My resumé is out of date

My resumé is very much out of date. For those of you wondering, I now work for The New Group. (Don’t hold our website against me—I would use a lot less Flash. It is getting updated soon.)

It has been a crazy first month at a company that is in the midst of some interesting changes and rapid growth. I’m really looking forward to the ride, though I can’t say I felt that way two weeks ago.

For those of you in the midst of change, give it a few weeks. It is amazing what you will learn if you allow yourself to go through at least one month worth of change with a group of people. I am really impressed with the team I am going to be working with. I can’t wait to see what we create.

Nearly painless upgrade to WordPress 2.5

I just completed a nearly painless upgrade to WordPress 2.5. I say “nearly painless” only because I managed to trigger a page error when attempting to upgrade a couple of plugins. (Apparently you have to deactivate a plugin before you upgrade it, which is a reasonable requirement, but it doesn’t say “deactivate first” anywhere.)

Technically, the actual 2.5 upgrade went off without a hitch thanks to WordPress Automatic Upgrade. Everything in my template just worked, which I couldn’t say after the 2.3 upgrade earlier this year.

So what is my favorite new feature? Well, so far it has to be the automatic plugin upgrade, but I am looking forward to using some fo the media features and the media browser is a clear improvement.

Permablitz: a faster way to permaculture.

Treehugger is touting Permablitz: Near Instant Permaculture for the ‘Burbs. I don’t live in the ‘burbs, but I do live in a high density Portland neighborhood. My goal by the end of this summer is to have a highly productive front lawn. The first step in that plan is the walkway seen in this photo. Next is a rock retaining wall so that I can level things out and start planting.

An impressive means of transport

While speaking with Jon Maroney at the last Mobile Portland event, he mentioned that he was hoping to get a rickshaw or similar pedal-powered vehicle for picking up clients from the airport. Jon, I think I’ve found your transport. The highly convertable Cycles Maximus Trike seems like the perfect fit for bike-friendly Portland.

Now who’s going to import it? Clever Cylces? This seems right up their alley.

I’m hoping for the dragons

According to some wacky scientists out there, there is a possibility that turning on a really powerful nuclear device could have unexpected consequences. Pbbwfff!

[via TreeHugger]

What Would Boxes and Arrows Do? (WWBAD)

In the course of handing off a project to another company, I just had the opportunity to say “just build them Boxes and Arrows on Drupal and they’ll be thrilled.” While I was merely using hyperbole to make a point, it got be thinking. What do they use to deliver their content?

The answer is PublicSquare. This is a subscription-based service for creating an online magazine with a community component. I’ve always like the layout and general functionality of Boxes and Arrows and now I know what they use to serve up their content.

I plan to look into this a bit more as the idea of a subscription-based magazine CMS intruiges me. I would have signed up for an account today, but it turns out that they have an expired security certificate on their account sign up page. I wonder if they know that?  (It expired on December 6, 2007.)

Re-thinking Flock

Flock Browser - The Social Web Browser

Flock bills itself as the browser for people who like to be connected. Really, I just wanted a browser that I could run the Web Developer Toolbar in now that Firefox Beta 3 has disabled that valuable add-on.

links for 2008-01-16

• Grouply
  Grouply is a tool that aggregates Yahoo and Google Groups into a daily digest.
  (tags: groups aggregator yahoo google grouply competition)

links for 2008-01-15

• Online Guitar Lessons
  Guitar Tricks may have one of the most dated designs I have inflicted my eyes with in some time. That said, it also has some sweet tutorials to help the budding guitarist learn a thing or two. (I am being generous when I refer to myself as a “budding” gui
  (tags: Guitar lessons guitarlessons music)

links for 2008-01-10

• Fluid - Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard
  I will set install this application that creates applications for use with Basecamp and Gmail… just as soon as I upgrade to Leopard.
  (tags: mac osx browser apple web leopard software applications)