Fun read by J.D. Andre: What Calvin and Hobbes taught me about mindfulness. I’ve been practicing daily with the Calm app.
Party Update
It’s rainy and chilly, but the party is still on in full force. I updated the entry with some frequently asked questions. I’m really excited about some of the folks coming out, it’ll be a great mix. Perhaps some of the writers can help me with the 1.5 release announcement. *duck*
Make-A-Wish on 1.5
The Texas Make-A-Wish Foundation manages their entire site with WordPress 1.5, very cool. Dig those Pages.
Revisiting Moral Hazard
Revisiting Moral Hazard, by Bob McTeer. (Whom I’ve met.)
What is music? There’s no end to the parade of philosophers who have wondered about this, but most of us feel confident saying: ‘I know it when I hear it.’ Still, judgments of musicality are notoriously malleable. That new club tune, obnoxious at first, might become toe-tappingly likeable after a few hearings. Put the most music-apathetic individual in a household where someone is rehearsing for a contemporary music recital and they will leave whistling Ligeti. The simple act of repetition can serve as a quasi-magical agent of musicalisation. Instead of asking: ‘What is music?’ we might have an easier time asking: ‘What do we hear as music?’ And a remarkably large part of the answer appears to be: ‘I know it when I hear it again.’
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis writes on why we love repetition in music and the neurological effects repeated songs have on us. Hat tip: Brian Groat.
Lockergnome Reviews WordPress
Lockergnome reviews WordPress and gives it 9/10. “I have never seen such a great interactive community before in my life.” Also talks about Blogger, which I’m personally a big fan of and it’s usually what I recommend to new bloggers. They also have the coolest logo and clothing in the biz.
On Friday at 3:30 I’m going to be interviewed onstage at SxSW by the formidable John Battelle on the Future of WordPress — you can see details here. Would love to see some of you there.
This Untold Story of Silk Road is pretty amazing writing, a gripping story regardless of the genre (non-fiction, in this case). I can’t wait for the next chapter to come out on May 14. Also when reading about Ross, it’s interesting to keep in mind Vanity Jones who was in many ways the brains behind the operation, and also undiscovered.
On Packing
Luckily most of my clothes look the same when wrinkled.
Batters Up: Major League Baseball Now on WordPress.com. MLB’s blogging system used to be powered by Movable Type, and about 15,000 blogs switched over to WordPress.com as part of this. It’s an honor and delight to have so many great bloggers joining the family. They’re also in good company with VIP blogs for the NFL, NBA, NBC Sports…
Panels Finished
My last panel was yesterday at 5 PM so now I’m taking as much time as I can to catch the panels that are left and learn a few things. Speaking was more stressful than I expected but most of the feedback was good. I still need to check out the web feedback though, as people are probably more candid online than when they’re shaking your hand.
Inline Editing
In our blog session Jay Allen described his vision for inline editing of weblogs, it looks like Owen is taking the first steps though I’m not sure why he’s doing it as a theme and not a plugin.
Spammer Compliments WordPress
A spammer, or a former one, compliments WordPress in this interview about 5 minutes in. It’s an interesting listen regardless. Hat tip: Praneet Kandula via email.
More Inline Editing
Gregory has a plugin that allows the sort of inline-editing we’ve been talking about the past few days.
Usable Security
Usable Security is a new blog about—you guessed it—the intersection of usability and security. This comes up every few weeks since I improved the error messages on the WordPress login (and bbPress) to specify which part of the login was mistaken, the username or the password. Security folks see this as a problem because you’re revealing more information but I see making the error message more generic as premature security optimization. Plenty of systems where login names are public or easily discoverable, such as Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, most email systems, and so forth, seem to be doing just fine.
7 Days of Plugins
Scott is doing 7 Days of Plugins.
XFN Graph
XFN Graph is a tool that you give a URL and it then spiders all the XFN relationships and shows them in a neat graph/map.
WordPress Lessons
WordPress Lessons on the Codex are looking good, in fact the entire Codex is becoming a fantastic documentation resource. Kudos to Lorelle for kicking these off.
Drupal 4.6
Drupal 4.6.0 is out and has some very cool new features, not the least of which is it’s joining the generation of new publishing tools that ping Ping-O-Matic by default. 🙂 Congrats to the Drupal team on the release.