Suddenly, New York looks pretty good.

In case you just want to go straight into the visualization, click here – http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/house-prices-to-income-ratio

No matter, I thought, surely wordpress uses the database password() function and I could just get a new password hash, insert it into the DB, and be good again. To PhpMyAdmin we go… and Wrong! WordPress does not use the function, probably with good reason.

Ok… what now? How about I reverse-engineer the hash function, include a call to it in one of theme designs and get a new hash in whatever way the hash is computed. Then, I can insert it into the database… Yeah – in what other ways could I try to scratch my left ear with my right foot?

Finally I remember something painfully obvious – I do not need to hash anything, just return “true” from some function called checkPassword or VerifyPassword – there is always one somewhere. Indeed, CheckPassword() function does this:
function CheckPassword($password, $stored_hash)
{
$hash = $this->crypt_private($password, $stored_hash);
if ($hash[0] == '*')
$hash = crypt($password, $stored_hash);

return $hash == $stored_hash;
}

comment out the last line and replace it with return true;

Now, just save the file, reload the page, and  login with a random password. Change the password to something I think I will remember, and change the code back…

And this is why I host my own instance of wordpress :)

I am trying to figure out how best to use the “deals” feature, and it would be really great if I could surface emails/notes from people involved in the deal without having to make 10 clicks. It was not even obvious to me that I could assign these to deals until I tried to change the email… At the very least, I should be able to drag an email/note to the “deal” that is already shown on the right side of the screen. Ideally, I would like to be able to add notes/emails from inside the deals – also with drag-n-drop…

Offtopic: Interestingly (for me) – I have immediately begun to expect that companies follow twitter and therefore will just pick up the resultant twit and comment on the blog. It’s all the fault of the GetSatisfaction.com team.