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When you type for a living, playing dodge ball is less than intelligent. Oh my swollen thumb!

See, I’m an adrenaline junkie. As a child, I was bad at sports. Couldn’t cut it at t-ball. Football was fun but I was just cannon fodder and didn’t really understand the rules. Basketball was befuddling; to me everything was a foul and besides, I was too short. Volleyball was cool but they still spiked me into the ground. Now put me in man against self or man against nature and the rules are different. I’ve kayaked, flown a glider, camped and hiked the backcountry, climbed, spelunked, scuba’d, qualified as a lifeguard, mountain biked myself bloody, repelled now closed cliffs, and fallen asleep on a motorcycle at 50mph in a curve. If it will push my limits, I’ll take it on! But these sports with balls being thrown around? You’d think that a juggler could catch a rubber ball. At least that’s what my face thought tonight!

Jock? Not me. Crazy thrill seeker? Yeah, I’ll take that.

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Cutting a plugin loose – Goodbye WP-Project

I liked the concept of WP-Project. It’s a WordPress plugin which adds a tab in your dashboard for project management. It was inspired by Basecamp (collaboration piece for project management) and Harvest(er) (a timetracker). Conceptually we like to spend a lot of time in our dashboards so why not do our project management there too? I just didn’t find the plugin robust enough for my needs. And if it was robust enough, I’d be concerned that my database, which already has issues with Spam Karma eating its space, would fillup too quickly. (n.b. The database has a 100MB allocation.) For now, I’m going to try out Zoho’s project management.

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WordPress Support on IRC is on Freenode

For those looking, WordPress.com support on IRC is on the Freenode servers at #wordpress.com while WordPress.org support is on the Freenode servers at #wordpress. #wordpress.com is primarily WordPress.com developers/employees and staff of Automattic while #wordpress is the open source community.

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Outlook Dim

I am retiring Outlook as my email client and moving entirely to GMail. I’ve used numerous clients over the years including Fidonet and the other BBS packages (my first email experiences), sendmail at the command line, emacs, cc:Mail, Lotus Notes, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Outlook, and others I can’t remember. Outlook express isn’t bad if you are simply checking email. If you are doing scheduling, group collaboration, todo lists and the works, then you should be using Outlook (not Express). As much as it goes against my philosophy of "be in control of your content," I think that using an email client and downloading email to your desktop is old school. Collaboration is moving to portals such as BEA’s Plumtree and Microsoft’s SharePoint. Meetings are done online now with Webex, GoToMeeting, Skype (I am djuggler), Adobe’s ConnectNow, and even Microsoft’s instant messenger using ShareView. Communication is being accomplished through instant messengers and in some cases instant messengers are being replaced by services such as Twitter. Text messaging is frequently favored over a voice call as it reduces the urgency of the conversation and can provide additional benefit such as retention of information (if I give you a phone number via voice you have to memorize it or write it down..in a text message the number is stored). I can make argument that email is in its death bed. Much like snail mail and fax, it won’t go away completely but is bound to be ignored in favor of better technologies.

The way we communicate is changing rapidly. Video conferencing over mobile phones was promised by AT&T last fall in the Motorola RARZ v3xx and looks to be delivered on July 11, 2008 with the new iPhones will come sooner than later. Collaborative tools are far more powerful than hording information on single machines. And using third party or server tools to store information makes the information portable and available to you from any computer and any location. A couple of decades ago Bill Gates said the personal computer would evolve into a terminal and all software and data would be managed on network connected servers. He was right.

ps. I didn’t forget IMAP but that’s for a different post.

Note: During my transition from Outlook to Gmail I may overlook some email. If you have emailed me and been ignored, please resend your message as I am having to adjust some email habits in light of the different way Gmail handles email.

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Back in the groove

This past week we took the family to Ocean Isle, North Carolina and joined my brother, his wife, and my parents for a week of relaxation. I feel great! I am relaxed and my mind is clear. Time to get back to the grind and try to maintain this peace of mind.

Oh, that’s right, first day back from vacation is like being marinated in blood and thrown in a tank of piranhas…

Before:
(lack of tans) Upon arriving at the beach

After:
(tans) Upon leaving the beach

Cathy has a great overview.