Big Friendly

This is how I work 65% of the day. Kills my back, but what is a man to do? I’m never alone, let’s see JC make me feel this loved.

WordPress 2.7 is being released on the 5th of December on wordpress.com so it probably means that the final version will also be released on wordpress.org for us “roll-your-own” people. I’ve been running WordPress 2.7 RC1 on this site for a couple of days now and I’m enjoying it. Front end doesn’t change as far as the casual user will see, but the admin interface is pretty cool. The changes there are pretty huge if you use the admin interface to write and manage your content. I think that for non-technical people, like Habibti, it will be a great improvement. It seems a lot more intuitive.

Some of the key features I think will be of value for non-technical users are:

• Right Now – a basic stats overview of your blog. With a breakdown of number of Posts, Pages, Categories, Tags and Comments. It also includes other information like your version and template.
• QuickPress – a stripped down posting widget kind of thing. It will make it easier for those hit and run posts that you need to get up quickly.
• Tool bar on the right – this makes it a lot easier to manage the deeper mechanisms of your blog if you’re more inclined to tinker and tweak. Like me.
• Drag and drop reorganising of Dashboard – You are able to place elements of the Dashboard in a way that makes sense to you by simply just dragging things around. You can also use the drop down “Screen Options” to exclude elements of the Dashboard. So if you don’t want to see “Other WordPress News” then you just deselect it in “Screen Options” and Bob’s Your Dictator ©.
• I still think that WordPress are missing a trick in not partnering with something like Microsoft Live Writer (but Open Source) and add more custom functionality. I use Live Writer to write my posts and I’m loving it.

So there you have initial impressions of WordPress 2.7. Not in any way comprehensive or even vaguely technical, but in my opinion WordPress 2.7 will pass the “can my mother use it” yardstick with little or no training. I’ll get Habibti to write something once I’ve upgraded her blog. You can read a more detailed breakdown of the all the new features, bangs and whizzes on this post by Jane Wells.

Habibti had me go and watch the first costume run of “The Tent” and take some photos with my brand new Nikon D60 yesterday. The above photo is of one of the actors whose name escapes me right now. Most of the 141 photos came out “uiters kak” as I was forced to use the built in flash and it burnt out features and completely destroyed the lighting. My Nikon Speedlight SB-28 does not work on the camera at all. Pretty bummed out by this. I walked away impressed with Habibti’s creative mind and amazing vision all over again. Married for 4.5 years and I still think she is one of the cleverest and sexiest people I know. So if one of my 2 or 3 regular visitors is in the mood for some great local theatre this weekend, be at the Arena (ArtScape) on Friday or Saturday evening.

Major excitement over the release of WordPress 2.7 Release Candidate 1. I’ve tried Beta 1 and Beta 3 out on my local dev server and I’m liking the direction things are taking. So right now I’m backing up this site before I try and upgrade. Seems the only action this blog ever sees is testing new versions of WordPress. Suppose it could be used for worse things, like writing about the mundane details of my life.

But being the proud owner of a new digital SLR I’m going to take this blog into a new direction over the next few weeks. Get ready for photos of the mundane details of my life. Don’t ever say I’m not pushing the envelope, doing things outside the box. I’m so excited I’m next to myself – new WordPress and new camera. Hell, I’d go as far as to say there is no box.