I’m going to be in New York next week and it’d be great to meet some of the WordPress community there. How about we do a WordPress Wednesday on April the 11th, starting around 7 or 8. Any ideas for a good venue?
Bandwidth Caps
Best Cities
When we had some calm seas while I was on the Drumfire, with my schedule unusually clear and Starlink humming, I found myself writing Python with Claude to export and analyze all of my Swarm check-in activity. I have 14,021 check-ins. So now on my about page it lists the ~70 countries I’ve been to and the top 200 cities I’ve spent time in. But it made me think a lot about what my favorite cities are, so here are my top ten current faves, in no particular order:
- Paris
- Tokyo
- Sydney
- Florence
- New York
- San Francisco
- Stockholm
- Singapore
- London
- Houston
Any of these I would be happy to live in. Honorable mentions but didn’t make the cut: Austin, Jackson, Seattle, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Montreal, Vienna, Reykjavik.
I would be remiss if I didn’t use this as an opportunity to highlight Paul Graham’s great essay on Cities and Ambition.
It’s Worse Than You Can Imagine
At first I was optimistic that the Lockergnome redesign wouldn’t be that terrible, I mean they have smart people there. Then the evidence mounted that there wasn’t going to be any good hybrid approach. Why go backwards? Is it a joke? Is ruining their website some twisted form of RSS evangelism?
Earlier today a comment from Simon said:
Well, the redesign appears to be out now and it�s much worse than I expected – blockquotes for indentation, paragraphs with non-breaking spaces in them for added vertical spacing – tag soup if ever I�ve seen it. Yuck.
He expanded his thoughts illustrated by the code snippet:
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="778"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<tr><td align="left">
<div id="footer">
<blockquote>© 1996-2004, Lockergnome LLC. ISSN: 1095-3965. All
Rights Reserved. Please read our <a href="/about/privacy-policy.phtml">
Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="/about/terms-of-service.phtml">
Terms of Service</a>. Web site hosted by
<a href="http://www.webair.com/cgi-bin/in?51">Webair</a>.
Email newsletters powered by <a href="http://www.whatcounts.com/">WhatCounts</a>.
Domain registered at <a href="https://www.gnomedomains.com/">GnomeDOMAINS</a>.
</blockquote>
</div>
</td></tr></table>
One can only assume that the newsletters will be following suit, and no one wants that kind of filth in their inbox.
All joking aside, I am going to be unsubscribing from all Lockergnome newsletters. I am not under the illusion that my action will be anything more than a number blip to the people there, but principle of the matter is I don’t have a lot of respect for them anymore. How can I take web development news seriously from an organization that is in the wrong decade code-wise? Even worse, they had something great and threw it away. If enough people were to do the same and unusbscribe they might take notice, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
I might even be forgiving if their markup (which is invisible to the user when it works) devolved but the site was much easier to use or aesthetically pleasing, but the site has degraded in every conceivable way. I decided I could tolerate the design long enough to unsubscribe, but couldn’t even find that on the site. Google brought up a cached page that no longer exists which pointed to the correct URI, which incidentally still has the old design. So if you also disagree with the recent direction things have taken, unsubscribe from Lockergnome.
Looking for something to fill the void? It didn’t come to mind the other day, but I highly recommend the SitePoint newsletters for web development topics. Blogs are also great, but sometimes it’s nice to get something in yoru inbox. I’m open to suggestions for other newsletters.
Update: I’ve written a new entry that explains why I care.
Homegrown CMSes
Peplink Multi-WAN Routers
Update Sept 2014: My favorite Peplink is now the Balance One, and my favorite router if you’re super-techy and want to configure networking stuff is the Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite. Read more about Ubiquiti here.
I live and work on the internet, so when I have trouble connecting it really slows me down. About a year or so ago I started looking into multi-WAN routers that would, at least, support two internet connections and failover to the other one, and as a bonus maybe provide some speed benefits as well. Here’s the story of that journey.
The Publisher
I’ve been dubbed The Publisher by BusinessWeek as one of their “25 Most Influential People on the Web.” Before anyone else writes in that I beat Rupert Murdoch, I think the slideshow is in alphabetical order. 🙂
Tom Ford’s 15 Things
For the 15th anniversary of Vogue.com noted fashion designer Tom Ford made a list of 15 things that every man should have, which are as follow:
- A sense of humour.
- A daily read of a newspaper.
- A sport that you love and are good at.
- Tweezers.
- A good cologne that becomes a signature.
- A well cut dark suit.
- A pair of classic black lace up shoes.
- A smart blazer.
- The perfect pair of dark denim jeans.
- Lots of crisp white cotton shirts.
- Always new socks and underwear, throw away the old ones every 6 months.
- A classic tuxedo.
- A beautiful day watch with a metal band.
- The perfect sunglasses.
- Perfect teeth. If you don’t have them, save up and get them fixed.
A pretty good list, though I would replace the newspaper with Circa, and I must confess I’m not sure sure what #4 the tweezers are for.
After writing two books on the science of climate change, I decided I could no longer continue taking a pro-science position on global warming and an anti-science position on G.M.O.s.
Mark Lynas writes How I Got Converted to G.M.O. Food, particularly how GMOs impact the places where crops are needed the most. If you’re looking for a catch-up check out this link collection on ma.tt last year.
WordCamp Developer Day
I have some cool news: On Sunday the day after WordCamp San Francisco we’re going to host a WordPress developer day at the Automattic office on Pier 38. It will be Barcamp-style with no pre-announced schedule, but expect more hardcore geek content like heavy WordPress performance optimization, BuddyPress internals, an intro to Erlang, a guide to secure coding, WordPress-as-CMS discussions, and more. If there’s a topic you’d like to lead start thinking about it now, there should be plenty of room for everyone to connect. (Try to keep things local though, we’re not sure how the internet will hold up.)
Ask Matt: Essential Gadgets
Essential gadgets for life on the road:
https://videopress.com/v/KllQxFVq
Since recording this I’ve switched to the D3S, which is just like the D3 but with video. Everything else is the same! Video here done with VideoPress.
Short, Sweet WP Video
A few months ago I was recently interviewed on KTEH’s program “This is Us!” and the result ended being a nice 5 minute overview of WordPress, something you could show to your Mom to explain the whole thing. Here’s the video (using Youtube’s new beta iframe player):
ThinkGeek’s Crappy Wishlist
I’ve always found the Wishlist concept to be cool, especially as Amazon implements it. I love it when the developer of a plugin or software I use links to their Wishlist because then I can buy them something personal, it seems less crude than a Paypal donate link where you’re putting an explicit price on things.
The other day Kent Brewster found a JS problem on WordPress.com. I was browsing his FAQ and saw this: “My ThinkGeek Wish List is always open.”
If you click that link, you’ll see in red letters: “To shop from this wishlist, please add items to your cart using this form only! Otherwise, your gifts will not be removed from this wishlist, and the recipient may get duplicates.”
Okay — a little weird, but ThinkGeek’s home-grown shopping cart has always been a little odd, I’ll run with it. I add it to my cart from that form, go to the checkout form and sign in (I’ve spent lots of money with ThinkGeek over the years), and complete the order. (How to Survive a Robot Uprising, for the record.)
So I send an email to their customer support: “I ordered something off someone’s wishlist, order e5886bb4. Everything in the order looks like it’s being shipped to me, not the recipient. Could you confirm it’s going to this guy’s wishlist and not me?” I then linked to the wishlist. Next morning, a response:
Matt,
This order is being shipped to [my address redacted]
United States
That was the address entered when the order was placed.
Thanks,Tracy G
Customer Service
Not helpful at all… my reply: “Why would I buy something off someone else’s wishlist and then ship it to me? If it can’t be shipped to the person who made the wishlist, then please cancel it.”
No response, and two days later the order ships, to me. This morning, a final response from Tracy:
Mr. Mullenweg,
When the order is placed the order you had the option of entering an alternate ship to address.
Since your order has already shipped we can not change or cancel the order.
Thanks,Tracy G
Customer Service
Given the next-day shipping I paid extra for, the book should be arriving any day now. The whole point of a wishlist is that I don’t know Kent’s address, nor should I need to. Also the big red sentence on the wishlist page implied to me that Kent would get anything I order from that specific form/page, otherwise why would I need to add it to my cart specifically from that spot?
To Kent, my apologies. If the robot uprising comes before I’m able to get you this book and we both die in the aftermath I’ll buy you a drink.
To ThinkGeek, you’re cooler and smarter than this. Please fix your wishlist functionality.
To everyone else, set up a wishlist on Amazon. It works, and if you link to it from your blog and do nice things people may order from it for you, and there’s nothing nicer than a surprise Amazon box showing up at the door.
Ask Matt: Tips On Public Speaking
I get asked a lot about tips on public speaking because I do it so frequently. Positive response when I give a talk is generally proportional to how relaxed I was when giving the presentation and on good days I’ll get comments like people were able to relate to what I was saying or that watching me calmed them down. I don’t mention this in the video, but besides breathing and remembering the audience is there to see you do well, the best way to relax is to know your material down cold. I’ve lived and breathed WordPress for almost 7 years now, so I can talk about it for hours without thinking twice. I think practicing and knowing your material well comes across most in your body language which probably affects how people perceive your presentation more than what you say.
https://videopress.com/v/VSvor57H
We recorded this before Scott Berkun’s new book Speaker Confessions was out, which I recommend now.
MobileMe Notes
Dear MobileMe / Me.com, I really think you’re swell. I’ve been dreaming dreams of sync since my first Handspring, and you are the best I’ve used. Two things would put you over the top. First, the notes application on the iPhone is handy, but please sync this to a quickie app on Me.com so I can put stuff in and out of notes easily. Second, and this is a stretch, I know you don’t like to-do applications, but I also have an inkling you could do something that would make me stop using paper and pen for to-dos. And synchronize it. With love, Matt.
No Guinness
Been in Ireland since Saturday, and it couldn’t be better. What a lovely country with lovely people. One thing I’ve noticed, at least here in the “real capital” Cork, that “Guinness is for tourists.” Everyone here drinks Murphy’s. Anyway, back to work with Donncha on some WordPress.com goodies.
Rich Brooks on Fast Company asks What’s the Best Blog Platform?. That’s an easy one to answer. There’s still some disagreement over “What’s the best CMS?” but we’re trying to make that one easy to answer, too.
Watching Television
It wasn’t that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, that I didn’t have any TV shows I was actively watching. Life has been busier than ever, but I’ve started catching up with shows instead of movies when flying. I’ve been blown away by the high quality of storytelling in the medium of television right now.
So I find myself actively watching a few different shows:
- House of Cards (new season out today!).
- True Detective.
- Scandal.
- Blacklist.
- Empire.
- West Wing.
There are some guilty pleasures in there, and there are probably a dozen shows that friends have recommended to me as amazing that I’ve never even started. (Hence West Wing, I’m watching it for the first time, somewhere in Season 4.)
This is the first time I’m watching things that are still “on” versus something like Firefly or Sopranos which are complete already. There’s definitely something fun about discussing the latest developments with other people who are also caught up, in the zeitgeist, and the anticipation of new episodes coming out, like what I imagine it must have been like with serialized novels back in the day.
Q&A: WordPress & GPL
In this one we cover the GPL and how it benefits WordPress, why WP is under the GPL, commercial themes, how the GPL fosters innovation, creates value, and affects themes and plugins.
Grey Followup
On the bright side, last week’s hatchet job in Techcrunch generated some great blog posts. For whatever reason they don’t show up as links on Techcrunch’s page, but here’s some of the better ones:
- Duncan Riley Supports Adversarial Value Extracting Strategies in Open Source Software from Adam of idly.org.
- The Grey Area is from Mark Jaquith, a core contributor to WordPress, makes part of the case for why Akismet is a good anti-spam plugin to bundle with WordPress.
- Techcrunch questions Matt Mullenweg’s Ethics from Amy Stephen at Open Source Community
- Making Money from Open Source talks about white, grey, and black ways of making money from OS.
- Finally Open Source: Grey and Green from Andrew has a literary objection.
To summarize some of my responses:
- I have no problem with people making money from Open Source, in fact I think some of the most successful OS projects have profit motives aligned with user motives.
- Related: I have no problem with Pligg being sold. I think it’s better than them selling links in the software.
- It is possible to make money while giving your users something they want and provides value rather than something they never asked for. (Think of selling a hosted version vs. selling paid links meant to spam search engines.)
- The fact that I made a similar mistake in the past gives me unique perspective into both sides of the issue.
- The developer blogroll links in WordPress are nothing like the links being bought and sold for the intention of spamming search engines, but regardless they have been replaced with links to WordPress resources instead of individual contributors.
- Duncan said “Money is money, no matter how you make it.” I could not disagree more.
- While anyone can do almost anything with WordPress under its license, that doesn’t mean we have an obligation to promote folks who we feel are doing so in a way which is not ethical or in the best long-term interests of the community.