I love this version from Kamasi Washington of Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, or “light of the moon.” Here’s the Paul Verlaine poem that inspired the original composition:
Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.
All sing in a minor key
Of victorious love and the opportune life,
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight,
With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
The tall slender fountains among marble statues.
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*
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.
And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.
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.
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.
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.
The full video and Q&A from 2016’s State of the Word last week in Philadelphia is now online. This year was especially exciting because it wasnt’ just a look back at the previous year, but sets out a new direction for where WordPress will be in 2017 and beyond.
Like every year, there was a ton of help bringing this together. Mark Uraine led the slides, and at various points these folks pitched in as well: Mel Choyce, Tammie Lister, Michael Arestad, Ashleigh Axios, Ian Dunn, Corey McKrill, Martin Remy, Josepha Haden, Alex Kirk, Marina Pape, Alx Block, Cami Kaos, Matias Ventura, Donncha O Caoimh, John Maeda, Barry Abrahamson, Nikolay Bachiyski, Chrissie Pollock, Sam Sidler, Boris Gorelik, Dion Hulse, Brooke Dukes, Sarah Blackstock. I also got input and suggestions from Petya Raykovska, Tony Perez, Joe Casabona, Helen Hou-Sandi, Jon Bossenger, Jason Cohen, Daniel Bachhuber, Drew Butler, Ryan Boren, Andrew Roberts, Joost de Valk, Stephane Daury, Dion Hulse, Gary Pendergast, David Bisset, Ryan McCue, Alex Shiels, Brian Krogsgard, Joe Hoyle, Sean Blakeley, Andrew Nacin, Mark Jaquith, John Blackbourn, and thank you to Rose Kuo for inspiring the poetry theme which featured prominently this year.
Tavern and Post Status wrote up the talk itself. As a follow-up I did interviews with both to expand on some of what was discussed in the speech. The Post Status one is now up and you can watch it here:
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.
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 4.6.0 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.
10up partner Helen is now a core WP contributor and 10up highlights that contribution on their blog. It’s very exciting to see more core involvement springing up all over the WP ecosystem, as it has a big impact on the quality of the core software we all depend on. Let me know if you spot any more examples and I’ll share them here.
