Got bored so I started experimenting with making wordpress plugins that are widgets.
1) I wrote this one because the default WordPress “Recent Post” widget does not show dates. It is important to have dates, so here it is:
https://gist.github.com/0c80a1918d6f66683f42
2) I was using a plugin called “get recent comments” that was working fine. But I thought it was a bit bloated for my needs, so I rewrote it as a simple wordpress widget. Here it is:
https://gist.github.com/ae68f29fd288e78e4272
If you want to use them. Just download them, put it inside your plugin folder and activate the plugin. Then you can go to the widgets menu and stick them in your sidebar.