Photos from the Meetup in NYC are up now. It was really enjoyable, NY has a really great group of WP folks.
Solo and the Wookie
Bring me Solo and the Wookie. P.S. I Can Has Cheezeburger is now hosted on WordPress.com.
WordPress Party
The party Monday is on Upcoming, and also got some coverage at Laughing Squid with a bit of historical perspective. Also next week on Thursday is the NewTeeVee Pier Screening, which looks like it’s going to be a fun event.
MT OS
I am settled back from Greece and quite a bit happened while I was unplugged. I want to belatedly congratulate the Movable Type team for committing to GPL for MT4, and wish them best of luck in rebuilding their developer community. The news has been written about nearly everywhere, rightly so; Lisa has a blog round-up.
If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
General Eric Shinseki
I actually heard this on the Farnam Street podcast with Patriots coach Michael Lombardi, but it seems like General Shinseki said it first so attributing it there.
From Bertrand Russell’s A Conquest of Happiness.
It is very singular how little men seem to realize that they are not caught in the grip of a mechanism from which there is no escape, but that the treadmill is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them up to a higher level.
He also says later, “There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” 😂
Japan Meetup
I just read on Detlog there is a WordPress Japan meetup in Okayama on July 1. I just got a copy of a new Japanese WP book and it looks pretty neat. I’d love to make it to Japan and one of these meetups someday.
I’m a huge fan of Mailchimp, but dang does the service get abused by folks aggressively opting you into mailing lists. I have a very early, very generic Gmail address that people put as a filler address into every possible service and it gets tens of thousands of list and spam mails. A good trick to find and unsubscribe from all the Mailchimp lists you’re on is to search for mcsv.net and then select all, report as spam, and unsubscribe. Gmail doesn’t deal well when the unsubscribe list is taller than your screen, so you may need to hit command + - a few times to make it all fit. Also according to this post, “you can also get in touch with our compliance team directly at compliance@mailchimp.com with the email address you would like to remove from all lists and they will be happy to further assist you there as well.” I will try that as well.
Grid-based design sure is getting popular these days: First map of the human brain reveals a simple, grid-like structure between neurons. Hat tip: Jeff Bowen.
Automattic and Six Apart
Toni on Wallstrip
Toni Schneider of Automattic was interviewed on Wallstrip today. We got to hang out a bit with the Wallstrip team and they’re very sharp, though maybe short on the Wii Tennis. Yesterday they did a musical review of the company behind most states’ Lotto.
Interview on Adii
I did a short interview with Adriaan Pienaar on his site, talking a bit about 2.3 and blogs in media.
King of Web Standards
Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards. Hat tip: Niall.
IIS Authentication Plugin
IIS Authentication plugin for the WordPress PHP blogging engine. So wrong, yet so right.
Farewell Splashblog
Six Apart is shutting down their mobile service Splashblog, which they acquired in 2006. Contrary to rumors Rojo (which I use) is sticking around despite being offline from July 25 through August 7, almost two weeks of downtime.
New Site: Mullenweg.com
I just finished putting the finishing touches on what I consider to be an acceptable version of the new Mullenweg Home Page. I bought the domain a while ago (because you know it would have gotten snatched up otherwise) but haven’t done much with it except put my senior pictures in a subdomain. However towards the beginning I built a database schema for all the genealogy information my sister seems to be obsessed with now :). Anyway once all the data was in the database it was a nice project to create a frontend for it, complete with tons of useless trivia about each entry.
I’m also quite proud of the entirey CSS based layout that it’s done in. I’ve dabbled quite a bit in CSS in the past, but this is my first abandonment of tables in a production design. You can also do some cool things on the Site Prefs page using some fancy javascript and alternate stylesheets. Try it out!
Mossberg Ubuntu Review
Blog Interview
I was interviewed on Blog Interviewer, there’s audio with a transcription.
The Houston Doberge Project
Every year for my Mom’s birthday lunch she has a Doberge cake from Gambino’s in New Orleans, but this year there was a Fedex snafu and it arrived spoiled. We found a last-minute replacement, but it piqued my curiosity as to better alternatives and I commissioned this survey of eight bakeries to answer the question: What’s the best Doberge cake in Houston or New Orleans? The article and pictures that follow are from food critic, travel journalist, and medical science writer Alice Levitt. I hope you enjoy the history, reviews, and surprise winner.
1885, Budapest. Franz Josef I and his wife, Elizabeth, rulers of Austro-Hungary, are attending the National General Exhibition of Budapest. There is much to see, but the emperor’s sweet tooth is pulling him toward one particular display. He simply must taste this new cake he’s been hearing about. He must find the Dobos torte.
Dobos torte?! Tell me more!