birthday, iMac</a>
<div class="s">
from <a href="#">The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)</a>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<a class="i" title="Happy Birthday, iMac" href="#">Happy Birthday, iMac</a>
<div class="s">
from <a href="#">The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)</a>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="f">
<a href="#">Read more…</a>
</div>
</div>


The primary container for the shared items is a selector named “reader-publisher-module”, it contains everything provided by google reader. The header provided by google is contained in a h3 element inside of the main container. Each headline link and source link is contained inside of a list element inside of the main container as well. The headline link is held inside this list item in a selector with the name “i”. The source is held inside this list element in a container named “s”. The read more link is contained inside of a selector named “f” inside of the main container.

Listed below is the css used in my current theme to make google reader appear appropriately, hopefully it can help you if you need it.


/* google reader from section */
.reader-publisher-module .s {
text-indent: 5px;
}


/* from link */
.reader-publisher-module .s a {
color: #660505;
text-decoration: none;
}


/* headline link */
.reader-publisher-module .i {
font-size: 10pt;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 10pt;
text-decoration: none;
display: block;
}


/* google reader read more section */
.reader-publisher-module .f {
display: none;
}


.reader-publisher-module .f a {
}


This information was hard for me to find, so hopefully listing it here will help someone, if you need any further assistance post a comment, and I will see what I do do.

Doesn’t this offend you?

Well it shouldn’t, we already do this at Guantanamo Bay.

I get it some people need to be locked up for their crimes, but not like this, not in subhuman conditions like this.

Some protesters will undoubtedly commit criminal acts and should be arrested but the overwhelming majority just want to speak their peace and there is nothing wrong or illegal about that.

What is wrong are these so called “free speech zones” they’re setting up at the convention sites but that’s a rant for another time…

I will try to provide some description so that if you want to read on it will be of some use to you, however I will be addressing Lindsay directly in this post, so don’t be mad at me if I call you Lindsay, I assure you it’s nothing personal.

Before continuing Lindsay I would highly recomend you somehow back up your code, as who knows I could make an error or you could make an error and I don’t want you to ruin what already is working just in case.

Anyways Lindsay the code snippet you will see below is css that should be able to be added at the end of your existing css without causing any issues for your existing page. The “twitter_div” id selector simply takes the enclosing div and adds that graphic to it as a background image, it also seperates it from the marquee above, as well as spacing it out the inner ul from the background image so your tweet does not cover up the background image in any way.

The “twitter_update_list” is listed with “header” before it to overwrite the inherited css from the previous “header ul” declaration. Chiefly this declaration affects the tweet’s appearance, however it also removes padding and margins from the previous declaration as well.

The “twitter_update_list a” id is simply used to take the time stamp link and place it on it’s own line below the tweet itself.


/* div that contains entire tweet */
#twitter_div {background-image: url(http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/4161/birdnu1.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-top: 10px; padding-left: 35px;}


/* contains just tweet */
#header #twitter_update_list {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 110%; font-weight: normal; color: #000000; text-transform: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;}


/* timestamp link */
#twitter_update_list a {display: block;}


Lastly here is the code as I edited it, going from the closing marquee tag to the ending div for the header container. The only major change I made was removing the line breaks from the presenation as it was replaced with a margin declaration in the css.


</marquee>
<!-- Your Twitter code starts here -->
<div id="twitter_div">
<ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/9131132.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=1"></script>
<!-- Your Twitter code ends here -->
</div>


<ul>
<li><a href=”/mobile”>Mobile</a></li>
<li><a href=”/archive”>Archive</a></li>
<li><a href=”http://ilindsay.tumblr.com/rss”>RSS</a></li>
<li><a href=”/random”>Random</a></li>
</ul>
</div>


I really hope this all went fine for you, if not you know where to find me.

Good Luck Lindsay.

Well for the past week this has been me, and to make it worse it has been an issue with a mac, a system I am not extensively experienced with.  For no reason at all iTunes would crash within a minute of opening, and it was the only piece of software experiencing this issue.  I consulted another mac in our house, and it had no problems, so finally I resorted to drawing straws.

I tried rebooting with no positive results, looked at re-installing iTunes on top of the existing install and it didn’t change a thing.  I even removed iTunes entirely and installed it again without it helping things.  That is when I effectively gave up because I was out of ideas.

That is until it ocurred to me to try an old Windows trick, I copied the iTunes library files to the desktop and deleted them and fired up iTunes, and boom it worked.  I am not sure why this helped but I don’t care.

So if you have an issue with iTunes don’t fret and as a last resort no matter the OS, kill the library and restart the program, then paste back in the library so you don’t lose your library and hopefully you will be back in action.

The icon for mobileme (or is it mobile me?), apples anticipated update to .mac, it sounds like a wonderful service in many ways just definitely not for me so I knew I didn’t download this. So who did? I know I have updated iTunes on the machine recently, and I think Safari may have been updated as well, either way I am certain it was apple who initiated the download and install without asking me at all (or giving me a way to remove it).

So what does it do? For those with mobile me, it’s an entry into the service and for those that NEVER WANTED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE well it’s an ad, so much so that the learn more button simply links you to apple.com/mobileme. It’s a bad move by apple, but hey maybe they will get a few more customers for mobile me, but it won’t be me.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get back to the products I received from apple today and monitoring the shipping of a new macbook.

I am such a hypocrite….

At gop.com you are presented with the above image, a fairly well designed site for the Republican Party, however what you are not presented with is much about their candidate.

Sure we have one graphic linking you to a post about Sen. McCain’s policy about climate change, but that is only one issue that relates to him, compared to six negative links about Obama. Those links are as follows:

1. Obama’s Disgraceful Duo - A story about some of Obama’s supporters
2. Meet Barack Obama
3. The Rezko Judgement - A story about a one time Obama fundraiser
4. Democrats vs Obama - A story about what other Democratic presidential candidates said about Obama during the primary
5. Obama’s Bad Week In Review
6. Days Since Obama Visited Iraq Clock

However, the Democrats are not much better.

Sure they are better in the count of positive postings compared to negative, however at democrats.orgthey only have one more positive story about their nominee, and that is only due to the fact that they have a large graphic dedicated to their new nominee.

Their first two links are dedicated to McCain bashing, and the last link is about correcting what they now see as a past discretion, only the third link can be seen as truely positive, that would be the link about “Change We Can Believe In”.

I am not naive, I know elections are always about the horror the other side would bring, but I thought someone some where would try to appeal to our sense of good, rather than our sense of evil. I posted this to show that this is not the fact, at least at the home of our two major political parties.