When did it get so cold??? I am cold to the point of desperation there. Now I know, some of you native (or born-again) Notherners are reading and thinking “42 degrees? Ha! That’s jogging weather!” and you are probably right. But how should I get warm? I’m not conditioned to deal with this.
Fewer Bugs in Open Source
Research proves what open source folks have been saying all along: “An analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code shows that it contains fewer bugs per thousand lines of code than commercial counterparts.”
Blank Slate
Daring Fireball: Blank Slate talks about basing your work off a template vs. starting from scratch. I think both can be valid, there are enough (over 1000) WP templates out there that finding one that’s close enough to what you want and customizing from there can be a great way to bootstrap and get started quickly. But longer term, invest in design. (This reminded me I have a long todo list for this site to catch up with.)
The Google Blog
As nearly everyone in the world has noticed, Google has a blog now. It’s too bad they didn’t go with the /blog/ URI because this one has extra redundant redundancy, and that doesn’t seem very Google-like. The new blog is very generic, it barely seems like a Blogger blog. On the same day Blogger releases gorgeous XHTML+CSS tempates from Doug and the crew, Google releases its blog with a table-based layout and funky HTML 4 (with no doctype). Also, Blogger uses utf-8 encoding by default now (like WordPress) and Google’s blog uses iso-8859-1.
So there isn’t a lot of information on their blog yet. The first post was signed by Ev, but after that it’s been non-entities writing (and modifying) the posts, which is very weird for a blog. Where to go for more information? Their Atom feed of course. The first thing I noticed was the <id> element, which contained tag:big.corp.google.com,2003:blog-1720. Big corp, ha! So who’s the mysterious author of the two entries after Ev’s?
<author>
<name>A Googler</name>
</author>
Well that’s helpful. Their second post on outsourcing has a more interesting bit of metadata.
<issued>2004-05-10T15:30:52-07:00</issued>
<modified>2004-05-11T17:40:57Z</modified>
<created>2004-05-10T22:39:01Z</created>
Bloggers edit their entries all the time, but “A Googler” actually changed quite a bit, removing a paragraph on outsourcing to India. Perhaps Google is already sharing more than they had planned, but I’ll stop now before they take away my Gmail account.
Jakob Nielsen
I went to the BayCHI event last night which had speakers from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, A9, and Jakob Nielson. I mentioned WordPress and thanked him for his free articles, which I usually enjoy even if I don’t agree with them. Niall snapped a picture of Jakob and I on his Sony F828.
Enrique Dans Switch
For the Spanish speakers in the crowd, noted blogger Enrique Dans has switched to WordPress. The switch was done by Blogestudio, whose Luis Rull was my host in Seville. They’ve done something neat with redirecting old links on Blogspot, I hope they publish more about that. (I wonder if they could use Blogger’s new Custom Domains feature to make it automatic.)
Every 60 seconds on the web there are 50+ WordPress downloads and 60+ new blogs created. Hat tip: Andrew Nacin.
London Meetup Update
I’m here with Khaled and Podz at the Revolution Bar in Soho. We’ll be hanging out here into the night so come by if you fancy.
MSN Search Standards
Sam Waudby writes in that the new MSN is (almost) standards compliant. That is really nice. There is one or two silly things, but I think it’s significant that 99.9% of the page including the advertising is XHTML 1.0 Strict. I’m going to point to that the next time someone whines about an ad system messing up their validation. “If Microsoft can do it…”
More Blue Skies
It’s been a gorgeous day today, highlighted by a mini-picnic with Heather, Richard, Tantek, and [forgot name] in Yerba Buena park for lunch. I’ll leave you this Friday with Ella’s version of “Blue Skies”. For extra credit compare it with Robert Glasper’s rendition.
Merry Christmas!
I hope it’s filled with lots of comfortable sweaters, like this one.
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Rob Paterson writes Why do corporation die so soon and cities don’t? Corporations are Machines and Cities are Networks. Along the way he brings it back to WordPress and the Wikipedia.
Happy Birthday Om!
Today the legendary Om Malik celebrates his 50th time around the sun. For many that know him, Om defies definition: He’s first a writer, and finally always a true friend, but in between he’s an investor, photographer, oenophile, closet Bollywood fan, critical thinker, and sartorialist. He’s also been my friend and confidant for over a decade now, and I cannot wait to see what his next 50 years bring for him and the world.
Here’s some snaps of Om over the years, from 2008 to just a few weeks ago when he was blonde for a few days. Happy birthday, buddy. 😀
Microsoft iPod
What if Microsoft designed the iPod package? Great video and music. I’ll have to watch this again next time I’m working on a new website, less is more. Hat tip: sillybean.
Home Storage Solution
Jeremy’s search for a home network storage appliance is very similar to my own, so go give him advice. I’ve also been considering just getting another dedicated server instead, for ~$100 a month I can get a high-bandwidth server with 250+ GB of storage and upgrade it every year. Of course this might not be necessary with home bandwidth going up — I got two offers this month for 10mbps and 25mbps internet connections in my building for under $30 a month, a third of what I just paid to Comcast.
New Mac Mini
I’ve been looking to get the two noisy linux boxes under my desk into a closet somewhere, because they’re so loud. One is a very very old PII or something running Gentoo that I had to put by the window and open because one of the fans was breaking down and the box was overheating, which caused it to make an alarm-like sound for hours at a time. AHEM. The second box is a fairly new Dell but it’s a server-class machine with TB+ of storage and it sounds like a plane taking off sometimes. The Dell is running Ubuntu, and also using the third screen on my desktop full-time. Having Linux right there (and on the same mouse/keyboard thanks to Synergy) is incredibly helpful for debugging and testing things, plus I could run X-chat full-time. When the new Mac minis came out they caught my eye — something not as dog-slow as my Powerbook, with a proper monitor and keyboard/mouse, could really be a great OS X experience and I’d still have all the command-line goodness at my fingertips. I ordered the maxed-out one online (they didn’t have any in stock at the SF store) and it arrived. So far so good! Almost as fast as my PC (AMD FX55 + 4GB).
Music Industry Lessons
Music lessons. “Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart).”
WordCamp SF 2009
WordCamp San Francisco 2009 will be on May 30, 2009.
Photos of Om’s iPad
Om, of course, got the iPad a day early. 🙂 He did an unboxing post. See also: Raanan’s post on the making of the WordPress iPad app.
Weirdly, every site I visited looked great, except this one. What’s the dealio?
Here are some photos of the iPad and its excited users:
WordPress Interface History
A Journey Through Five Years of WordPress Interface. Take a look at what the WordPress interface looked like at the beginning of 2008. How far we’ve come!
