Category: General

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I’m Speaking At WordCamp Philly

WordCampPhilly_Big.gif
Write down the date — October 30, 2010, the day before Halloween, I’m due to speak at WordCamp Philly down at Temple University in Philadelphia. I’m incredibly honored to be given the chance to speak on a topic near to my heart: Making WordPress Work AT Work. I plan on posting a series of articles over the next few months that will act as the foundation for my talk.
In the meantime, browse the #wcphl website and (after getting your tickets, of course) be sure to check out the other speakers that will be presenting.

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WordPress Hg

I’ve really caught the Mercurial bug recently and have begun chewing coworkers’ ears off about its benefits. I’ve been looking into ways to integrate it into my WordPress-related efforts and, inspired by this recent post on the WP Devel blog announcing a github effort to make WP available via git, I decided to set up an Hg clone (haw!) of the core WordPress codebase.
It’s available here over on BitBucket and, unlike Nikolai’s effort (which only appears to track trunk), I started my clone at the root of the Subversion repository, meaning that all branches and tags are (theoretically) accounted for. I’m currently syncing the two repos by-hand but am working on an automated process that should push changes from the core WordPress SVN server to BitBucket fairly quickly.
I’ll post again later to demonstrate my full process for accomplishing this — it was astonishingly easy, to be honest.
In the meantime, get cloning!

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Real Life Update

Just a quick update on the State of the State, as it were.
Will’s gash is healing quite nicely and he’s due to have the stitches out tomorrow morning, while Kate’s cough has largely subsided. The doc prescribed steroids for her (due to her earlier bout with RSV), thus her encounter with croup seems to have been mercifully short.
We’re due to head to TX this Saturday, so hopefully everyone will be on their best health footing, although I do feel a nasty cold coming on, myself.
Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that. At least the kids are okay.

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Greetings

Norf Mirtle Beech
Maxin’ and relaxin’ on the beach, hence posting is likely to be light, light, light.
Nobody touch nuthin’ while I’m gone.

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A Bountiful Link-Filled Catch-Up

I am fully cognizant of my delinquent blogging — apologies all around. I’ve been in full recovery mode since taking the redeye from SFO to PHL on Friday night. Short observations on that flight? Sucked like a brand-new Dyson 07 with the full pet hair kit. Stupid US Airways.
In exchange for my previous silence, please accept this surplus of links.
This is my kind of math: 1 rainy/icy racetrack + multiple expensive race cars + a massive pileup = millions of USD/GBP in damage, 0 fatalities. Nice.
WordPress converts aplenty: Michelle Malkin moved from an On’B MT-powered site to a brand-spankin’ WordPress one. Jeff Goldstein dumped Emotion Engine for WordPress, while Fred Thompson’s official blog was built from the ground-up using WP.
iPhone-tailored apps (read: websites for the iPhone’s tiny Safari browser) have already started hitting the streets, thus an aggregation site was nigh-inevitable, of course.
The Payback Project — stickin’ it to sucka GOP Senatorz that be all “We’ll vote to let the illegals ignore our laws ’cause then they’ll totally vote for us. Or maybe their kids will.” “Teach the GOP to respect their base again — the hard way” — fo’ sheezy.
Speaking of “fo’ sheezy”: Geek bling keyboard rings. To paraphrase a certain incarcerated celebrity heiress: “That’s Ctrl-Alt-Del hot.”
Life as a videogame character? It has its plusses and minuses.
LOLCODE: taking both the lolcats meme and programming where both probably ne’er should have ventured. LOLBOTS, on the other hand, is the utlimate incarnation of the joke.
John Hodgman as Steve Jobs in the intro to WWDC last week:

Speaking of WWDC, I posted my crappy cameraphone pics from the conference over at my Zooomr page.
UPDATE:
Can’t forget the transforming Transformers cosplayers:

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In-Flight Blogging

[Recorded somewhere over Western Pennsylvania or possibly Ohio, I think, 6:07pm EDT]
After an unspecified “paperwork”-based delay of almost 45 minutes (due, according to the pilot, to a delayed or mishandled flight from either Phoenix or Las Vegas, curse you Sun/Sin City!), we took off and are on our way to SFO.
The flight is filled to capacity — a bit surprising to me, I’ll warrant. Didn’t realize there was much call for direct flights to San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon, but there’s no accounting for taste or city of residence, I guess.
A few observations:
In-flight movie: Breach.
In-flight food: Looks to be peanuts. For-pay meal to follow, I’m sure.
In-flight advertising: Pervasive. The drop-down screens that America WestUS Airways use to run the movies are also a nice way to invade my personal space with ads for DHL shipping, credit cards and more apparently. Plus, the stewardess’s safety speech was practically “sponsored by” the ever-present Sky Mall.
[UPDATE 7:30pm EDT]
In re: In-flight food: Turned out to be pretzels. Also, sitting in row 22 means that there was no food left by the time the cart reached me. Feh. Room service it is, I guess.
In re: In-flight movie: Breach, Bourne Identity — doesn’t Cris Cooper ever get to play a good guy? Also, I probably could’ve researched the previous point more thoroughly were the FAA to allow for in-flight wireless.

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Random Links: Little Rays Of Orthogonal Sunlight For Your Dreary Lives

Frank J. offers a FAQ from the White House in re: the forthcoming illegal-immigration amnesty- and crime-enablingreform bill. To wit:

Q. I’m concerned that the immigration bill focuses more on giving illegal immigrants amnesty than border protection. Does the President share these concerns?
A. The President doesn’t hate brown people.
Q. This isn’t a racial issue. Many people think this bill will only encourage more illegal immigration and leave our borders open and dangerous. What are the answer to these charges?
A. To answer your underlying question, I’m afraid the the President is against your proposal to commit genocide against Hispanics.

Heh.
Cracked.com offers the top 10 “secret” celebrity Scientologists and the top 20 “that guys” of all time, both of which are irreverent, crass, curse-ridden and worth a read.
Funky-looking clouds in Nebraska (I recall seeing something similar after a tornado back in MN at one point).
Blogs4God is back with an all-new Pligg-powered setup.
Tattling comes to a cinema near you.
Baby carrots aren’t “baby” anything — they’re re-purposed ugly carrots.
Bruce Willis frequents Ain’t It Cool and other movie-centric message boards and is man enough to prove it to a doubter.
How to fake a smile properly.
10 things you should know about WordPress 2.2 and three things developers will like about it.
Google Maps StreetView is da bomb.
Did I mention that I’m selling stuff now?

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As If I Needed Any Further Reasons To Avoid Jersey Whenever Possible

Were it not for the fact that I work in New Jersey and have many friends there, I would stay as far away as possible, particularly in light of the recent revelations that

  1. NJ State Police are a bunch of whiny, self-satisfied punks with their tails in a twist over criticism they’ve taken after crashing Gov. Corzine into a Jersey barrier at 91 mph and are not above resorting to extortion and harassment of their critics in order to make themselves feel better
  2. NJ beaches are full of unexploded ordnance
  3. NJ played host to the home-grown Terrorist Cell That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, given the fact that they went to a commercial video dubbing establishment to convert their jihadi terror videos into DVDs

I would advise that those that can avoid Jersey do.