I learned from the news feeds on the Dashboard for this software, that today is WordPress’s ‘official’ fifth Birthday (it was actually 5 years ago back in the beginning of the year). While that’s pretty young, in software years it’s probably all the way into somewhere in the early teens. The five year mark places the software’s birth in 2003 at some of the darkest times of the post-Internet bubble bursting. That such impressive and powerful software could come out of those times is comforting, in a way. No matter how poor the economic climate, new software can survive, and actually begin to grow in complexity (and user base).
At the most recent Northern Voice, the Annual blogging conference held here in Vancouver, the keynote speaker was Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress. I located his keynote (Thanks to At Large Media, who recorded it and posted it), and thought that on this occasion, it might be nice to include it here, so here it is:
So, I imagine that at the moment, the champagne corks are popping in New York City (there is a party planned for 9PM in San Francisco, so we can raise a glass here to them then, as well). Happy Birthday, WordPress, and congratulations to Matt Mullenweg all of the other folks who worked on it.
A Better Blade Runner and the Designer Behind its World
Before I got started on redesigning this blog, I did get to spend an evening hearing stories from a real designer. Last Wednesday evening’s talk by Syd Mead was a mind-blower.
Before his talk, however, the SIG-CHI Chapter of Vancouver, who were hosting the evening’s event, made some announcements, and then… well, the best description of it might be a ‘happening’.
Here’s a video that someone took of it:
(For those who can’t see the video, essentially, the lights went off and 2 lightweight balls of stretched fabric enclosing multi-coloured lights were tossed over the audience. They were about 7 or 8 feet in diameter, and changed hue every few seconds or so. The crowd happily bounced the balls around the hall, reminding me of those beach balls that get bounced around over the crowds at political conventions. Accompanying the bouncing balls, which were called ‘Zygotes’, courtesy of Tangible Interaction Design was a sort of processed audio, from sensors responding to impacts as the balls bounced off the crowd or the walls and ceiling.
The main event followed: Syd Mead. Mead is the designer of a half a dozen films, including the science fiction classics Tron and Blade Runner. He spoke about his work, using a Quicktime movie to show several decades of illustrations of futuristic cars, buildings, cities and other artifacts of the future that were inside his head and now, perhaps, inside our own as well. There is a DVD of his work as a ‘Visual Futurist’, containing much of the material from his lecture, as well as interviews with others about him and his work. Here’s the trailer, from his web site(check out the high definition version there, it’s well worth seeing at a larger size):
He’s not only a brilliant designer, but he was a good speaker as well, commenting on his work and influences. He showed probably 50-75 examples of his work over the past 50 years or so in various games, cartoons, movies, cars, and industrial design projects. I was surprised to hear that the two artists who influenced him the most were the Baroque painter Caravaggio and 19th/early 20th century illustrator, Maxfield Parrish. As one person interviewed in the trailer put it, Syd Mead is essentially an ‘18th Century Man moved to the 20th and 21st Century’. Many others spoke of the ‘reality’ of his vision, that it had gone through much of the evolution and testing related to a product, building, or technology, but entirely in his own mind.
After the talk we saw a screening of the Final Cut (or so it’s now known) of ‘Blade Runner’, a film that . That screening, in and of itself was fascinating as well. The version has none of the film noir, Raymond Chandler-style voice over by Harrison Ford, and there are quite a few scenes either lengthened, added or in one particularly critical case, omitted (I won’t spoil it if you don’t already know). As I was watching it, I kept marveling at the consistency and richness of the visual environment. The only giveaways that Mead’s vision (like Kubrick’s) of the future wasn’t 100% correct was the appearance of the Pan Am logo on a few electronic billboards. Boy, nobody saw that airline as going away, and its logo still looks fine in all of the visualizations of our future.
Third Tuesday
Last night was the monthly meeting of Third Tuesday, a combination presentation and mixer, focusing on (but not entirely limited to) marketing, web 2.0 and the new ’social media’ that takes place, whenever possible, on the third Tuesday of the month. Last month, Writer and Social Media Evangelist/Consultant, Monica Hamburg introduced many who attended (myself included) to the concept of crowdsourcing. This month, Local Vancouver Technologist, Writer, Raconteur and Miscellanist (that’s how his web site puts it) Darren Barefoot gave an excellent ‘case study’ that explained how his marketing company, Capulet Communications got the attention of the web’s movers and shakers through an online demo of his client’s product. Most surprising detail of the campaign? To invite key people to the online demo (actually, a faux company’s Intranet Wiki), they sent invitations to about 35 of them via snail mail. That’s right, email has produced so much noise and clutter (read: SPAM) that the best way to get to some people is the old fashioned way. It reminded me of an Isaac Asimov short story where a bunch of military scientists realize that the best way to compute some missile trajectories is through some lost ancient techniques, known as ‘multiplication’ and ‘long division’ performed by a soldier with (*gasp!*) a pencil and paper… There was no mention of telegrams or signaling fires, so I’m going to assume that those ‘Employee kits’ sent via Courier were as far back in technology as he was willing to go.
I met up many friends and acquaintances, and am glad to see that the summer season (and mostly sunny skies) has not meant that everyone is heading for the beach, only to reconnect up in the fall. At least, not yet.
How can you tell when I have a little more time on my hands? A change to the look and feel of this blog is a sure sign. For those who don’t read it via the feed (which means, family and a few others, rather than other bloggers), I’ve once again fiddled with the theme or rather the pages of the blog/web site. There are a few minor glitches, but overall, I’m pleased with this one, and if I don’t screw it up, this design might be in place for a while. The picture of the mountains in the header is from a recent picnic at Locarno Beach.
(Warning, geekery to follow : ) I’m still a fan of the Georgia font for body text, but now I’m making the more standard font choice of a sans serif (Helvetica or Arial if you don’t have that installed) font for headers and navigation. I’ve decided to take the chance of using the Wordpress ‘widget’ technology for the sidebar, instead of relying on the theme’s own PHP code for generating the calendar, search box, blogroll and category list, which may or may not be a good idea. Already I can see some disadvantages to this approach, as the sort order of the blogroll is no longer randomized and always appears in alphabetical order. I guess the answer is to use a different widget, but I’m new to this approach. I also can’t figure out how I’ll insert Flickr thumbnails between widgets. I’m thinking that will need a widget of its own. Will have to research further.
At any rate, the advantage to experimenting is that you learn more, so I’ll surely be playing around a bit more. I’m already a bit more sure of myself on the CSS side of things, so hopefully there will be fewer layout glitches.
Now I just have to figure out how to get the home page listed in the page list…
You know how it is: A drippy faucet leads to a tile coming off, which leads to a hole in the wall, which leads to…a new bathroom. Well, that’s what happened to us years ago in Boston, and that’s all supposed to be a metaphor for what’s going on right now with this blog (or at least, the design of it).
I just wanted to ‘fix’ a Flickr badge, and incorporate some new functionality. That led to the whole design coming apart before my eyes. So, bear with me while I essentially start from scratch. I’m experimenting with a new look. I’ve tried 2 new themes so far and I’m not happy with either of them. I really hate messing with this.
The highlight of the afternoon was for me, as it turned about, PhotoCamp. That’s the session on photography led by Kris Krug, President of Bryght. I’ve been to this session in past years, but this year Kris had a slightly different format (although he had done PhotoCamp this way at other venues like BarCamp): A group of different experts in a variety of photographic techniques and topics followed. Tim Bray talked about what ideal small camera to get, even if you already have a larger Digital SLR (and I was glad to see that he promoted the site DPReview, a site that Steven had recommended many times when I was shopping for a camera.) Local art photographer Rachael Ashe showed some stunningly psychedelic effects you can get by using long exposures in a dark room along with various kinds of coloured lights; a kind of light painting. You can see an example done today here. I’ve seen other examples of this online, but the ones she did had an almost iconic (in the religious sense) quality. Novak Rogic of Microsoft showed how you could make elegant and almost picturesque little planets from stiched together panoramas, Duane Storey (who I am hoping to purchase one of his stunning photomurals of the Vancouver skyline from) talked about how to set up a store to sell your photos on SmugMug.com and Miranda Lievers, a local portrait and wedding photographer, gave a superb show of how to make the best pictures from available light. It was that last presentation that particularly impressed me, and I hope I’ll be able to use some of what I learned in future photos.
After Photocamp, I went to the session on WordPress (partly as a prelude to tomorrow’s keynote by Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of Wordpress, one of the most successful blogging software packages today, and the software I use to publish all of my blogs.) While that was mainly a breakout session where we all had the opportunity to avail ourselves of local experts, it was followed by a terrific presentation called ‘More than Cat Blogs’, which was how WordPress can be used to build web sites that are either not blogs at all, or don’t look anything like blogs. (unfortunately I didn’t get the presenters name and he hasn’t posted any links to his session or himself on the Northern Voice Wiki).
After all of these presentations, I went with several others to the nearby Mahoney’s bar, where Voxant Newsroom, a digital news video hosting service, was offering free drinks and t-shirts in return for filling out a short survey regarding blogs and other demographic information. It was nice to be able to get drinks (and eventually dinner) so close the the conference, and I was home at a decent hour, ready for a full second day of Northern Voice tomorrow. It starts early (at 8:30 AM), so hopefully I’ll be up and ready.
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You know how it is: A drippy faucet leads to a tile coming off, which leads to a hole in the wall, which leads to…a new bathroom. Well, that’s what happened to us years ago in Boston, and that’s all supposed to be a metaphor for what’s going on right now with this blog (or at least, the design of it).
