Andrew Nacin, lead developer of WordPress, just finished a talk at Loopconf, where he talked about a series of related WordPress security fixes that spanned two years, with the final fix included into WordPress core under the guise of Emoji support.
Post Status has a good look at some of the really deep security work that has been going on in WordPress lately. There will always be more problems, but we’re getting to the point where the problems (and the fixes) are often quite subtle.
Music for the party tonight? Ellington of course, playing with and compisitions by Billy Strayhorn.
Andrew Bosworth, one of the early engineers and leaders at Facebook tells the story about how he almost got fired in the early days despite being a top engineer. “If I was a good engineer, why would it be hard to work with me? Of course that question was the very foundation of my problem.”
On the recommendation of my friend Timothy Young I checked out the book The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir. Think of it like Shackleton’s Voyage (a great recommendation from Toni) but on Mars. I really enjoyed the book, and if you like geeky, science-filled novels you will too. One thing about the publishing I thought was really cool, as the Wikipedia puts it:
Having been rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published, Weir decided to put the book online in serial format one chapter at a time for free at his website. At the request of fans he made an Amazon Kindle version available through Amazon.com at 99 cents (the minimum he could set the price). The Kindle edition rose to the top of Amazon’s list of best-selling science-fiction titles, where it sold 35,000 copies in three months, more than had previously downloaded it for free. This garnered the attention of publishers: Podium Publishing, an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013. Weir sold the print rights to Crown in March 2013 for six figures.
I was hoping it was on a WordPress blog, but it appears to be more of a static HTML site (his official site is WP-powered) and includes some awesome short vignettes like Meeting Sarah.
Eric Meyer on WordPress 1.5, “A good tool is now a great tool, and I can only imagine where it will go from here.” A nice look at things from a developer and tweaker perspective.
Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings is, as far as I know, the first mention of WordPress in the New York Times. First of many, hopefully. 🙂 (I wonder what sort of traffic they’ll drive?)
In the great balancing act of our social lives, between the gratification of self-interest and a concern for others, fleeting experiences of awe redefine the self in terms of the collective, and orient our actions toward the needs of those around us.
The New York Times answers Why Do We Experience Awe?
The Web Photos Pro site is run mostly on WordPress, which I didn’t even realize until I saw the “Powered by WordPress” link. Great example of WP used as a CMS for an entire site. (The software looks cool too.)
Doc Searls on framing in a blogging article. Market statistics aren’t hard to find, just ask one of the people indexing the darn thing. (Technorati, Feedster, Pubsub, Bloglines…) To read the original article you have to register first—obviously an organization that “gets” the web.
I can’t believe I’m going to be out of town for this concert, Branford Marsalis and Ravi Coltrane celebrating the 40th anniversary of Love Supreme. (Listen to Branford’s recording of Pursuance.)
Bloggers of America, chill. Great advice! Declan’s story seemed like a bit of a blogger troll.
Interesting fact: the iCurve also makes an excellent pizza box holder.
Just a reminder, I have two panels tomorrow, one at 10 AM in room 17AB (Blog Software Showdown) and one at 5 PM in room 15 (Open Source Infrastructure). I’ll try to record them for blogging later, but the quality will be about the same as the keynote recording.
OK/Cancel comic on SxSW 2005, in which my name makes an appearance. OK/Cancel appears to be running on a well-hacked WordPress install, though there’s no link.
WordPress in Higher Education — “Penn State is also telling all of the participants (about 200 leaders in higher education) about how they use WordPress for courses, portfolios, content mangement and about everything else.”
I was on VentureBeat’s podcast with Dylan Tweeney, talking a bit about how WordPress came to be and geeking out on some of the tech behind our approach.
Om on why I can’t pay att… ooh look, shiny!
Congrats to Jay and his team on Movable Type 3.16. There are some “orange level” security problems fixed, so be sure to upgrade! It’s a day for releases.