I get the odd inquiry about the work involved in organizing a conference, particularly a WordCamp. Rebecca, John and I have organized several WordCamps, but WordCamp Whistler was undoubtedly the hardest of the bunch, mainly because none of us had the opportunity to assess the location until the night before. While the event was really successful in my mind (the speakers were great, the staff at the Fairmont were helpful, and everyone I talked to felt that they got good value from the event), in retrospect I might have organized something a bit more local. The costs associated with the event kept ...

So, I was lying in bed last night, letting my mind fill up with useless dribble, when I started thinking about WordPress permalinks. I came to the conclusion that the WordPress friendly permalinks aren’t really permalinks in the traditional sense, in that they can be changed after the fact by an end-user. First, here’s a definition of a permalink: A permalink, or permanent link, is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. An example of ...

As you can see, things have changed around here a bit. I actually still have quite a bit left to do on this theme, but it’s functional enough that I put it live. I’m going to do a custom template for the upcoming Blogathon event, and also flesh out the content in a few more areas. But it’s definitely getting close. Thanks to Dale for his help with this too. ...

I had a bit of time yesterday (really, I didn’t, but the creative juices were flowing and I wanted to start dabbling), so I started tinkering with some ideas for a new theme for this site. While I routinely update the theme on this site (I average about every four months or so), I really want the next one to be up here for quite some time, so I’m not going to rush development on it. I have a few basic goals for the new theme: The theme should put more focus on aspects of my life such as photography, and less on my other content The theme will focus more on my life, and some of my passions ...

Yesterday was WordCamp San Francisco, and Rebecca, John Bollwitt, John BIehler, Dale and myself all attended. The night before we thought it was a good idea to sit around and drink margaritas until around 2am, so we were all a bit tired during the event. But it was a great event, and we’re all glad we made the trip down. Several fairly exciting things happened during Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word Presentation. First, Matt showed a slide which displayed some of the new profile information that is going to be coming to WordPress.org — BraveNewCode has actually been helping with that ...

We whipped together a little script to scan the WordPress plugin repository for common errors. You can check out the end result here. Hopefully plugin developers can use it as a resource to improve plugins and let them be used by a wider audience. If you click the link and it doesn’t work, try again in a bit — I’ve been having a few server problems today. ...

A while ago I started messing around with trying to get a single WordPress installation to host multiple blogs. If you read that and think WordPress MU, you’re not far off. What I don’t like about WordPress MU though is that the system administrator chooses the themes and the plugins that are available to the end user — ideally, I would want each user to control that themselves, such that it basically has the same functionality as a normal WordPress installation. There are a lot of other reasons why you might want a single WordPress install for multiple blogs. First, if you make backups ...

I spent some time tonight updating my about page, the site information page, and my media kit. I also dumped the content of my FriendFeed stream to my new streams page. I’ve loving the layout options with the new site changes. Can’t wait to slowly build it out over the next few weeks. ...

I spent some time working on Viper Cache last night. It’s going to get a new name at some point, but it’s close to being done. I’m going to test it on this site for a while and see if I can iron out any bugs. ...

Obviously I’ve been spending a bit of time tweaking Apache such that it is well optimized for working in a VPS environment. Truthfully though, Apache is a major resource hog. To be honest, I really can’t comprehend what it’s doing with all that memory it seems to hoard. One of the other major downsides to Apache is that it forks additional processes to handle server load, and processes are rather heavy (at least when compared to user threads). Since I haven’t touched any C++ in about two months, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a quick web server to see if I can better understand ...

A few years ago I sat down to write my very first WordPress plugin, and ended up writing Crossroads. My goal at the time was to integrate Flickr comments into the normal comments on my blog, which was something I ultimately did. Unfortunately though, some of the limitations of the Flickr API made that feature fairly slow to use, and so it’s something I ditched on my own blog a long time ago. A few days ago I sat down and started working on version 2.0. It’s a 100% complete rewrite, which given the state of the old code is definitely something that’s going to improve it. I’m writing it ...

Don’t have much time this morning, but I wanted to give a quick update. First off, I had a shower before I went to bed last night. Unfortunately, I left the floor a little bit wet, something I realized at around 4am when I went to the bathroom and complete wiped out. Somehow I busted my hand open trying to stop myself from falling, and I bruised my shoulder pretty bad. I woke up with dried blood on my hand this morning, so I must have whacked it pretty good. This is my sixth last day of work, and then I’m done. I haven’t even begun to think about packing yet, and probably won’t get a chance ...

WordCamp Whistler is just around the corner, and we’ve already seen an increase in ticket sales these last few days. If you’re interested in coming, you should go ahead and buy your tickets now. Right now tickets are $35, but as of Friday, January 9th, they’ll increase to $40. The following Friday, January 16th, they will increase to $50, and shortly afterwards they will no longer be available. If you’d like to purchase your tickets, please visit our EventBrite page and pick up your tickets now. Included in the price of your ticket is a full day of WordPress-related talks, complimentary ...

I woke up this morning and had a few people email me saying that there were a bunch of duplicate entries in my RSS feed. I really have no idea why, but since I installed WordPress 2.7 RC1 last night, I suspect that it’s related to that. I might spend a bit of time trying to figure out why. More likely is that I do nothing though and simply let it work itself out naturally. I’ll scan the WordPress forums in a few minutes and see if anyone else is having this issue, otherwise I’ll spend a bit of time debugging. Thanks to everyone who emailed me to let me know that my website sucked. Much appreciated. ...

Raul *finally* moved off of WordPress.com, and has a shiny new self-hosted one up at HummingBird604.com. Make sure you swing on by and take a look. ...

I did a bit of work to my links page tonight. I wrote a piece of code so that now the people I follow on Twitter show up as well. It’s sort of a neat mashup, and I’m hoping to do a bit more with Twitter soon. ...

Yes, that’s right people. How does going up to Whistler and spending a weekend boarding/skiing and talking about everyone’s favourite blogging engine, WordPress, sound? I suggested this briefly on Twitter tonight, and immediately got a message from Rebecca along the lines of “hell ya!” I emailed a hotel already tonight at the heart of the village to see what kind of group rates we could get in December or January. I think it would be awesome to go up for a weekend, hold a WordCamp during the day, and do afternoon/night skiing in the off time, or on the second day. Rebecca and I helped ...

I posted an article about QR Codes a few months ago. QR Codes are two-dimensional barcodes that can contain a great deal of information in a relatively small area. They are heavily used in Japan, and are slowly starting to gain traction in other parts of the world. One of the best uses of QR codes in my mind involves the inclusion of QR code hyperlinks in printed media. That way a user could be reading a poster or a paper version of an article and still be able to navigate hyperlinks using their phone. Typically this is accomplished using a QR code reader on a cellular phone, which causes the ...

Lots of people in the WordPress community know about Dancing Matt, but I thought I’d put this up for those who haven’t heard of him. This guy named Matt has been bouncing around the world and doing a little YouTube-like video dance whenever he stops. I’m not entirely sure how it started or what it was supposed to be, but it’s amazing what it finally turned into. Here’s a little ensemble of shots from Matt’s journeys: It actually took me a minute or two to figure out where he was dancing in Vancouver. The background looked like Yaletown, but the foreground looked like the Inuqshuk at ...

Well, the event is all over now, and I officially have a small hangover to remember it by. I met a lot of really great people last night at the social, and it was a ton of fun. I have yet to meet a blogger I didn’t like, and last night was no exception. Everyone was friendly, and a pleasure to hang out and drink beer with. The social event was at Pete’s Tavern, which is conveniently located directly across from the baseball stadium. The bar was completely open as were the pool tables upstairs, so there was lots to do. I tried my best to walk around and meet as many people as I could, but I’m ...